The Canadiens must be happy to see that the Arizona Coyotes exist, and that they too are part of the National Hockey League.
Because if the Coyotes did not exist, the Canadian would be the worst club in the entire NHL, even worse than that of the Seattle Kraken, despite the expansion.
But thanks to the Coyotes, the Canadian can save face, well, a little, by deserving, for the moment at least, the 31e rank in the overall NHL standings, three points ahead of Arizona, which has two games in hand in this thrilling race for mediocrity.
With 53 more games to play on the calendar, the Canadian can already think of 2022-23, so much so that the specialist site Hockey Reference is no longer even able to quantify the club’s probabilities for a place in the playoffs; on the site, the Canadian box is empty, which equates to something like 0%.
“We don’t want to come to that,” said goaltender Jake Allen after the 4-1 loss on Saturday night in St. Louis. Because it can become very dangerous when you start to lose like that. Defeats will happen, but it always depends on the way; how we play, how we can play honestly. If you lose, you lose, but you have to know how to fight. ”
The Canadiens have fought many times this season, even in defeat, but Saturday’s performance may have been a turning point.
Of course, the 11 names that end up on the injured list don’t help, but against the Blues there was a slight sense of abandonment, or at the very least, there were 60 difficult minutes. where most of the CH players played as if they knew full well that they had no chance. Charlie Lindgren, the Blues’ fourth goalie this season, has only had 23 shots aimed at him.
“There have been a lot of losses these days,” added Jake Allen. We have to win now in order to change this culture and also to turn the tide. ”
In the immediate future, the Canadiens’ management will appoint a new general manager after Christmas, and there is no doubt that the club’s priorities will then shift from ice to offices. In other words, decisions regarding personnel will take up all the space, and it should not be surprising that a few veterans quickly find themselves in the transaction market; this season, the deadline for this is March 21, it has probably already been circled on the calendars that are hung in the offices in Brossard and at the Bell Center.
What is left then? Already not much. It remains to try to limit the damage, and the Canadian can undoubtedly try to concentrate on “beating” the mark of the 70 points collected by the club during the season 2000-01. Since the expansion of 1967, and excluding seasons affected by a labor dispute, this is the team’s worst crop.
The Canadian is also behind in this race; after 29 games, the 2000-01 squad had managed to get nine wins. This is three more than the harvest of the current team, which has not won since November 27, and which has just lost six games in a row.
In the rose-colored glasses department: the Canadian obtained his last victory in Pittsburgh against the Penguins, at the same place where his next game will be presented on Tuesday night. It’s already that.