It defies nearly all logic. The Montreal Canadiens lost in embarrassing fashion to the last-place Chicago Blackhawks one night. The next, they knocked off another recent Stanley Cup champion, the fourth they’ve beaten in the last five games, in one of their most impressive efforts of the season, as they edged the hosting Colorado Avalanche 2-1 in a shootout on Saturday, Jan. 4.
There’s at least plenty of credit to go around, in regard to the last outing.
Credit to Dobes
Most will go to rookie goalie Jakub Dobes, as it should. He stopped 22 of 23 shots, excluding two in the shootout, to win his second straight since getting promoted. After historically shutting out the opposition in his debut, he’s now sporting a miniscule 0.48 Goals-Against Average (GAA) and .982 Save Percentage (SV%), making the Canadiens look like geniuses.
Related: Canadiens’ Dobes Earns Shutout over Champion Panthers in Debut
That goes for head coach Martin St. Louis too. He’s the one who had the wherewithal to play Dobes when he did, when the aforementioned logic dictated he do just the opposite, i.e., play the inexperienced rookie against the now-13-24-2 Blackhawks, when the Canadiens were well-rested and in good position to support him, in their first game of 2025. Under normal circumstances, he’d have had Montembeault face the 24-15-1 Avalanche, who hadn’t played since Thursday, when the Habs had just played the night before.
Well, to clarify, they’d be normal circumstances for just about every other team. Not the Canadiens, who seemed to make their mishandling of Dobes’ predecessor, Cayden Primeau, an art form. Sure, by the end, after literally years of playing Primeau once in a blue moon and throwing him to metaphorical wolves on the rare occasions they did, without giving him much in the way of offensive support all the while, they didn’t really handle him at all. That’s kind of the point.
Dobes vs. Primeau
After Primeau lost 6-3 to the Boston Bruins on Dec. 1, giving up five goals (one empty-netter) including three in just 1:10 to put the game out of reach midway through the first, they never started him again. Before getting sent down to the American Hockey League on Dec. 29, he played once more, in relief of Montembeault on Dec. 12 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. In that game he gave up three goals on seven shots. It was kind of a lose-lose situation for Primeau specifically. The Canadiens as a whole weren’t playing well, meaning they had little invested emotionally in his performance, losing 6-2 midway in the third when he joined the fun fest.
If Primeau had played well against the Penguins, no one would have cared. The fact that he played badly only seemed to confirm what most everyone had concluded already: The Canadiens couldn’t trust him. The truth is, while Primeau has played badly this season (2-3-1, with a 4.70 GAA and .836 SV%), he ended 2023-24 on a high. Over his last nine games, after the trade deadline when the Habs finally traded Jake Allen to enable him to play regularly, he actually earned a .921 SV%, outplaying Montembeault down the stretch. Keep in mind, the plan according to ex-goalie coach Stephane Waite had been to give Primeau 200 AHL games. After numerous false starts to his NHL career, he only got in 123 before the Habs were forced to keep him out of training camp or risk losing him on waivers. So, they did, only to give him the scraps of their two other goalies last season. The rest you know.
Now, it seems like the Canadiens are repeating the same mistakes with Dobes. Remember, the Habs gave him his first-ever game against the well-rested champion Florida Panthers coming out of the holiday break. St. Louis saved the Tampa Bay Lightning the next night, when the Bolts had just played the New York Rangers the previous night, for Montembeault. Considering both teams are what anyone would rationally consider difficult competition, so be it. However, at this point, two times in a span of a week is more than a mere coincidence, especially when everyone has Primeau’s tenure as backup to look to as a reference guide of what can go wrong with a young goalie, once considered to be Carey Price’s heir apparent.
A Canadiens Track of Record of Poor Prospect Development
Fans who choose to trust the Canadiens, perhaps a little blindly, will say the onus is on Primeau to stop the puck. There’s no denying that Primeau had to in the end and he ultimately didn’t. However, the Habs shouldn’t be blameless in this situation. To be fair, the Canadiens’ mishandling of Primeau dates back to the Marc Bergevin era, so before St. Louis took the reins as head coach under current-general manager Kent Hughes. However, while St. Louis has established himself as a player’s coach in general (and arguably the right man for the job on a young, rebuilding team), he did come in inexperienced and has made at least a few questionable deployment decisions.
