Habs Weekly: A Solid Week Against Atlantic Opponents

With three games in four nights against Atlantic Division rivals (three of their biggest rivals league-wide), the Habs got off to a solid start to their 2024-25 campaign, picking up four of a possible six points.

The Week That Was

Oct. 9: Canadiens 1, Maple Leafs 0 – At a time where there were several high-scoring games around the league, this was anything but.  The first period saw the two teams play back-and-forth hockey while Cole Caufield opened the scoring on a power play goal, mercifully putting the needless overreaction to not scoring with the man advantage in the preseason to bed.  From there, Toronto took over and had Montreal scrambling in the defensive zone numerous times.  But Samuel Montembeault stood sharp, kicking aside every shot that hit the net (while thanking the posts a few times as well) to allow the Canadiens to get the win.

Oct. 10: Bruins 6, Canadiens 4 – Let’s just say Cayden Primeau wasn’t able to match the type of performance Montembeault had.  One of the issues he has had in the past is getting beat glove-side and Boston was ready to exploit that, peppering him with distance shots to that side that he struggled with.  Montreal made it close in the third, scoring twice to cut the deficit from 5-2 to 5-4 with goals from Josh Anderson and Brendan Gallagher but Mark Kastelic banked his second of the night off Primeau’s stick soon after to end the comeback hopes.

Oct. 12: Canadiens 4, Senators 1 – The Habs have struggled against Ottawa in recent years, losing nine straight regular season games coming into this one (plus a couple of recent preseason games for good measure).  The game felt like more of a chess match in the first period with chances hard to come by.  Fortunately for Montreal, Emil Heineman and Caufield were able to score on some of their limited looks in the first, giving them some cushion to work with.  They struggled in the second, a trend that carried over from last year.  However, they put the proverbial foot on the gas in the third, scoring twice to thwart any comeback hopes instead of holding on for another extended stretch.

StatPack

Skaters:

#	Player	GP	G	A	+/-	PIMS	SOG	ATOI
8	Mike Matheson	3	0	1	-1	2	3	26:08
11	Brendan Gallagher	3	2	0	-1	0	10	15:24
13	Cole Caufield	3	4	0	+2	2	10	18:23
14	Nick Suzuki	3	0	1	+1	0	8	19:53
15	Alex Newhook	3	1	0	-1	0	4	14:10
17	Josh Anderson	3	1	0	+1	6	4	13:55
20	Juraj Slafkovsky	3	0	3	+3	0	3	17:25
21	Kaiden Guhle	3	0	3	+5	0	1	22:10
27	Alex Barre-Boulet	2	0	0	-2	2	0	10:10
28	Christian Dvorak	3	0	1	E	0	3	13:07
40	Joel Armia	3	0	2	-2	2	7	15:29
48	Lane Hutson	3	0	4	+3	4	2	19:55
51	Emil Heineman	2	1	0	E	4	4	9:34
52	Justin Barron	3	0	0	-2	4	3	14:55
58	David Savard	3	0	0	-2	0	1	16:23
71	Jake Evans	3	0	1	E	0	2	14:50
72	Arber Xhekaj	3	0	0	-3	0	2	12:58
77	Kirby Dach	3	0	1	-2	0	9	15:50
91	Oliver Kapanen	2	0	1	+1	0	1	12:16

Goalies:

#	Player	Record	GAA	SV%	SO
30	Cayden Primeau	0-1-0	6.30	.793	0
35	Samuel Montembeault	2-0-0	0.50	.986	1

Team Leaders:

Goals: Cole Caufield (4)
Assists: Lane Hutson (4)
Points: Caufield/Hutson (4)
+/-: Kaiden Guhle (+5)
PIMS: Josh Anderson (6)
Shots: Caufield/Gallagher (10)

News And Notes

– While he’s not on injured reserve, Jayden Struble missed all three games due to an upper-body injury.  The issue isn’t believed to be too serious, however.  If Montreal does decide to move him to IR to get an extra body on the back end (frankly, it probably should have happened by now), the placement can be back-dated to his last preseason game played, allowing him to be activated at any time.

