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Hugo Brossoit: Ready, Set, Drop the Puck for Habs |
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Ek's note: We have some very exciting news for our Montreal Canadiens fans. HockeyBuzz has brought in the Rocket Sports Media team (Rick Stephens, Amy Johnson and Chris Galanopoulos) to provide regular hybrid content of blogs and podcasts. Additionally, Hugo Brossoit has joined the HockeyBuzz crew to provide Habs blogs of his own.
We are psyched to have these first-rate additions to our site. Please welcome them. We'll have more site additions to announce shortly.
-- Ek
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Ready, Set, Drop the Puck
By Hugo Brossoit
With preseason and training camp finally over, Montreal Canadiens fans can finally breathe
easy as no more important players will risk injuries in meaningless games. They can now
risk injuries in games that matter!
We finally know who’s still standing and ready to play on opening night, in Montreal, this
Wednesday. According to RDS, the roster depth chart is as follows:
Caufield-Suzuki-Slafkovsky
Newhook-Dach-Armia
B.Boulet-Dvorak-Anderson
Heineman-Evans-Gallagher
Kapanen-Pezzetta
Matheson-Guhle
Hutson-Savard
Xhekaj-Barron
Struble
Montembeault
Primeau
Despite what looked like very little openings when training camp started, Laine’s injury
combined with some players underperforming and others surprising management made it
possible for some players to sneak into the starting lineup.
I, for one, am pretty disappointed to see Roy being sent down. I expected Roy to play a
significant role with the Habs this season as he would improve on a very interesting rookie
season. Well this vision many had for him will have to wait as he showed very little in camp
to justify keeping him in the lineup over other players. In fact, he even looked uninterested at
times and made lazy plays in the last preseason game for absolutely no reason. For a player
who managed to shed the reputation of not being the hardest worker the last few years, I
hope it’s a wakeup call for him reminding him he’s only just begun his NHL journey and he
cannot take a day off if he wants to succeed.
On the other hand, I’m glad to see Barré-Boulet stick around with the team. He’s
been excellent in every showing during the preseason, even leading the team in scoring.
Now of course that doesn’t imply he’ll have similar success in the regular season or that his
current “chair” on the third line will remain there for a long time but it would have been hard
to tell him he didn’t do enough to start the year in Montreal.
We also have two different feel good-stories in Heineman and Kapanen. The first one being
barely considered when training camp began after a disappointing 23-24 season decimated with injuries in the AHL last year, his addition to the team is a nice surprise. I think that’s a
player with a very nice combination of size, a good shot and some physicality to his game
that could work well enough on the team’s bottom six.
Kapanen also went into training camp with very little expectation except the one of being
heavily scrutinized before a decision would be made about sending him back to Sweden.
I’ve mentioned multiple times how the odds were stacked against him. Despite a downturn in his
performances towards the end of camp, it seems he has done enough to open the season in the NHL.
It will be interesting to see how the team intends to use him moving forward. He obviously needs to play and not remain “stuck” as the team’s 13th forward. His performances will need to remain good enough to justify him sticking around as it is still possible he is sent back to Europe at some point.
The only question that remained was if Struble would get the nod over Xhekaj to begin the
season after showing us a much more complete and reliable game than Wifi… but the latest
news is that he’s in need of treatment and will likely miss the first game.
I know some will be pleased at the idea of a bout between Reaves and Xhekaj to begin the season, but I’d rather it doesn’t happen since Montreal losing a defenseman for 5 minutes is much worse than Toronto losing a 4th line player that probably shouldn’t even play on a good NHL team.
Bottom line: The excitement can be felt in the air as the puck drop is within sight! And for those of you pointing out the Habs went 0 for 30 on the powerplay during the preseason, I think you need
a good dose of Carey Price telling you to “chill out”.
Even if it would have been reassuring to see some encouraging sights on an aspect of the
game that really needed improvement from last season. I expect nothing less than a high intensity game between the two Atlantic division rivals.
Despite their aspirations being very different for the 2024-2025 season, the typical first game
of the season against Toronto almost never disappoints in terms of entertainment. With numerous young players entering the lineup and a team that seems tired of losing, I’m not worried about the effort that will be deployed on the ice Wednesday.
Drop the puck already! Let’s win the first one! Oh, and let's close with a prediction for you all: Barré-Boulet will score the first goal of the game on Wednesday!
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