Canadiens Lineup

Tomas Tatar – Phillip Danault – Brendan Gallagher

Nick Cousins – Max Domi – Nick Suzuki 

Artturi Lehkonen – Jesperi Kotkaniemi – Joel Armia

Charles Hudon – Nate Thompson – Jordan Weal

Brett Kulak – Shea Weber

Ben Chiarot – Jeff Petry

Gustav Olofsson – Cale Fleury

Carey Price – Keith Kinkaid

Christian Folin, Mike Reilly 

Paul Byron, Jonathan Drouin, Victor Mete

Game Report

Following the game, Claude Julien wanted to focus on the officiating. The head coach boiled the entire game down to a holding penalty assessed to Nick Cousins, a call with which he angrily disagreed. With all due respect to Julien, it was an obvious penalty and an unnecessary one at that.

The outburst by Julien reeked of desperation. He was blaming a referee for the loss to deflect the criticism from himself and his players. It’s the kind of tactic a coach uses when he has nothing else.

Whether Julien has run out of solutions or the players have stopped listening to those solutions is irrelevant. The point is that the Julien has lost the room. For that reason,  the fact that he has not improved the penalty-kill and his treatment of younger players, Julien is on thin ice.

But wait just a minute. The first person that should be heading to the unemployment line is the architect of this mess. Marc Bergevin did nothing to improve this team in the off-season at the same time when so many general managers in the East were making significant upgrades.

The Canadiens have major holes on defence, particularly the left side, with a roster overflowing with third-pairing defencemen or worse.

The defence is so bad that Julien and his staff have designed a system to spend as little time in their own end as possible. It may have taken a month but the book is out on his approach and it is being exploited, as we’ve witnessed, even by teams at the bottom of the standings. 

Up front, Bergevin did not make a serious attempt to add a badly-needed scoring top-six forward.

Instead, the general manager, along with Geoff Molson, spoke about icing a team that would make the playoffs and then hope that a miracle would happen. It is a weak strategy and tough for fans to swallow given the 26-year Cup drought.

Bergevin and his backers will spin the notion that a playoff spot is still within spitting distance. And that is why it is crucial that Molson acts now before the season becomes too far lost.

Because for the last eight games, we have seen the kind of hockey that Bergevin’s best are capable of playing. They are trending downward. And right now, Montreal are competing with a half-dozen other teams for a wild card spot, and many of them are heading in the opposite direction. 

The last time a losing streak of this magnitude happened for the Canadiens was during the 1939-’40 season. So this is significant. And the causes for the skid cannot be cured by shuffling the lines, a minor trade or a recall from Laval.

The general manager has failed dismally in two of the last three summers. And what we have been seeing on the ice since November 16th is a direct result of his actions/inaction.

The Canadiens have two games at the Bell Centre this week. And it could get ugly.

Molson would be wise to let Kirk Muller and Dominique Ducharme act as co-coaches to  the end of the season until an experienced NHL head coach is found. And install Trevor Timmins as the interim GM, with full control, for now.

The season can be salvaged and the trajectory reset in the right direction.

Plus / Minus

▲  Carey Price, Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot, Joel Armia, Artturi Lehkonen

▼  Gustav Olofsson, Nick Cousins, Phillip Danault, Max Domi, Nate Thompson, Charles Hudon, Cale Fleury, Jordan Weal