The Montreal Canadiens have had an outstanding regular season so far. The team sits second in the Atlantic Division and third in the entire Eastern Conference. The big guns of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Lane Hutson are all having career seasons. Juraj Slafkovsky has taken a significant step forward in his development, becoming a truly dominant player when he is on the ice. Ivan Demidov looks like the real deal, and Oliver Kapanen has surprised many with how well he has played this season. However, even though the Canadiens are potentially on their way to back-to-back playoff berths, there is one area of the team that has struggled this season: Goaltending. Specifically, the play of Samuel Montembeault.
Tale of two seasons
What a difference a year makes in how you view a player. After Montembeault’s career year last season, which saw him included on Team Canada’s 4 Nations Face-Off, he was a big reason why the Canadiens were able to make the playoffs. He set career highs in games started (60), wins (31), and goals against average (2.82). He was the unquestioned number one goalie for the Canadiens coming into the season, and if he was able to duplicate the success he had in the 2024-25 season, it is entirely possible he would have been looked at as the Canadiens goalie of present and future. Instead, Montembeault has gone from the best season of his career to his worst.
Montembeault has struggled since the opening night of the season against the Toronto Maple Leafs. There are moments during games where you can see the goalie we saw last season, but then there seem to be lapses in concentration, and he lets in a goal that he really should have stopped. That has been his problem for most of the year: stopping the routine shots any goalie should make at the NHL level. It became such a big problem that the Canadiens were forced to call up Jacob Fowler, who was not expected to have any NHL action this season. The move felt like the Canadiens were sending a message to not only Montembeault, but to Jakub Dobes as well, that if they are not helping the team win, they have other options to put in goal.
Reset in Laval
While Fowler was with the Canadiens, it was Montembeault who drew the short end of the stick, with Dobes and the young American netminder rotating starts. Montembeault went nearly a month between starts, appearing once during that time, coming in relief for Dobes, who was pulled in a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Canadiens decided it was best for Montembeault to go out on loan to the Laval Rocket for a conditioning stint due to the lack of starts he was getting. When he returned to the Canadiens, his play looked to have improved, which prompted Montreal to send Fowler back to the Rocket.
However, after the Canadiens returned Fowler to Laval, Montembeault began to struggle again. In turn, the Canadiens made another move to find a solution for the goaltending problem, firing goalie coach Eric Raymond, who had been with the organization since 2021. In Montembeault’s first game following the firing, he had his best start of the season, stopping 36 of the 37 shots he faced as the Canadiens beat the Winnipeg Jets 5-1. Maybe it is the start of a turnaround for Montembeault, but with a 3.34 goals against average and .875 save percentage for the season, he has easily been the most disappointing Canadiens player so far this season.