Articles in Montreal Canadiens

from Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette,

So when will Montreal once again be a genuine contender? Most of us would suggest maybe in two or three years, when Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Kaiden Guhle, Arber Xhekaj, Jordan Harris and Juraj Slafkovsky are in their prime, along with whoever joins the CH fold in the meantime. But, of course, there are no guarantees in the ultracompetitive NHL.

Plenty of teams — for example, the Buffalo Sabres and Edmonton Oilers — have been rebuilding for years, to little avail. Even for teams that have rebuilt and won the ultimate prize, like the Colorado Avalanche, it’s been a long, tough haul. It took the Avs five years. Colorado finished last overall in 2016-17 and won the Cup in 2022.

Will Montreal’s notoriously fickle fans have the patience to wait five or six years for the Habs to claw their way back to the top? Already this year, the boo birds have been out at the Bell Centre when their hometown team has sucked. But there is an enormous amount of good will from the fans. Most love the new management team of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes and there’s been an outpouring of affection for head coach Martin St. Louis for the very good reason that he might just be the most inspiring coach in the league. He’s certainly the NHL coach with the most original way of talking about hockey.

It also helps that the team has two of the most exciting Canadiens players this century in Suzuki and Caufield. So even when the team loses, it makes for an entertaining show.

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from Jack Todd at the Montreal Gazette,

It was all so very unnecessary. All Carey Price had to do was nothing.

He could have remained on the Left Coast, taciturn as ever, collecting the balance of an $84-million contract that runs through the 2025-26 season while unable to play hockey.

He could have basked in the adulation of the millions of fans who have backed him from the moment he was drafted in 2005 through the dark time when he entered rehab for substance use 16 years and many triumphs later.

A tall, laconic westerner who did not speak French, Price was always an odd choice as the sporting face of this city — but he could stop a hockey puck and that was enough. Had he chosen, he could have indulged his love of firearms and hunting without troubling anyone.

It wasn’t to be. In a misguided attempt to aid a gun lobby that does not need his help, Price posted on Instagram a photograph of himself in camo gear, holding a large shotgun and expressing his support for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, a group so morally bereft that it used the promo code “POLY” for merchandise.

The timing of the post itself, appearing three days before the anniversary of the massacre at École Polytechnique, was bad enough. Price’s fumbling attempts at damage control only made things worse.

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Kirill Kaprizov of the Wild with a cross check and Juraj Slafkovsky of the Canadiens.

NEW YORK (Nov. 6, 2022) – Montreal Canadiens forward Josh Anderson has been suspended for two games, without pay, for boarding Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo during NHL Game No. 184 in Montreal on Saturday, Nov. 5, the National Hockey League’s Department of Player Safety announced today.

The incident occurred at 10:06 of the third period. Anderson was assessed a major penalty and game misconduct for boarding.

Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and, based on his average annual salary, Anderson will forfeit $59,459.46. The money goes to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

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from Eric Duhatschek of The Athletic,

Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.

Lapointe is ranked No. 98 on The Athletic’s list of the top 100 players of the NHL’s post-1967 expansion era — likeable and popular off the ice, sometimes tremendously underrated on the ice, one of the NHL’s greatest all-time practical jokers, someone always trying to lighten the mood while playing for a series of demanding, all-business coaches.

On the ice, there’s almost always a pecking order to the Big Three and it usually goes Robinson, Savard and Lapointe. But in his autobiography, “Robinson for The Defence,” Robinson wrote of Lapointe: “In his heyday, a great defenseman — and not too far behind Bobby Orr. He rushed. He played the body. He blocked shots (and had two eye injuries to show for it). He was there in the heavy traffic and he had one of the best point shots in the game.

“Guy Lapointe simply did everything — and the people who compared him to (Brad) Park did him a disservice; he was better than Park because he could do more.”

In all, Lapointe won six Stanley Cup championships with the Canadiens and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993. In 884 NHL games, Lapointe recorded 171 goals and 451 assists for 622 points. He also produced 70 points in 123 career playoff games.

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