Habs News: Montreal Canadiens, Claude Julien, Carey Price, Jake Allen, NHL, NHLPA, Joel Edmundson, Josh Anderson, Tyler Toffoli, Luke Richardson, Stephane Waite

ROCKET SPORTS MEDIA | LAVAL, QC. — The National Hockey League (NHL) and the Players Association (NHLPA) took a step forward by tabling the main financial question that remains outstanding. I’m glad that it’s settled for now, as I think that both parties would look bad fighting over money during a global pandemic.

According to reports, the NHL asked the players for additional escrow amounts and to defer an additional amount of their salaries in order to meet the terms of the newly signed Collective Bargaining Agreement. The NHLPA wasn’t prepared to make further financial concessions at this time. However, in order to comply with the terms of the 50/50 split in revenue at a time without fans in the building, the players will have to make reductions at a time in the future.

The NHL and NHLPA may be targeting January 13th as the start of a 56-game regular season schedule. There are many decisions still outstanding including safety protocols, location of games, and key dates. An asterisk should be placed on the entire plan as it all has a dependency on COVID.

With the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau announcing on Friday that the border with the United States will be closed for non-essential travel at least until January 21st, it’s a safe bet to make that there will be a Canadian division. Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and Major League Soccer weren’t able to get permission from Canadian government to have US-based teams come into the country without mandatory quarantine, therefore highly unlikely that the NHL would be granted that exemption.

Closed Facilities

The current health measures in effect in the Greater Montreal area prevent the opening of Complexe Sportif Bell at least until January 11th, 2021. If training begins on January 3rd as currently targeted, that will be a problem for the Canadiens.

Paul Wilson, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications for Groupe CH, confirmed to LaPresse last week that the organization has been in discussion with Quebec’s Public Health Agency with the goal to find a way to get the team’s practice facility opened for their players.

If no agreement is reached with the provincial authorities, Montreal would need to find an alternative. An option would be to take a similar approach to the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers, where they have temporarily moved to Arizona due to local health regulations in Northern California. Montreal can potentially look at options in the province of Ontario until they are permitted to resume operations in Quebec.

Canadian versus Atlantic

In the 2019-20 season, Ottawa was the only Canadian team that finished with less points in the standings than Montreal. Vancouver was the closest team ahead of Montreal with seven points separating them.

The Canadiens had better results when facing the Canadian teams last season. They finished the year with 10 wins, three loses, and one overtime loss against their Canadian counterparts. Last season’s record against each team is shown on the table below.

The Habs’ success shown above, along with the acquisitions of Jake Allen, Joel Edmundson, Josh Anderson, and Tyler Toffoli would make it easy to believe that Montreal will have success in the Canadian division. It would also be easy to assume that it would be an advantage for Montreal compared to being in the Atlantic Division.

“I’m ready to say that the Canadian Division will be a little bit tougher than the Atlantic Division,” Marc Bergevin recently told TVA Sports in an interview. The general manager justified his statement by saying that the Red Wings and Senators are headed in the right direction, but they are currently rebuilding. It seems appropriate to add here that Montreal lost all four games in regulation to Detroit last season.

“The thing that I’m looking at the most now, as a coach living in the present, is how competitive that would be because most of the teams, I would say, with very few exceptions, are all teams that feel they are competitive and feel they should be playoff teams,” Claude Julien said in an interview NHL’s The Rink Podcast.

Preparation

The coaching staff and scouts have certainly started watching videos of the other Canadian teams in preparation for the start of the season. Excluding the Senators and the Maple Leafs, the Habs normally face the remaining Canadian teams twice a season.

“You don’t get used to playing against the specific style of each team, so that might be a little bit different. With today’s pre-scout and everything else, there’s not much that’s unknown when it comes to other teams. You know who their best players are, you know how the other coach handles his team as far as utilizing his lines and ice time and everything else. I think we’ve got that pretty well covered. It’s just a matter of how does your team fare against that team that you don’t play against much, and I think we’ll find that out pretty quickly,” said Julien.

I expect Carey Price to get scouting reports about the ‘normal’ Western Conference teams from Jake Allen. “He [Jake Allen] brings a lot of knowledge with him, including about players in the Western Conference who he’s faced more often than Carey. Carey loves chatting with and learning from his backup, especially when it’s a veteran who shares a deep knowledge of the League,” recently said goaltending coach Stephane Waite.

“For me playing in the west for the last seven-plus years, I got a pretty good feel for Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver,” Allen recently said in an interview on Sirius XM. “I think it sort of benefits myself a little bit, and maybe I can help out the team a little bit more in that way. I’ve played those teams personally and collectively so many times in the past that gives me a little bit more of an advantage of understanding the players, understanding the teams and the concepts, and I think that’s big.”

The decision of whether the games are played in each home city or in a hub city will impact the preparation. If the teams will travel to the home cities, the Canadian teams will need to take the three different time zones into consideration in their preparation. The three divisions based in the United States are not finalized, but it’s highly unlikely that any of those divisions will have to deal with three time zones.

Rivalries

An all-Canadian division will create rivalries amongst the teams. When the Canadiens travel to western Canada, there’s usually a significant portion of the crowd cheering for the ‘bleu-blanc-rouge’. The rivalry will certainly go up a notch if the teams face each other a lot more frequently during a 56-game schedule.

“All Canadian hockey fans will love that, and it’s going to be great for content, and great for TV, and great for us. It will be exciting,” said Allen.

“It will be fun,” said Brendan Gallagher. “There’s a little bit of pride involved when you’re playing for a Canadian division. I’m sure everyone will get a little bit of motivation out of that.”

I think it would be an extremely competitive division. It’s the NHL, it’s the best league in the world. But if there’s a Canadian division, there are definitely going to be some more bragging rights to fight for. It’ll make all the games even more intense and it would be very fun to see,” said assistant coach Luke Richardson.

Canadiens Connection podcast

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