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The Buck Stops Here

March 26, 2020, 4:06 PM ET [111 Comments]
Karine Hains
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
When a season goes oh so very wrong, there needs to be a post mortem and a serious assessment of why it actually went off the rails. Normally, that happens in the days after the season actually ends, this year, well, your guess is as good as mine as to when it will, if it does happen. The league is still clinging up to the hope that they may be able to resume play and finish the season or at least hold some sort of playoffs but this is looking more and more unlikely. I mean today it was reported that the Rangers offered their arena to the authorities in New York as an emergency hospital. It's really hard to fathom how the league can even hope to be able to salvage this season. Anyhow, here are my thoughts about why the Habs' 2019-2020 was a disaster even before a real disaster struck the world...

Lack of talent
It's not new, the Canadiens lack scoring touch and firepower. It has been true for years and it still is now as I write these lines. Last summer, Bergevin traded away Andrew Shaw for picks and hoped that his spot would be filled by Sebastian Aho but as we know that did not happen. Result? The Canadiens traded away a guy who got 47 points last season 19 of which were goals and got no roster player in return. That was always going to hurt. Yes, I know, trading Shaw was not a bad idea, his value was high and his concussion history was scary so if a team was willing to take him, we had to let him go. The issue wasn't sending him packing, it was failing to replace him. I still think that Bergevin's attempt at signing Aho was ridiculous, it was unfortunately a half-hearted effort and looked like he just wanted to be able to say: "oh well, see I tried but no dice". If you're going to try and pry a UFA from his team, you have to make an offer that the other team won't be able to match, otherwise, it's a waste of time and that's exactly what the Aho debacle was. The failure to add any offensive threat this summer is, in my opinion, the biggest reason why this season was so bad.

Max Domi
I absolutely love Domi, he's a great guy, he's got skills and grit but this season, in large parts, he looked like a shadow of his former self. Going from a 72 points season to a 44 one (in 71 games) is quite the fall. In his defence, he didn't have the best line mates at all times but the fact is that a good centre should make his wingers better not the other way around. This bad season came at a really bad time for Domi who will become a RFA this summer... What kind of contract do you offer him? Do you offer him a long term deal at a lower price because he had a bad season or do you go for a bridge deal and give him a chance to prove that the real Domi is the 18-19 one? If you do that and he gets hot again, he'll be much more expensive to sign. Even with this counter performance, I do hope Bergevin signs him. Once Paul Byron was back in the line-up, a nice chemistry developed between the 2 and the Canadiens cannot afford to let go of another offensive player.

The goaltending
Price was inconsistant at the start of the year and it hurt badly. To make matters worst, while the franchise goaltender was struggling, the newly signed back-up was just awful. I'll admit that I was hopeful this summer when Kinkaid was signed as a back-up. He had played 41 games in both of the last 2 seasons and I thought that surely he would be able to perform in a lesser role and take some of the workload off of Price's back but that was a rather spectacular fail. In 6 games he got a 4.24 goal against average and a .875 save percentage before the team got fed up and sent him down to Laval. The fall didn't stop there though, he was then sent to the ECHL after spending some time on the press gallery in Laval. He put up better numbers in Charlotte but considering the level of play in the ECHL this is hardly surprising. The only place where Kinkaid excelled this season was on Twitter...perhaps he should stick to that from now on. Thankfully, Bergevin had only signed him for a year so he'll be able to right this wrong this summer (hopefully). Funnily enough, Kinkaid doesn't seem to think he had that bad a season judging by this tweet:



So there you have it, my take on the spectacular debacle that was this season for the Canadiens. What do you think? Where did it all go wrong? Who's responsible for this sorry state of affairs?

In other news, the Habs announced today that they had signed Jesse Ylonen to a 3 year entry-level contract. The details of the contract have not been confirmed yet but capfriendly.com assumes that he signed for the maximum permitted $925,000. It will be interesting to see how he does during training camp.... Ah training camp...in a few months when everything will be back to normal...who else just can't wait?

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