– With six assists in his first five NHL games (one was added after Saturday’s game), Lane Hutson broke the franchise record for the most assists in the first five games of his career.  The previous record holders were John Chabot and Joel Hanley with five.

– With 48 saves (a number that changed several times going from 45-48 postgame) in his shutout against Toronto, Samuel Montembeault set an NHL record for saves in a season-opening shutout.

– The Canadiens placed winger Alex Barre-Boulet on waivers on Sunday. Teams will have until 2 PM ET on Monday to place a claim on him.

Last Game’s Lines:

Caufield – Suzuki – Slafkovsky
Newhook – Dach – Armia
Anderson – Evans – Gallagher
Heineman – Dvorak – Kapanen

Matheson – Guhle
Hutson – Savard
Xhekaj – Barron

The Week Ahead

Monday vs Pittsburgh – The Penguins have struggled out of the gate, particularly between the pipes as they’ve allowed 13 goals in their first three games.  Tristan Jarry was lit up for six in their opener and with Alex Nedeljkovic injured, they’ve turned to third-stringer Joel Blomqvist for the last two outings.  Sidney Crosby is one point away from 1,600 for his career while Evgeni Malkin is the early leader in points with four.

Thursday vs Los Angeles – The Kings have played in a pair of low-scoring games so far, an unsurprising outcome for a team that lost some secondary scoring over the offseason and finds themselves without Drew Doughty for at least a couple of months.  Former Hab Joel Edmundson is now in their top four while they’ve upgraded between the pipes with veteran Darcy Kuemper.

Saturday at NY Islanders – The Isles have been a bit snake-bitten early on offensively while Semyon Varlamov has struggled in his first two outings.  Ilya Sorokin was banged up in training camp and hasn’t started yet this season.  Maxim Tsyplakov is a player to keep an eye on as Montreal was one of many teams that pursued him in the spring.

Final Thought

It hasn’t been a great start to the season for Montreal’s third defence pairing consisting of Arber Xhekaj and Justin Barron with the latter, in particular, already drawing some ire.  While I understand the early frustration, we’re still at a point where patience is needed with Barron.

While he’s now in his fourth professional season, he’s still just 22 for another month.  There are a lot of good prospect blueliners his age that are still in the minors or only now just getting their feet wet in the NHL.  While Barron is ahead of the curve in that respect, he’s still in the curve, so to speak; he’s far from a finished product.

On that note, Barron is a toolsy player and those players tend to develop slower.  With a lot of raw tools, that only makes sense.  I find it’s important to remember that particular context when comparing him to someone like former Hab Jordan Harris.  Harris is in that same age bracket and had a lot more poise and defensive presence.  However, there isn’t much development runway left because there aren’t many raw tools to work with.  There clearly are with Barron so that development curve is going to be slower.

It’s also worth considering the reality that there’s not a lot behind Barron for right-shot options.  Logan Mailloux is a quality prospect but I think management would rather have him playing big minutes in Laval for a few months at least.  Behind him, we’re looking at Gustav Lindstrom who showed last season he’s not capable of playing regularly in this system.  It’s one thing to think they can get rid of Barron but back-filling him with Mailloux makes them really thin depth-wise with David Reinbacher out for most of the year.  And with David Savard a potential later-season trade candidate, should they really be rushing to make the weaker side of their blueline even weaker?  I don’t see the rush. 

There isn’t much downside in keeping Barron around for this season to get a better feel of if he could be a top-four player down the road or if his current third pairing role is his ceiling.  This isn’t the right time to move on from him yet, especially with blueliners like him typically taking a bit longer to develop.  Patience is a word we’ve heard a lot lately with the organization and it’s still needed with this young blueliner.