Canadiens are suffering a stunning slide

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To say there were headwinds coming into this season for the Montreal Canadiens would be an understatement.

With the captain on long-term injured reserve, the franchise goaltender in the NHLPA’s player assistance program, two centres lost to free agency and the salary cap an utter mess, the upside was difficult to see.

A lot has happened since last summer in Montreal, little of it good. The team currently has seven players on injured reserve. The front office has been gutted. And, for the most part, Canadiens fans just want this regular season to end. Who can blame them?

That said, the slide of this team – a team that competed in the Stanley Cup Final a year ago, I remind you – has been stunning. This isn’t just a lineup that’s really struggling to find their way, buried in poor shooting luck or void of any goaltending. The parts are bad. The sum of the parts is worse. If you hadn’t watched a single Canadiens game, you would assume this team was tanking.

But that can’t be true either. We have seen teams tank regular seasons in the hopes of chasing a lottery pick. The 2014-15 Buffalo Sabres did it in preparation for the Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel lottery race. The 2021-22 Arizona Coyotes lineup is another example; the motivation is less clear, but when virtually your entire lineup will contractually expire at season’s end, the path to competitive hockey doesn’t exist.   

What do these teams have in common? They were better hockey teams. In fact, the Canadiens have a shot at finishing this year with the worst regular-season performance in the modern era of statistics (2007-22), a stunning indictment of how far this franchise has fallen.

By cumulative season goal differential, compare the Canadiens