HabsWorld.net --
With the Habs struggling to maintain their top ten position in the NHL, I don’t know about you, but I find their struggles torturous at times. The issues rotate, bad team defence, goaltending issues, weak secondary scoring, not enough grit, not enough right shooting defencemen, inexperienced players, weak penalty kill, questionable coaching choices, and yet at the end of each day, the team’s improvement over last year is significant.
The Habs were a middle-of-the-road team last year, making the playoffs despite finishing 17th in the NHL standings. This season, they’re a top-10 team with everything pointing to a rebuild that is absolutely moving in the right direction. After waiting for the team to rise out of the rubble of a number of years as one of the worst teams in the league, we can’t help but suffer as we watch the growing pains of a soon-to-be year-in, year-out contender emerge.
To help ease the pain, find some gratitude, I searched through the records of the Habs over the last 60 years to find some parallels in the team’s history. Looking for context that might help ease my mind about where we are now.
A number of years after the 1967 expansion, the Habs had a rookie goaltender who, in 35 games, earned the Habs 50 points for a .714 points percentage. Their so-called #1 goalie had a points percentage of .460. Only one team in the league had a higher winning percentage than the rookie goaltender, yet the kid was not even in consideration for the rookie of the year award.
For the Habs, this was not something new. In fact, on the team, they had another rookie, a forward, who was fighting for the lead in goals among all rookies, and he, too, was barely an afterthought for rookie of the year. In fact, the team had a third rookie who was leading all rookies in points and he, too, was considered a long shot to win the award. The weirdness goes on. The rookie goaltender was not even the favourite rookie goaltender on his own team. The fans loved an even younger goaltender who was playing at about a .500 winning percentage in a handful of games.
The team had four rookies and was favoured to make the playoffs, not bad for such a young team. In fact, even as the team struggled, the fans needed to remember how young their team was and be grateful for all they’ve achieved and on the whole, the fans knew this.
Of course, I’m leaving out the most important detail and that is that while this did happen a number of years after the 1967 expansion to 12 teams, the number of years is 59 and the Habs I’m talking about is this year’s team.
Jakub Dobes is the rookie goaltender, Jacob Fowler is the younger goalie, Oliver Kapanen is the young sniper who is not in consideration for rookie of the year and a youngster named Ivan Demidov is the league scoring leader among rookies and is considered a long shot to win. That is still a lot of fresh talent on a young team. With last year’s Hutson still improving, with a flotilla of prospects banging on the door and a team of veterans led by the grizzled Juraj Slafkovsky, there is so much to be grateful for and to look forward to.
The rebuild has had its ups and downs but this team is bound to give us a ton of entertainment over the next decade. As much as I know they will not always come through, it’s hard not to be over-the-top excited about what’s ahead.
