Before the Christmas break, ever since the return of Patrik Laine and the trade that brought Alexandre Carrier to the Montreal Canadiens, we’ve seen the team take a big step forward with a reliable defense, steady offensive production and good goaltending from Samuel Montembeault.

It wasn’t perfect, but it certainly was encouraging to see the team improve from what they’ve shown earlier this season. More than that, it felt like players were finally playing in their right role and within reasonable icetime and made less mistakes because of it.

Of course a quick look at the schedule was enough to give us more chills than a -20 degree winter day with wind biting your skin as they were going to face off with the Panthers, Lightning, Golden Knights to end 2024 and ended their insane road trip across multiple time zones facing off against the Blackhawks and Avalanche to begin the new year.

Despite the odds stacked against them, Montreal comes out of their trip with 8 points out of a potential 10 and could have easily been perfect if not for a great goaltending performance from Arvid Soderblom in Chicago. The team played exciting, structured hockey where (almost) everyone played as well as you’d expect them to.

Even in Colorado, less than 24 hours after traveling from Chicago and despite looking as tired as you could have expected them to be from their long trip, the team rallied in the 2nd half and actually outplayed the Avalanche in the third period to win the game in the shootout.

It’s been a joy to watch for the fans and just like that, the Canadiens are ONE point away from the last wildcard spot.

I don’t know if these good times will last but for the first time since 2021, both the fans and the players are looking up at the standings instead of rolling their odds on Tankathon.

Difference in net

After playing Samuel Montembeault for 10 consecutive starts in December, Montreal finally decided to send Cayden Primeau to Laval and recalled Jakub Dobes with the hopes to get better performances from their backup position.

He was thrown in the deep end of the pool with the hopes he wouldn’t sink, facing the Panthers and the Avalanche to begin his NHL career.

It’s fair to say the young goaltender didn’t disappoint, allowing just 1 goal in two games, even surviving a barrage of good scoring chances from the Avalanche when the team was trying to find its energy early on.

With these kinds of performances, it will become much easier to give Montembeault a more reasonable workload that won’t see him become overworked with the four nations cup approaching.

I mentioned before on this blog how I truly believe Dobes will be a NHL goaltender for a long time and he remains very young. It’ll be very interesting to see how much he can improve and maybe turn a position (backup goaltender) that was a weakness into a strength for Montreal.

Quick individual notes


There are plenty of good things to say on this team right now, but here are a few standouts observations from yours truly:

If you had to name one player that, despite coming back from a major injury, didn’t manage to reach expectations in the first half of the season, Kirby Dach would have been a very popular answer. In these last few games, I think we are seeing Dach turn a corner both in his engagement and his confidence. He’s making plays, he’s involved defensively, scoring important goals and we see considerably less mental mistakes from him. If he can keep building up on these performances and find some chemistry at 5 on 5 with Patrik Laine, it could become a major factor in the playoffs race for the Canadiens.

I don’t think there is currently a bottom 6 forwards group playing better than Montreal’s right now. Granted, it may very well be the most expensive but seeing as the team isn’t lacking cap space right now, we can easily forget about that part. The Armia-Evans-Heineman has been incredible, not only are they dominating scoring chances while they are on the ice at 5 on 5, they’ve also showed their usefulness on special teams with Armia and Evans being amazing on the penalty kill while Heineman keeps showing his shooting skills now scoring his 10th goal of the season, good for third amongst rookies in the NHL.

With 2 out of the three expected to become UFA at the end of the season, the Habs will have to decide rather quickly if Evans and Armia would be worth keeping around for a few more years. The way they are playing right now, they are certainly making a good case for it.

As for the Gallagher-Dvorak-Anderson line, they brought energy, spent time in the opposing zone by cycling the puck well and got themselves a few quality chances. Despite being “tagged” as players not part of the long term future of this team, they sure are leading the way currently with their work ethic.

The only player currently not playing up to his potential is most likely Juraj Slafkosvky. Don’t get me wrong, the big power forward is doing good things on the ice but he’s also made some glaring mistakes that really looked out of place with how the rest of the team is currently playing. Now these mistakes are going to happen with every 20 year old player, even former first overall picks but “Slaf” will need to find a way to limit these mistakes while probably shooting more at the net as he’s currently averaging less than one shot in the last 6 games. It’s not normal to see Heineman get more shots and more goals despite playing almost 3 minutes less per game and being on the 2nd wave of the powerplay. Martin St-Louis doesn’t seem to want to break up his very useful bottom 6 lines but if anyone is to be moved up in the top 6, Heineman would be the obvious choice.


The Habs will finally be able to take a small breather from their travels, playing Vancouver in Montreal on monday with 3 whole days before their next back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday as they once again play very strong teams in the Capitals and Stars.

This being said, if there was ever a time to be confident about this group of players and their ability to win against anyone, that time is now.

How many points do you think the Habs get this week? My #Optobus prediction says 4.

Thank you all for reading and have a nice day!

Hugo Brossoit (Scabeh)

Join the Discussion: » 286 Comments » Post New Comment

» Dobes Recalled and The Impact of Carrier

» Laine returns

» 7 out of 10 points

» A competitive week

» Adjusting Expectations