The Montreal Canadiens concluded their seven-game road trip on New Year’s Eve and will return home having lost more than they won.
The Habs hit the ice in Raleigh, Carolina Tuesday looking for a positive record to end out the year. They had won three and lost three with the decisive and final game of 2019 against the Hurricanes.
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Montreal has played outstanding hockey at times, but their difficulty on defence has haunted them as well. They looked to Charlie Lindgren in game seven of seven before returning home. Lindgren was outstanding, but the Canadiens couldn’t find the goals and fell 3-1.
Wilde Horses
It was the most consistent positive theme the entire road trip — Max Domi played well. Sure, he is not the best centre in the league on defence and therefore should eventually be moved to the wing so he doesn’t have to take care of those assignments. But on offence, he is on fire.
Domi has scored in six straight games. He roofed another in this one, and hit the post in the second period from in tight. On the entire seven-game road trip, Domi counted six goals and four assists for a massive 10 points. That’s a point-a-game player.
Domi will be up for a large raise soon. He will fetch likely somewhere in the high six million range. He’s still young, and G.M. Marc Bergevin should do his best to sign him through the rest of his RFA years and move right into a high number of UFA years. There’s a chance to lock up a passionate player here who loves to play in Montreal. That’s not easy in this day and age where players often seem more interested in taxes, good weather, and golf courses.
Domi is trending up and that is happening as a centre. He could trend even better as a winger. His offensive game could even improve, only having to watch the point man on his side defensively.
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Charlie Lindgren got his first start of the season and he warranted a second one with this effort. Lindgren has been iffy at times in the American Hockey League, and that difficulty has stopped him from being a regular on the NHL circuit. Montreal has needed some help in the back-up position so many times this season, and has essentially received it only two times. Cayden Primeau got a win, and Keith Kinkaid got a win. The rest of the time it has been a struggle. Lindgren made a save in the third period that was sensational as he sprawled to get his glove on a puck on the goal line. Lindgren kept the Habs in the game.
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It was odd the Habs signed Kinkaid in July. It was odd they would do that when he was horrible last season. It was odder still when he was horrible this season and they kept using him. It was even odder considering there was no reason to believe Kinkaid would be any better than the goalies they had in the system. It’s hindsight thinking for some, but here, it was viewed as a bad signing right from the first moment. Lindgren is not likely the long term answer as Primeau likely is, but the Saint Cloud State standout sure looked like a solid NHL goalie in Raleigh.
Wilde Goats
The defensive combination of Jeff Petry and Brett Kulak has had a road trip to forget.
Kulak has struggled especially to remind us that when a journeyman defender has a good stretch that it likely won’t last too long. It’s very difficult to keep that consistency up. The Habs likely believed they had a second pair defender when Kulak played well for large parts of last season. He just is not the same player this year. He is the player that Calgary did not care if they lost. It’s like a goal scorer who has a lot of five-to-ten goal seasons then puts it together one season doing something special and gets 20. Nine times out of ten that player drops back to five goals the following season. Most players, in fact most people in any facet, revert to the mean average.
It was extremely troubling to see Brendan Gallagher laid out on the ice with glassy eyes after an unfortunate collision in the second period.
He had gotten hit and the initial blow was not troublesome, but on the way down, Gallagher’s head was crushed against Ben Chiarot’s knee – — it was and an awful-looking direct shot to the head of Gallagher. He looked ill as he tried to find his bearings after the brain injury. Gallagher waited to get up for two minutes and then skated out on his own to the locker room to be attended to.
Gallagher has concussion history, and this could be a big blow to the Habs fortunes. They need Gallagher. More than that though, Gallagher needs to be healthy. It was very difficult to watch this.
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The playoff spot the Habs are trying to achieve is getting very tricky right now. This loss leaves the Canadiens on pace for only 86 points. This would have been acceptable two weeks ago as the Atlantic Division was in disarray. However, the Lightning, Panthers, and Maple Leafs all have gotten hot.
Whereas before the Habs were actually in a playoff spot before, now they are 11 points out with the current projections. The Leafs are on pace for 99 points, while the Panthers and Lightning are on pace for 97. The Habs need two of those three teams to slump sharply while they find a better path. This is not going to be easy, though, given that there is half of the season remaining.
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Wilde Cards
While everyone was panicking that Cole Caufield was a bust because of his World Juniors, the message in these columns was always constant: a player like Caufield needs a pass. He’s a finisher. He can’t finish when no one starts it. That is why it has been such a difficult tourney for him in the Czech Republic — he has had limited ice time, virtually no power play time, and no one to pass him the puck.
That is until the overtime against the Czechs that was everything that Caufield is. He gave the puck to a teammate that knows him and has talent. That teammate from Wisconsin Alex Turcotte got the pass, then he saw that Caufield pushed through toward the net. Caufield received the Turcotte pass and it didn’t even seem to be on his stick before it was gone already into the roof of the net, perfectly fired. This is Cole Caufield.
He has this skill at an NHL level already. It is simply a matter of whether he gets the chance to use this skill on a regular basis or a limited basis. It’s going to be interesting to see what he can create 5-on-5 at the NHL level, but I have absolutely no doubt that he can create on the power play. He just needs one east-west pass through the seam and it’s in the net. That’s what he does. He does it better than anyone you will see.
He’s a master already and he’s in his teens. Caufield will be an NHL player. Imagine him with the sublime Nick Suzuki as the budding star for Montreal feints that he is going to shoot, freezing the goalie to him, then feeds it blindly to Caufield who fires it home before the goalie has a chance to get across the net. It could be glorious. There is every reason to believe in it.
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