Call of the Wilde: Carolina Hurricanes give the Montreal Canadiens their fifth consecutive loss of the season – Montreal | The Canadian News

The build-up was Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s return to the Bell Center in a Carolina Hurricanes uniform. He had his best game of the season scoring his first goal in a third period.

And while Kotkaniemi’s return was the good story for the media, the only story the Montreal Canadiens cared about was finding a way to win their first of the season after four losses. But it wasn’t like that either.

Montreal had another loss, falling 4-1. Now they are zero points earned out of 10 this season.

Wilde Horses

This section has been almost empty this season.

In this one, there was really only one brilliant moment where the zero-17 run in the power play was finally broken. Nick Suzuki scored his first point of the year preparing Tyler Toffoli in front of the net for his first goal of the year. The Canadiens played with some life after that, but couldn’t score another goal. Montreal has only four goals in five games.

They had more chances in this than in previous games. Brendan Gallagher looked great from two feet away. Christian Dvorak had a great opportunity from two feet away. Jonathan Drouin had a getaway. But they achieved a goal. That is the bottom line.

From an improvement standpoint, if you’re trying to fill this supposedly positive section with something positive: The Habs had five shots for the first half of the game and 23 shots for the second half of the game. Maybe, just maybe, that’s something to build on.

Wild goats

This season is impossible to understand so far. There is considerable talent in this club. They are not last year’s team, it is true, but they are not that horrible. Most experts felt it would be a transitional season for the Canadiens after losing some key men, but the depth of this discomfort is unfathomable. Midway through the competition, the Canadiens had five shots.

They have been games this season without even a good offensive moment. There are too many talented forwards for that to happen. An American Hockey League team could play at the Bell Center this season and do better than five shots in half a game.

Canadians have Brendan Gallagher. The Canadians have Tyler Toffoli. The Canadiens have Jeff Petry. The Canadiens have Josh Anderson. The Canadians have Jonathan Drouin. All of these players have been successful at the NHL level. Not everyone forgot how to impact games at the NHL level. Everyone knows how to make plays at the NHL level.

As bleak as the start of this season has been, this will not continue. Can not. It was more than 108 minutes without a single goal.

So why is this so bad?

It is up to the coach to figure out how to create more offense through this lineup, but it won’t be easy, because from the bottom there is a huge problem that is seen here many times.

While David Savard, Ben Chiarot, Alexander Romanov, Brett Kulak, Jeff Petry are all NHL defenders, together they don’t make a good defensive body. In general, they do not match, they cannot target the man the puck effectively, and they cannot combine to create an offense.

In general, they are mostly adept at defending themselves by collapsing and absorbing. That means a lot of hockey against Jake Allen.

So while there is a lot that is in the coach, the construction of this defense that he can only defend is in general manager Marc Bergevin. More on that below.

Wilde’s Letters

General manager Marc Bergevin met with the media Wednesday afternoon for an impromptu unscheduled visit. Two important bulletins came out of the press conference.

There is much consternation on the part of some that Bergevin will not return next season because his contract runs out at the end of the season. Bergevin says he definitely wants to return to the club. It seems that this is a simple way of negotiating a contract in which both parties are entrenched while they can be entrenched. When the season is close to ending and Bergevin needs to look for work next season, the negotiations will become more serious and one would assume that it will be resolved.

The confidence that they will be settled with him staying in downtown Montreal is based on the simple fact that there really is no qualified French name that can replace Bergevin. Geoff Molson has always said he wants a French speaker in that GM role.

There may be French-speaking names like Patrick Roy, but no names that are better than Bergevin.

Personally, I think he will never value today’s defender and will never be able to build a championship caliber team because his blue line options will always resemble David Savard and never Keith Yandle.

Without a defender to move the puck in today’s NHL game, you can’t be successful. The new blue liner can play on both ends of the ice, and must also keep the puck in the attacking zone, as well as handle tasks close to its own goalkeeper. The NHL ice now has five players everywhere doing it all.

The other major issue was knowing that Shea Weber will not be back this season, and may have played the last hockey of his career. Bergevin indicated that it was highly likely that Weber would ever return. However, he did indicate that he has a plan for Weber going forward. ‘

One would assume this will be in some kind of coaching capacity. It certainly wouldn’t be public relations, though he could also excel at scaring members of the media with Roy Keane’s terrifying style of scowling. That certainly worked for me over the years.

Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after every Canadiens game.