ChronicleEnd of season: has CH come out of the woods, or just enter it?

For fatalists, the Canadian has been overwhelmed by an incredible wave of injuries this season. According to this theory, this explains why a team that participated in the Stanley Cup final became, in a blink of an eye, one of the most common in its era.

It’s not fake.

Canadian players have not missed more than 700 games due to injury, which is an unofficial record in NHL history. Over the years, this statistic has been compiled more or less consistently by teams in the league. Prior to this year, the 2003-04 Los Angeles Kings held the mark for most single-season absences (629).

Carey Price only played four games. And we know, alone, the loss of Price is usually enough to sink the CH. The organization used six goalkeepers (!), Including Andrew Hammond (!!!). When your most used keeper of the season (Samuel Montembeault) comes out of the waiver, it’s usually a sign that the road is uneven.

Shea Weber, both captain and defensive stabilizer, was forced to retire in the summer. And last season’s most reliable defender, Joel Edmundson, hasn’t missed nearly 60 games.

The group of attackers also continues to be destroyed. Nick Suzuki was also the only player on the team to participate in all meetings. And behind him, in the group of attackers, the second iron man was Jack Evans, who missed only ten games.

Clearly no other team could survive such a massacre. You know nothing about hockey to argue otherwise.

It is for this reason that this report does not dwell, or very little, on the individual performance of the players.

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That being said, death injuries don’t explain everything. If that’s what happened, it’s enough to treat everyone and prepare for the next training camp as if nothing had happened expecting to find a competitive team.

To draw a more accurate picture of the season ending, we should rather talk about a non-functional organization that had the misfortune to be hit, moreover, by a tsunami of injuries. In other words, CH is somewhat similar to a patient with respiratory distress who escaped from his stretcher by being taken to the operating room. It was a long time before he fell to the floor.

To be fair, you should note that even with his entire roster, the Canadiens probably missed the playoffs this season.

Furthermore, if CH hasn’t survived two consecutive years of pandemic and the incredible rearrangement of the series ’divisions, calendars and formats (that’s life!), It’s a safe bet that the Montreal organization became excluded from the spring tournament for the sixth time in seven years.

We’re already talking about the worst five-year term in CH history two years ago. There are serious major problems that have been overshadowed by the pandemic and re -emerged in recent months.

When an NHL organization is running at full capacity, its GM is not forced to use his last year of contract and is not expelled in 23 games after appearing in the Stanley Cup Finals.

In a normal organization, you would not fire two coaches in less than a calendar year. And most importantly, we don’t fire a coach (Dominique Ducharme) seven months after giving him a three -year contract.

In a well -organized organization, you don’t let go of your number one center (Phillip Danault) with a pat on the back and wishing him good luck. And we didn’t steal our number three center (Jesperi Kotkaniemi), three years after making her the third pick in the draft.

In other words, we’re not talking about a quiet cruise ship suddenly torpedoed.

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Friday night, this endless season of 2021-2022 will be a thing of the past.

Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes had time to get acquainted with their new environment. And they made some great deals by swapping aspiring players with Ben Chiarot and Artturi Lehkonen.

They will now enter the crucial stage of their tenure with the cards left to them. And it won’t be easy.

Their administration is more direct and more transparent than before, but it is too early to predict if they will be better than Marc Bergevin. And it’s smart to predict how long before they can change the organizational culture and give back to fans a team capable of regularly participating in the playoffs.

New Canadian administrators are particularly struggling with the massive number of heavy and difficult contracts to swap in the context of the imminent salary cap freeze.

The primary goalkeeper position monopolized nearly $ 13.4 million for the next campaign. But Carey Price, who has four seasons left to spend at the rate of $ 10.5 million per year, has been severely weakened. It’s not far from the end of the roll. And Jake Allen, who will be 32, has been injured twice in the past few months. Also, Allen is not the number one goaltender.

CH is therefore exposed to the most important position and the most difficult to fill.

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As a defense, the CH should remove Jeff Petry, who seems to no longer want the family to live in Montreal.

However, Petry is 34 years old and still has a three -year contract left, at a rate of $ 6.25 million per season. In sports, he had a completely awkward season that caused a significant drop in his market value. And on a personal level, when CH went through its worst moment in the first half of the calendar, Petry acted as a negative leader. Across the league, this has been noticed.

Joel Edmundson, David Savard and Alexander Romanov will form the defensive core next season. Several young fullbacks are knocking on the door, such as Kaiden Guhle, Justin Barron, Arber Xhekaj and Matthias Norlinder.

We need to provide space for them because that is the whole purpose of rebuilding. At the same time, it takes time to come up with a great NHL defender and it will take patience before newcomers can deliver consistent performance.

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On the attack side, it will also be difficult to find financial leeway because some contracts are far from attractive.

For sports or other reasons, the contracts of Mike Hoffman (2 years at $ 4.5 million), Jonathan Drouin (1 year at $ 5.5 million), Paul Byron (1 year at $ 3.4 million), Joel Armia (3 years at $ 3.4 million), Christian Dvorak (3 years at $ 4.45 million) will not attract other league CEOs.

For now, we should also give the benefit of the doubt to Brendan Gallagher, whose impact and production literally plummeted at the start of his 6 -year contract totaling $ 39 million. If Gallagher proves unable to accept the bull after a normal summer of training, that will be a big problem for the organization’s new bosses.

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The Canadian will have a good position in the draft in addition to handling seven picks in the first three rounds. But with this privilege comes great responsibility. This repechage will be important for the re -launch of the organization. There is no room for error, especially in the first choice the Canadian will make.

In terms of efficiency, CH’s amateur recruiting department has been in the bottom third of the NHL for 13 years. The new management team must ensure that the new amateur recruiting directors, Martin Lapointe and Nick Bobrov, will succeed in this delicate mission.

Drafting one of the three best prospects available will likely allow the Canadiens to enter another youngster on their roster next season.

However, the recent examples of Jack Hughes and Alexis Lafrenière (and even in Kotkaniemi’s early years in Montreal), have taught us that it will probably be several more years before they are expected to take responsibility.

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In other words, when we study the situation as a whole and we see the size of the site standing in front of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes, it’s hard to believe that the Canadian is out in the woods. In fact, the organization is likely to rush here again, but on a more interesting path.

You cannot speed up the growth of the flower by shooting it. And many young people will join this group. This is a must.

Colleagues jumped the other day when I thought CH could run for Connor Bedard next season. Quite like Jeff Gorton’s Rangers (who are however in a more advantageous position than CH) got their hands on the 2nd and 1st choice of the 2019 (Kaapo Kakko) and 2020 (Alexis Lafrenière) sessions.

These days, there are probably few Rangers fans who regret years of well -planned and well -executed rebuilding.