Jake Evans is expected to have a bigger role on the Habs this season and they’ve opted to give him a vote of confidence, announcing that they’ve signed him to a three-year contract extension. The deal carries a cap hit of $1.7 million.
Ryan Poehling had a strong second half. Jesse Ylonen was one of the best players in the second period. Arber Xhekaj was quite strong. But all of these flashes came after the team’s top unit of Suzuki, Toffoli, Gallagher, Petry, and Romanov stepped up and led the way as the Habs played a fundamentally strong game to earn a 2-1 win over Ottawa on Saturday night.
There has been some uncertainty surrounding Montreal’s goaltending situation with Carey Price’s availability for the start of the season in question. As a result, the Habs opted to add some more depth at the position on Saturday, claiming Samuel Montembeault off waivers from Florida.
The Habs kicked off a home-and-home set versus the Senators on Friday night and couldn’t get much going either offensively or defensively as they fell 7-2.
It was only a matter of time before the Habs made a big list of cuts with minor league camps soon to get underway. That happened on Friday as Montreal trimmed down their roster by 19 players.
Regular waivers opened up on Thursday and the Habs wasted little time putting a pair of veterans on the wire as defencemen Xavier Ouellet and Louie Belpedio on waivers.
A strong sophomore season for Nick Suzuki has helped cement his role as Montreal’s top centre. With that comes an expectation for him to produce more; what type of numbers could he put up in 2021-22?
As is usually the case, Monday’s preseason contest against Toronto was not very exciting. However, the team’s would be second line had a huge night as they hit the back of the net three times and combined for 10 points in a 5-2 victory.
There are plenty of wildcards heading into the 2021-22 season. One of those will certainly be head coach Dominique Ducharme as he runs training camp for the first time and looks to learn from some choices that didn’t work out as well as he had hoped in the playoffs.
Montreal’s first preseason game is in the books and it was not a particularly pretty one as they fell 4-1 to Toronto on Saturday night. Tyler Toffoli had the lone goal for the Canadiens in the losing effort.