With 12 games remaining in the regular season, Montreal holds on to the last wild card spot in the eastern conference despite losing their last three games (two of them being overtime/shootout losses helps soften the blow).

The pessimists around you will point to the Islanders now being one point behind Montreal, playing inspiring hockey in front of a top form Ilya Sorokin despite being sellers at the trade deadline.

The optimists will look ahead at Ottawa being only 4 points ahead as we wait for both teams to eventually play each other on April 11th which will undoubtedly be the most important game of the season for the 15th time.

What this means is that the Habs remain fully in control of their destiny and that any winning or losing streak will go a long way in deciding if Montreal will live it’s first playoffs game with a full, crazy crown in the stands since 2018 as the Canadiens last two playoffs appearances were during the Covid pandemic.

Despite being roasted by the Blues, who are looking ready to soar into the playoffs like it’s 2019, I think you can argue Montreal has played some pretty good hockey in their last stretch of games. They’ve shown great resilience coming back from behind against the Senators, the Islanders and gave us a night to remember against the powerful Colorado Avalanche coming back from a 4-1 deficit in the third period to eventually lose the game in overtime.

The top line is still scoring, the second line is scoring from time to time and the bottom 6 is contributing as Christian Dvorak is having his best moments as a member of the Montreal Canadiens on a very effective line with Brandan Gallagher and Josh Anderson.

There is no quitting on this team, so much so that you would be a fool to turn off the TV even though the team is trailing by 2-3 goals at any point during the game.

This being said, and we’ve talked about this in January right before the Habs ended their great stretch of games that sent them back into the playoffs conversation, they need to find a way to start their games better and not play catch up hockey all the time. Resilience can only take you so far if you’re always trailing on the scoreboard and when you end up facing a team that’s working just as hard (or more) as you do like they did against St-Louis, you’re gonna get burned.

Time to regroup and be ready for the next game against the Flyers in what will be, you guessed it, the most important game of the season at this point!


Guhle set to return

Kaiden Guhle has joined the team for their current road trip and participated in a regular jersey at the last team’s practice. With the Habs giving up an average of 4,25 goals in their last 4 games, Guhle’s return could go a long way in helping the defense keep the puck out of their net.

Now the question on everyone’s mind is: Who’s the odd man out when Guhle returns to the lineup? We’ve heard plenty of people voice their opinion that it should be David Savard as the pending UFA is probably the slowest defenseman on the team and won’t be an integral part of the team’s future beyond this season, feeling all of his 34 years of age.

Personally, I think Martin St-Louis trusts David Savard considerably more than people seem to think. When a player is used on your first penalty kill unit and is always on the ice for the final seconds when protecting a lead, that's probably the sign of a useful player.

With that in mind, I think we will see a rotation of Struble and Xhekaj playing depending on who the opposing team is. Personally, I think Xhekaj is probably the least effective defenseman on the team and if you look at his total ice time, the coaches seem to agree with me. This being said, it’s undeniable he has his importance when playing teams that like to play a physical game and with Montreal playing the Panthers twice in the next week, expect Xhekaj to be in the lineup for these kinds of games.

Evans’s line needs to be better

I don’t want to be too hard on the Heineman-Evans-Armia line since they’ve been an effective bottom six line for most of the season. Currently though, I think they’re the only line that’s trailing behind the others in terms of contribution.

Not only have they not produced offensively with one goal and 4 assists collectively in the last 10 games but they’ve been pretty badly outshot and outplayed on the ice which probably explains why they’re ice time has melted in that span (except for Evans who’s usually staying above 14 minutes a game). Everyone knows Armia is likely injured and Heineman hasn’t found his scoring mojo back since he came back from injury but since there isn’t anyone coming in to replace these guys, they need to find solutions to make things better together.

Montreal needs all of their lines to contribute if they are to win that wild card race and the effectiveness from Evans’s line has been a nice surprise earlier in the season. We need these three to find a way to play a little better and chip in offensively from time to time.

The Habs still have three more games on the road before they head back home to the wild crowd of the Bell Centre. The #Optobus prediction sees them getting 4 points out of 6!

Thank you all for reading and have a nice day!

Hugo Brossoit (Scabeh)

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