Sure, but who has the star power on the Habs of ROR, Tarasenko, and Pietrangelo

price, romanov, toffoli, gallagher, anderson, and dvorak, so im told.

well we have three 30 goal scorer, a two 20 goals scorer on the team. Tarasenko scored 33 the year they won the cup.

BUT we dont have Pat Maroon on our team :P

The year they won the cup doesn't defien whether a player has an XFactor. When they needed to score this players scored, that's how you win championships, andThese players don't really seem to be IT, and having price is good but it gets you to the finals and then you lose.

yup. i agree. more complementary pieces than anything else. suzuki is the only 'it' player.

I agree, and I think Suzuki is 2 young.

I've been Watching Primeau since before he was Draft Eligible following other Habs prospects i noticed him.
As amazing as he is he's got no stamina for anything over 3 games in 1 week and needs atleast 2-3 days recovery time

Only way Primeaus an option is in a Tandem when Allen Leads taking hardest match ups
Primeau like his dad is more known for impact then his ability to play top minutes nightly
It might be in Primeau but he's Years away from being conditioned enough to be defined as a Starter.

All you'll accomplish is crushing a kid who puts the weight of the world on his shoulders
If he comes up and fails that will change is attitude and not for the better

I mean Primeau could 100% come up and HELP accomplish all this once Eddy's back on the blue line.
But in no way is he going to push Allen out in a Binnigton situation as Jordan spent until him late 20's working in the AHL on his conditioning.
Until 2019-20 the first 50 game season JB had since that 1 time in Junior. Conditioning took almost 6 full years of Pro to reach a Starter level

Those like Carey Price who are big game players are few and far between as this Generation doesnt mold Diamonds it molds Participation Trophies creating no Adversity to overcome.
Its why those Goalies who have Risen in the younger generation are 9/10 from outside North America (which is not how the NHL worked for almost 100 years with canada as goalie capital of the world)

How would a BUF fan know?
Behind the the Leafs you're the biggest and longest reigning losers in the NHL


Only thing BUF can advise on is how to lose a Franchise player for slightly more then we got for Pacioretty?
I mean MTL management notoriously had it out with Patches naming him as a toxic attitude indirectly with Subban

But BUF took it one step further denying a person a right to choose whats right for their body.
I mean of all the dumb ways to devalue your team and ensure UFA's avoid BUF ownership , this is by far the most Suicidal effort

ouch

Not Surprised a MTL fan would say this...u just got to the Stanley Cup final. . . And lost because you didn't have an X Factor to score for you.

I could ask some of you fellow fans...who actually have opinions that I would consider valid and or um how can I say not stupid in a nice way... not pathetic attempts to rip apart someone else's franchise they support cause you insecure about what they said about your team. I mean a Montreal fan can't talk about X -Factor skaters cause you haven't drafted one since 2004...

@a_habs_fan @kotkaniemi15 @sevenleg
If any of you all want to tell Billy here that he is no longer allowed into the sensible fan club of Montreal. I'd love to be here to support you lol

Congratulations man, I respect how you kept the discussion professional and relevant to the topic at hand instead of making it personal all because of a comment that wasn't offensive or directed at you.

In an ideal world Suzuki, Caufield, and Petry. (Which is for the most past what happened last season, although it was more by committee than a 1:1 comparison) However, the 2019 Blues just underperformed in the first half of the season, the 2022 Canadiens have much larger problems stemming from the absence of Edmundson, Weber, Price, & Danault. Plus the habs aren’t a good regular Season team, so to have the kind of run that St. Louis had to do to make the playoffs isn’t a possibility.

Saying the habs will make the playoffs this year is delusional.

For the habs to get back in to contention a few things need to go right. For one, Petry needs to be a #1 defenseman, which isn’t really super likely considering he’s dropped off at age 34 this year, and the older you are the less likely you are to bounce back. Frankly, he didn’t have any business being as good as he was last season, players usually don’t have career years at age 33. Plus Savard is no Weber or Parayko, so RD is a huge issue for Montréal that will likely hold the team back in the future.

The forwards are less of a problem, since bounce back seasons from most guys and natural progression from Suzuki & Caufield would make the forward group already better than 2021. Goaltending is voodoo, so we would just need to hope Carey gets hot at the right time.

We usually hit that kind of slump in the middle of a season... now we got it early - a hot December or November could get us back at .500 easily.

We are not dead yet.

Good news is that Price may return soon

RD is going to be a painful spot for several years. There's nobody close to top 4 potential in the system, let alone top 2. Savard isn't good and Petry is not going to last, but there's no pressure there because nobody is coming up behind them.
That's our right side for the next few years.

We might find a magic partner for Savard, so he can be serviceable in at least one pairing. Fingers crossed for it to be Norlinder, but that's of course a long shot.
Edmundson returning will help Petry.
Romanov will hopefully continue to improve.

Our right side is all dependent on our left side right now, but there's nobody who can carry a partner on either side. We need to jump and make a significant move for a quality RHD regardless of anything else. If that isn't possible, we need to collect a few potential prospects are the position.

Mailloux?

Not counting him until we know his development is on track and he'll be accepted with a chance of even playing in the NHL.

That piece of garbage? Even ignoring the fact that he has significant growth to do as a human, his hockey skills are stil 4 or 5 years away from being anything meaningful in the NHL, if everything goes right.

Half our team is injured. Also unless you haven’t noticed, the habs have been 18th and 24th in the NHL in the last 2 seasons, and only made the playoffs because of circumstances caused by the pandemic. Even when things are going well this team isn’t a good regular season team, and the start to this season is worse than anything that has happened over the past few years. It’s pure naïveté to think the habs stand a chance at making the playoffs this year.

I know its unlikely, but we've seem crazier things in the NHL...

Ottawas last year had a terrible start of the season.

But almost climbed back to a playoff spot.

Almost climbed back in is a bit of an overstatement, considering they missed the playoffs by 8 points in a division that had the lowest playoff line of any division. They were on pace for 75 points in an 82 game season, which is only 4 more points than the habs had the year before they drafted Kotkaniemi when they finished 28th in the NHL.

Also Ottawa as a team wasn’t much better before or after their bad start, it was just abhorrent goaltending that sank them to start the year. Montréal’s problems run much deeper than having our netminders going through a slump.

You mean not having our starter and our back-up having a slump? Our most constant D (edmundson) out since the start of the season.