From an organizational standpoint, is it really so outlandish of an idea that they would consistently fumble the development of a few prospects? When each of their first draft picks from 2006-2018 failed to stick in the organization? And, not for nothing, but their first-round record for a few decades prior to Price in 2005 is pretty spotty at best too.
Ultimately, Primeau and Charlie Lindgren, whose development effectively got sacrificed during the 2020-21 season so that the Canadiens could carry a taxi-squad goalie, aren’t isolated incidents. There’s a history here. And that’s really the season in which their mistreatment of Primeau started, when he appeared in just 20 games, including four in the NHL, going 1-2-1 with a 4.16 GAA and .849 SV%. The previous year, his first as a professional, he played two, going 1-1, with a 2.52 GAA and .931 SV%, seemingly reaffirming the widespread faith everyone had in him and the reasons why he had just won the 2019 Mike Richter award as the best Division 1 collegiate goalie in the States.
So, while there is justified optimism that Dobes can end up being the guy, any suggestion he’s starting off better than Primeau and that things will be different now is playing revisionist history and akin to wearing rose-coloured glasses. Oh, it’s possible Dobes pans out, but two games don’t make a career. Montembeault himself started this very season under similar circumstances with a single goal allowed, after impressively shutting out the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 1. Then he and the team hit a rough patch. The key difference here is St. Louis kept going back to him, because he’s a goalie the head coach clearly trusts.
No Harm, No Foul? Not So Fast
The question is, why give Montembeault the easier opposition in the Blackhawks? There is no certain answer. It would admittedly be pure speculation to suggest that, suddenly right smack dab in a playoff race, St. Louis saw a golden opportunity to secure a victory beyond a shadow of doubt, whereas the Avalanche represented a much more difficult, again rested, opponent the next night. No one expected the Canadiens to beat the Avs, so “que sera, sera.”
It just so happened that things worked out as expected, in the most unexpected of ways, with the Canadiens earning two points out of four, just coming out on top against the better team in the Avalanche, with Dobes in nets? So, no harm, no foul? Maybe.
It would be easy to just sweep this weekend’s deployment decision-making under the rug, were it not for the litany of evidence suggesting the Canadiens are playing a dangerous game here. Ultimately, St. Louis got lucky that things worked out, because had Dobes gotten lit up, it’s extremely possible the vicious cycle would have started anew. Of course, the saying is you have to be lucky to be good and good to be lucky. St. Louis and the Canadiens are playing well. Even against the Blackhawks, they just seemed to get “goalied” by Arvid Soderblom. The Habs may have lost had Dobes been in net too. Then, where would we be?
There may be some school of thought that, facing lower expectations against the Avalanche, St. Louis was somehow protecting Dobes? But let’s get real: If the general expectation for Primeau had been for him to be ready when called upon and simply stop the puck, which he failed to do consistently, Dobes faces the same both within the organization and from fans.
There aren’t any mental gymnastics in existence that should be able to justify what at face value is an odd judgment call at best, one St. Louis has consistently made, perhaps in the interest of winning now, which is undeniably his job. In keeping the Canadiens in the race with one win this weekend, he’s done it for all intents and purposes, but what about when they’re in a must-win situation in April? Will St. Louis play Montembeault vs. the tougher opponent in a back-to-back situation? It shouldn’t be a question. Yet here we are.
If the Canadiens are serious about making the playoffs, every game in a must-win situation. The two games this weekend were no different. They just played Montembeault like the backup and Dobes the starter, when nothing should be further from the truth. Dobes is potentially the goalie of the future, who should be adequately groomed for the position. Montembeault is the starter. Play him like it. Just because they beat the Avalanche, it doesn’t mean they should be satisfied. And just because Dobes won it doesn’t mean fans should be satisfied with the organization’s handling of him and Primeau before him.
It’s possible the Canadiens could have gotten four out of all four points this weekend. No one knows what would have happened had St. Louis taken more of an orthodox approach here. In sharp contrast though, we have a reasonable idea of what will happen if he doesn’t course-correct with regard to Dobes. It won’t be pretty.
