The Montreal Canadiens came into Wednesday’s game with a modest two-game winning streak, but after an eight-game slide, it sure feels good for fans and the players to be on the better end of the scoresheet.
It was a real chance for a third-straight win with the struggling Chicago Blackhawks in town after they played Tuesday night in Ottawa.
Montreal is still entertaining hopes of a playoff spot with seven points to make up in the wild card race. But this was one of the Habs’ worst nights of the season, getting demolished by a very average Hawks team 4-1.
READ MORE: Call of the Wilde: Montreal Canadiens douse the Calgary Flames 2-0 at the Bell Centre
Wilde Horses
- It’s impressive to watch how important all of this is to Ilya Kovalchuk. It looked like his career was over after getting bought out by the Los Angeles Kings. There were no suitors until the Habs, with injury problems, came along to try their luck. Kovalchuk has delivered beautifully so far. He has five points in his first six games with the Canadiens. It’s not going to last particularly long at his age (37), but for now, it’s fun to watch the skill set when he is still able to show it. In the first period, he made a beautiful no-look pass to set up Phillip Danault. What has been even more interesting is to see how passionately he is reacting to his good moments. The joy was immense when he scored the overtime winner in Ottawa. One might wonder how much he had left emotionally at the end of a two-decade run in pro hockey, and the answer is seemingly he has everything left.
READ MORE: Call of the Wilde: Montreal Canadiens make it 8 winless games against the Edmonton Oilers
READ MORE: Call of the Wilde: Montreal Canadiens struggle with offensive game, fall to Winnipeg Jets 3-2
Wilde Goats
- I have been a San Francisco 49ers fan just about my entire life because of Joe Montana. However, I just took about five years off. The Niners gave me absolutely no reason to be a fan, and it was easy with loss after loss piling up, and no chance of a playoff spot, to forget them. So I did. I left them easily until this season when they finally gave me a reason to cheer again. I wonder sometimes how long the Montreal Canadiens can keep everyone on the love train. It’s working for now. Fans are extremely passionate about their team, but the club is no longer selling out this season. There are cracks starting to show. This will likely be the fourth season in the last five that the Canadiens miss the playoffs. The point of being a fan is the happiness, the joy, the entertainment. Not the continual frustration. This season, that happy feeling when you leave the Bell Centre after a win has been felt only nine times in 25 games. The fans are clamouring for front-office firings as a panacea, but that is not going to happen. Don’t expect Marc Bergevin or Claude Julien to be let go. It’s not even a guarantee at all that a change would make the club any better in the short or long term. Sometimes a firing can be more unsettling than motivating. Owner Geoff Molson seems to love his front office people. Molson is fortunate for another reason though. Very few owners get to offer their clientele a failing product without penalty. If you sell a boat that sinks, people don’t usually come back to buy their next boat from you. These are the best fans in all of hockey. No other NHL franchise can get a gate over 20,000 people paying top dollar for 41 games per season. No other franchise would even consider building a stadium that large because all of the empty seats would be embarrassing. Molson gets 21,000 fans pretty much every night. The Alouettes and Impact can’t really get that even one night. It’s impossible to have a crystal ball here, but at a certain point, the Canadiens are going to have to give their fans a playoff spot, or maybe, just maybe, some lifelong devotees may take five years off or so.
- Max Domi has a bad habit of getting frustrated with his play and directing that frustration into a bad penalty. It may feel good in the moment, but it hurts the team. Domi took a needless penalty that led to the third goal of the night for Chicago. Julien was fed up with it, and benched Domi for the remaining 10 minutes of the second period. Domi got out of purgatory for the third period, but the deficit was still two instead of one. The damage was already done. It’s important to be competitive, but the fire has to be in working harder; not punching someone who is unsuspecting in the face. He will get there. That fire when he directs it well is what makes him a difficult player to face, and more useful the more important the game gets.
- The game was likely out of reach at 3-1, but any hope of a comeback ended midway through the third with a massive giveaway from Jordan Weal. He was the last man back and he tried a deke, but he got stripped by Drake Caggiula who went in on the breakaway to beat a helpless Charlie Lindgren. That was the moment that the fans filed out en masse.
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Wilde Cards
- GM Marc Bergevin did an interview recently where he was asked about the future of Carey Price and Shea Weber. This question was asked because the Canadiens have to finish around 25 and nine to make the playoffs. So, ostensibly, without a playoff future this year in Montreal, it was a possibility that Price and Weber’s futures might be better served with a chance to win a championship somewhere else as they age. Bergevin answered that the two aging stars are not going to be traded and he is not looking to make a deal for them in any way, and they are staying. He was clear as day. Bergevin feels that he wants to remain competitive during what he likes to call a reset. They want to remain competitive while they rebuild. This means that there will not be a strong, powerful, bottoming-out style of a rebuild by the Habs with the present ownership, and present management. That being competitive is ownership’s goal. There are fans who want the Habs to make wholesale moves to really fall down the standings, so they can draft the elite talent that, generally speaking, is available only in the top five in the draft. The Canadiens believe that they are building a winner through the draft, and they are gaining many valuable pieces. The Habs drafts the last three years have been vastly superior to the three before that. The trade for Nick Suzuki has also been a giant win for the future. What the Canadiens lack are elite players who, naturally, are extremely difficult to attain. Even if you draft in top five, you are not guaranteed an elite player then either. It’s a casino really, but one that you can improve the odds, but still, in the end, it is a casino. A high draft pick this year will lead to a strong hockey player as the top 10 picks are better than they have been in the recent drafts. It takes time. However, if you are expecting that a move will be made to thoroughly empty out veterans to have some lean years while attaining elite players in the top five of the draft, you can forget that. It is not happening. We know from Bergevin’s words that Price and Weber will not be dealt. What will be interesting to see is what is the dividing line for the rest of the players? Is Jeff Petry untouchable as well this February? How about Tomas Tatar with one more year left after this season on his current deal? An educated guess would say that they will remain as well so next year has a better chance to be a good one. That sounds like the plan of a person who wants to remain competitive. That would leave on the block only players like Nate Thompson, Dale Weise, Marco Scandella. The Habs already have 11 picks in the upcoming draft. That could move as high as 13 or 14, if Bergevin can find suitors for his UFAs. After that, the wait begins. The wait has dreams that players like Jordan Harris, Jayden Struble, Mattias Norlinder, Cole Caufield, Alexander Romanov, Josh Brook, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, and Nick Suzuki will become elite. It’s almost a numbers game at this point. Have ten high quality first and second-rounders waiting to join the line-up and hope three or four can become elite hockey players. If that happens, perhaps Bergevin will one day say that the goal is not just a playoff spot, but a Stanley Cup.
READ MORE: Call of the Wilde: Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators go to OT
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