Stu Cowan: Time for a little transparency with the Canadiens

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What does a team owner / president do when just one month after the NHL season their club is already out of the playoff race?

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That’s a question Geoff Molson should ask himself as the Canadiens go 3-10-0 in Tuesday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings at the Bell Center. (7 pm, TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

According to Sportsclubstats.com , the Canadiens had a 1.6 percent chance of making the playoffs on Monday. The only team with fewer chances was the Arizona Coyotes at 1.1 percent with a 1-10-1 record.

It’s not going to happen.

It will probably take around 98 points to make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference, which means the Canadiens would need 92 points from their last 69 games, a record equivalent to 45-22-2. Even the return of goalkeeper Carey Price in the near future after leaving the NHL / NHLPA player assistance program for the weekend isn’t going to fix what’s wrong with this team. On Monday, the Canadiens ranked 30th overall in the NHL, 30th in goal differential (minus-19), 26th in power play (13.6 percent), 29th on penalties (66 percent) and 30 in direct confrontations (45.6 percent). percent). There are 32 teams in the league.

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The Canadiens have also been outscored 44-13 in their 10 losses. When the Canadiens lose, they lose big and spectacularly, like Saturday night at the Bell Center when they outshot the Vegas Golden Knights 20-1 in the first period as they took a 2-0 lead before losing 5-2. . The Canadiens are now 2-5-0 at home.

So what does Molson do now?

This season is already basically a cancellation, so you don’t have to panic and start laying people off right away. What he does have to do is clear up the general manager’s situation before the NHL’s trade deadline of March 21. It certainly doesn’t look like Marc Bergevin is coming back next season and Molson has a few months now to look for a replacement.

Since Molson has made it clear in the past that he wants a bilingual general manager and head coach, the list of candidates is short, but it could start with Mathieu Darche, director of hockey operations for the Tampa Bay Lightning. The next GM can then decide who he wants to coach.

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Molson just hired head coach Dominique Ducharme to a three-year deal worth $ 5.1 million during the offseason and he’s still paying Claude Julien $ 5 million not to coach this season, so probably don’t be in a rush to make another coach change.

It’s hard to imagine a team needing to think about rebuilding just four months after going to the Stanley Cup final, but that’s the case now with the Canadiens. This team didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs the last two seasons, which were disrupted by COVID-19, finishing 24th overall in 2019-20 and 18th last season when they warmed up at the right time in the post. -season and came within three wins of winning his first Stanley Cup since 1993.

But many of last season’s key players are gone and this now looks like a terrible team with a lame general manager, no captain in the locker room and a head coach who has a regular season record of 18-26-7 since who replaced Julien.

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Bergevin built this team around Price and Shea Weber, who probably played his last game in the NHL. It’s time for a new plan now.

Canadiens players had trouble figuring out Ducharme’s system when he took over last season and barely made the playoffs before he finally started clicking. With so many changes to the roster since then, players are once again looking confused and frustrated on the ice this season.

But a manager change right now won’t save the season and maybe Ducharme can get his system working again at some point. Like I said, let the next GM decide if he wants to make a coaching change, if Molson is willing to eat another contract.

Molson doesn’t have to rush into making decisions right now, but what he needs to do is let the fans, especially the season ticket holders and box owners at the Bell Center who shell out a lot of money to see their team, know that it really is. working on a plan to fix what went wrong. Molson can even make it easy for himself if he wants, picking a few journalists from whom he likes to answer questions, as he did after the Canadiens’ controversial decision to select Logan Mailloux in the first round of this year’s NHL Draft. .

After the Canadiens finished 28th overall in 2017-18, Molson talked about how he not only had to improve the product on ice, but would also be more transparent with fans going forward.

“We are the most storied franchise in the NHL and we owe it to our fans for achieving the standard of excellence they expect,” Molson said at the time.

Time to see some of that transparency now.

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