A tale of two Octobers: comparing the 2024 and 2025 Habs season starts

The Montreal Canadiens have kicked off the 2025 season with a bang. At the time of writing, the Habs sit atop the Atlantic with an 8-3-0 record for 16 points in 11 games played. To put it plainly, they are one of the best teams in the NHL. Full stop.

And what a turnaround from the start of the 2024 season. To call the start of the 2024 campaign abysmal feels more appropriate, scraping through the month of October with a 4-6-1 record.

So what changed? I figured now would be as good a time as any to compare the starts.

The Roster

Opening night rosters could not be more drastically different between the two seasons. In 2024, Joel Armia was a second-line winger alongside Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook. While Christian Dvorak centred a line for Alex Barre-Boulet and Josh Anderson. Cayden Primeau was the backup goalie, and Justin Barron and David Savard.

The only line that remains unchanged is the Caufield-Suzuki-Slafkovsky grouping.

Of the players who were on the roster last season, a total of nine are no longer on the team.

The defence for the 2025 season has been bolstered by solidifications made last year (Alexandre Carrier) and the big offseason move of acquiring Noah Dobson from the New York Islanders.
Matheson and Dobson have been one of the most reliable new pairings for the Habs, logging heavy minutes. The pair is not only extremely responsible defensively, but also creates tons of scoring chances on the attack.

It would be hard to talk about opening night roster differences without mentioning netminder Jakub Dobes. Dobes was called up from the Laval Rocket in place of Cayden Primeau to help stabilize the Habs' net last season after the Christmas break, going on to win his first 5 starts. Dobes has brought that same stability to the Habs this season, winning all six of his starts this season, with a 1.97 GAA and a .930 save percentage. For his efforts, he was named the NHL’s third star of the month for October.

There are the excellent additions of Zachary Bolduc and Oliver Kapanen, and what they have brought to this team, but the most obvious young gun is, of course, Ivan Demidov.

Demidov has hit the ground running on the season, with 2 goals and 7 assists for 9 points in 11 games. His ability to make space and shred defensive structures on the power play with quite literally a look has been a godsend for the Habs, and with his promotion to the first power-play unit, it has shown even further. Oh yeah, he’s also only ever played over 15 minutes a game twice so far.

Finding Ways To Win

Have the Canadiens been perfect this year? The obvious answer is no, but a key difference from last year is that they find ways to get the job done. The Habs have been sent to overtime four times in this first stretch of games and won every single time (thank you, Canadiens OT goal record setter Cole Caufield.)

While they’ve been able to close those games out, a new problem, a good problem, but still a problem, has arisen. They need to learn how to hold on to a lead. The most glaring example is the last 10 minutes of their game in Seattle, blowing a 3-0 lead and being forced to rely on overtime heroics to secure the win.

Early on, those two points on the board are significant, but with the “regulation wins” category being the first tiebreaker in the standings, we will see how important closing games out in regulation may become.

Again, while holding leads and winning half their winning games in overtime are things that need to be adjusted, it's far better than where they sat last year in the same span, only 9 points in the standings and losing their only non-regulation appearance in the shootout.

Visiting Victors

Winning on the road has been a strength for the Habs to start the season, winning 2 of the 3 on their opening road trip, then winning 3 of 4 on their most recent western swing. Arguably, despite losing the 2 road losses, Toronto and Edmonton were some of their most convincing games, showing solid pushback and offensive prowess, but just couldn’t get over the line.

I mean, the Oilers game was a whole debacle that frankly isn’t worth unpacking in this situation.

Sustainability

That’s it. That’s the word. Can the Canadiens keep their winning ways? It relies on a couple of factors that are well within their control. Keep up the pressure through all 60 minutes, find ways to get solid goaltending night in and night out and continue to be one of the quickest transition teams in the league.

The speed portion I am hardly worried about, nor am I so much about the full 60-minute effort. The complete game can be refined and learned. But whether the Habs can get a solid 1A 1B situation rolling with Dobes and Montembeault is another question. Can Dobes stay in form? We saw cracks at the end of the Seattle game. How will he adjust?  Can Montembeault bounce back? Time will tell with each of these, but November and onward certainly look much brighter than they did at the start of last season.