General manager Kent Hughes spent the first few months of the offseason stressing that his hands were tied until Carey Price’s future was known.
Now that we know that the Montreal Canadiens will most likely be without their star goaltender for the whole of the next campaign, will Hughes be able to get active again to try to fill the gaps in his training?
The situation in net is particularly worrying. Since the departure of Jaroslav Halak in 2010, Price has never been threatened as the number 1 goalkeeper of the Canadian. Each time he’s been sidelined, the team has sunk to the bottom of the NHL standings, as it did last season when he was limited to five outings.
Moreover, Hughes had affirmed on the airwaves of 91.9 Sports, last May 4, that besides Price, “we do not yet have anyone among our goalies who has shown from one year to another that he is a number 1”.
These remarks clash with those of Thursday evening, when Hughes affirmed with confidence that he did not plan to seek reinforcements in net and that he would trust Jake Allen, Samuel Montembeault and Cayden Primeau to defend the goal of the crew.
Allen is the most seasoned of the group, with 353 NHL games. However, the 31-year-old New Brunswicker was unable to retain his goaltending position with the St. Louis Blues before moving to the Canadiens in September 2020.
In addition, Allen was not spared from injuries last winter either. He missed nine weeks with a lower-body injury in January. He then suffered a groin injury in April, which ended his season.
Interviewed by The Canadian Press earlier this summer at the Memorial Cup in Saint John, N.B., Allen felt ready to take on more responsibility if the worst-case scenario were ever confirmed in Price’s case.
“I think my game is on point. I’m happy with my last season, and I hope to have the opportunity to continue to build on it,” he said.
During his interview, Allen spoke of the void in the group of leaders created by the absences of Shea Weber and Price. In this regard, we cannot say that the situation has improved this summer, but the Canadiens should at least appoint a captain by the start of the next campaign.
The new captain will have the task, together with head coach Martin St-Louis, of keeping the ship afloat, even if this mission seems practically impossible in the short term. Anyway, Hughes has never hidden that his goal was to make the Canadian competitive in the long term, year after year. This is not done by simply plugging the holes with chewing gum, as its predecessor used to do.
In the right chair
If Hughes makes any more trades between now and the start of the season, we can expect it to be to replace a forward with a defender.
The Habs seem to be left with a surplus of forwards. If we include the first choice of the last draft Juraj Slafkovsky and the restricted free agent Kirby Dach, the Canadian has 16 forwards labeled NHL.
Hughes, however, mentioned that it was possible that Paul Byron and Sean Monahan, freshly acquired from the Calgary Flames, miss the start of the season. The name of Jonathan Drouin (wrist) is also on the injured list.
Defensively, the Canadiens have only four defenders in their ranks with over 200 games of NHL experience: David Savard (673), Michael Matheson (417), Joel Edmundson (416) and Chris Wideman (245).
While Hughes often pointed to the group of young defensemen when talking about the Canadiens’ promising future, he also reiterated the importance of putting them in a position to be successful.
“Our priority will be to put young people in the right environment to develop,” Hughes said of the young defenders during the end-of-season review. Are we going to come to camp with the idea of putting three rookies in our roster for 82 games? We will not take that risk. »
This also applies to Primeau, who is currently a restricted free agent. The 23-year-old American goaltender may have helped the Laval Rocket reach the semi-finals in the American League playoffs, but he had previously had a rocky campaign.
Primeau had looked particularly bad in his few NHL games. In 12 outings with the Canadiens last winter, he went 1-7-1 with a 4.62 GAA and 868 save percentage.
Everything indicates that he will start the season with the Rocket. Primeau will also have to continue to prove that he has the potential to become a starting goaltender in the NHL. If not, the Canadiens could find themselves struggling in that position for many seasons to come, unless Hughes finds a solution outside of the organization.