Over the past month, the Montreal Canadiens had a big question at goalie as they were carrying three on the roster, but it wasn't necessarily a long-term solution. On Friday, they answered that question by sending Jacob Fowler back to Laval, but they might have immediately regretted that decision.
This meant that moving forward, they were going back to the duo they began the season with in Samuel Montembeault and Jakub Dobes. These two struggled to begin the season, which is why the team elected to call up Jacob Fowler in the middle of December.
Fowler would play a majority of the games over that span, and while he went 4-4-2 in his 10 starts, he played much better than his record showed, including a solid goals against average of 2.62 and a save percentage of .902.
The Canadiens would play their first game since the decision to send Fowler to Laval on Saturday, and had Montembeault in net. Unfortunately, the performance was reminiscent of what they saw at the beginning of the season as he allowed five goals on 34 shots.
They needed a huge two-goal comeback late in the third to push it to overtime before Cole Caufield scored the game-winner in the extra period of hockey.
Jacob Fowler had shown enough to be the starting goalie for the Montreal Canadiens
The decision of which goalie to send down to Laval came down to Fowler and Dobes because those were the two who could be sent down without having to go through waivers. For the Canadiens, the thought process probably came down to wanting Fowler to get as much ice time as possible and not be the backup to Montembeault.
However, there lies the flaw in the logic, because Fowler had played well enough to be the starter for the Canadiens. The record wasn't great, but in two of his last four starts, the Canadiens failed to score a goal, and no matter how good Fowler was, they wouldn't have won.
The Canadiens' best chance to remain atop the Atlantic Division is with Fowler in net, and they will probably realize that at some point this season. However, with how competitive the division is, it will be interesting to see how long it will take them to make that decision and how far they might fall in the standings.