Back view of 2021: miracles and melodrama of the Habs

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It was like 12 seasons of He Shoots, He Scores packed in 12 months.

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It was great drama, little farce, almost tragedy, and embarrassing comedy. It was the year that a mediocre group with a 24-32 record somehow made it to the Stanley Cup final and then became the worst team in the long and glorious history of the CH.

It was Habs 2021 and it provided more melodrama than Nick Cage doing Hamlet.

It might be easier to tell what didn’t happen in 2021: The Canadiens weren’t stuck in the Suez Canal. That covers it pretty well.

This was the year Jeff Petry got his little finger caught in one of the photographer’s holes in the glass at the Bell Center, then he developed juju eyeballs when he passed out from the pain of putting his finger back on his place.

It was the year that Jonathan Drouin was absent to deal with anxiety and insomnia and received massive support from the public. The year superstar goalkeeper Carey Price entered the NHL / NHLPA player assistance program for 30 days to deal with substance use issues, and received even greater support.

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In January, the club was preparing to play a season in the short-lived Canadian division with the other six Canadian teams. Claude Julien was the coach, Marc Bergevin the general manager, Trevor Timmins the exploration director.

They started with an overtime loss in Toronto on January 13, but rallied to go 8-2-2 at the start. The schedule was intense, and it became more so after a pandemic protocol shutdown between February 13 and 20. When they did play again, the losses were big and fast.

Still, they were 9-5-4 when Julien was fired on February 24 and Dominique Ducharme was named interim head coach. With too many games to play in too little time, the club still stumbled through the playoffs with a 24-21-11 record to clinch a playoff spot, four points ahead of Calgary.

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As expected, they quickly fell 3-1 behind Toronto in the first round, but in Game 5, Nick Suzuki scored in overtime to give the Canadiens a 4-3 victory.

With that, the miracle followed the miracle. The Canadiens won two more to send off the Leafs, swept the Winnipeg Jets to four and defeated a talented Las Vegas team.

In the Stanley Cup final against defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning, the Canadiens ran out of miracles. Andrei Vasilevskiy edged out Price and finished in five games.

It was July 7, the first day of the collapse. The first hint was Bergevin’s announcement, the day before the draft, that Captain Shea Weber, now 36, was taking the year off to deal with a brutal list of injuries and would likely never return.

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The next blow was self-inflicted. On July 23, the Canadiens announced that with the 31st pick in the draft they were choosing Logan Mailloux, whose potential was overshadowed by the charges against Mailloux in Sweden, where he had photographed a young woman performing a sexual act and posted the photos. to his teammates. , a criminal offense.

For Bergevin and Timmins, the karma was fast and wild.

First, head of public relations Paul Wilson turned the matter into a textbook exercise in how not to handle damage control by getting into a totally unnecessary fight with the media while failing to adequately prepare club executives before taking on the players. reporters.

The pain kept coming. Phil Danault, one of the best centers in the league, announced that he had signed a six-year contract with the LA Kings. Two days later, high-performance veteran Corey Perry lost to the Lightning, who offered him a two-year deal.

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A month later, the Carolina Hurricanes came up with a revenge signing: $ 6.1 million for young Jesperi Kotkaniemi, a third overall draft pick whose future in the NHL was uncertain. With a choice between losing Kotkaniemi or ruining his salary structure, Bergevin let the young Finn go.

Then the season began without Weber, Price and defender Joel Edmundson. On November 28, with Ducharme and the team battling 6-15-2, Bergevin and Timmins were fired along with Wilson. Unilingual American Jeff Gorton was hired as executive vice president and tasked with hiring a French-speaking general manager.

At a press conference the following day, Molson began the long process of rebuilding the club and regaining the public’s trust with his best performance to date. You will need more.

The Canadiens entered a Christmas COVID break with a 7-21-3 record. They have yet to win two games in a row and there is no indication that Ducharme, whose teams are 22-37-10 in the regular season, will be able to train at this level.

The playoff race now seems like a distant mirage. The only safe bet? The drama will never end.

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