Did you see the Canadian’s victory in Dallas on Thursday night? It’s as if this sacred team had nothing left to prove. The Stars struck early in the match, the Habs responded immediately. Martin St-Louis’ squad finds ways to win. They say it’s the sign of a good team.
It’s astonishing when you think that this team still couldn’t get out of the bottom of the National League during the first quarter of the season. But Serge Savard, to whom I spoke about Lane Hutson and the Habs two days ago, does not think that this feat is magic.
Explanations.
“I wonder if it’s that incredible,” he adds.
“Let’s forget about the games where the team was destroyed earlier this season. She wasn’t able to score. If your team scores one more goal per match, your chances of winning will improve.”
The proof: the Canadian has a 10-2-4 record in such circumstances. For the entirety of last season, she suffered 27 defeats by a goal difference, including 16 in tiebreakers.
No bigger than the team
Notwithstanding these statistics, Savard is especially happy to see that the success of the Habs no longer depends solely on its goalkeepers.
“For too long, it’s been the keepers, the keepers, the keepers!” he says.
“I never considered them [comme] bigger than the team. I never had the mentality of placing all my hopes on the goalkeepers. Samuel Montembeault meets the expectations that hockey people saw in him when he was drafted. He’s good.”
Photo Martin Chevalier
“But at the start of the season, we didn’t yet know who the number 1 goalie was for the Canadian. Cayden Primeau was drafted in the seventh round and everyone called him ordinary. But we persisted in [se demander] whether he was a number one or a number two. It doesn’t work like that.”
Savard agrees that Carey Price was the best goalie of his era.
“But when the playoffs started, the previous administration of the organization said that the team might have a chance to win if Price was up to it,” he adds.
The previous administration was that of Marc Bergevin to whom Savard addressed a lot of criticism for his last years in Montreal.
Four large markers
But didn’t we say the same thing about Patrick Roy with whom Savard won his two Stanley Cups as general manager of the Habs?
-“We were also banking on four scorers of 80 points or more,” Savard hastens to add.
“We had Vincent Damphousse (97 points), Kirk Muller (94), Brian Bellows (88) and Stéphan Lebeau (80). Goalkeepers may be good, but they can’t do everything. They can’t score goals.”
This is what Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Patrik Laine are doing today.
“Laine has one of the best shots in the league. We see what he brings to the five-man attack,” continues Savard.
Photo MARTIN CHEVALIER
“When everything starts to go well for a team, all the players are better. When we had good teams over time, all the players were better, without exception.
“The current Canadian is banking on some good players. The team has more maturity. You have to be able to analyze the potential. Three weeks ago, everyone was asking for the head of Martin St-Louis.”
The light at the end of the tunnel
Savard also believes that the defense has improved with the arrival of Hutson and the acquisition of Alexandre Carrier.
“Last year, people said the defense was good, but that wasn’t the case,” he said.
“Since the kid [Hutson] is there, they are more solid. Carrier is not spectacular, but he provides stability. He is capable of doing several things, he is versatile.
At this point, we can think that the best is yet to come, even if, as Savard mentions, the team will still go through periods of turbulence.
“It’s encouraging, there’s also Demidov coming,” he continues.
“We’ve been waiting for 30 years. It’s normal that we finally see something that makes sense.”
Indeed.
