It’s time for the Habs to move on from Samuel Montembeault
It’s time for the Canadiens to move on from Samuel Montembeault.
This might seem like an obvious point, but some Habs fans have been posting on social media to say they feel Jacob Fowler should be sent back down (or is up?) to the Laval Rocket and Monty should be tapped as Jakub Dobes’s back-up. Even some otherwise reliable hockey columnists have said the same thing.
Me, I’m wondering if these people are simply repressing memories of what happened last season. If that’s the case, let me remind you. Montembeault was absolutely awful. I’m not trying to be mean. Just stating the facts.
By all accounts, Montembeault is an upstanding guy. When he became the third goalie on the Habs’ depth chart last season, he took it like a good team player, continued to hang with the team and cheer them on, all the way to the conference finals. Montembeault, 29, also just became a father for the first time recently and that is indeed super news.
I bear absolute no ill will to Montembeault personally. Last season, when I was saying that coach Martin St. Louis had to stop playing Monty, people said I was being mean. It’s not personal. It’s just business.
Call me old-fashioned. I think the Habs should do whatever it takes within reason to win games. It’s not about being nice to people. It’s about putting the players on the ice who give you the best chance to win, and last season that wasn’t Montembeault.
Yet St. Louis just kept coming back with Montembeault. Kept giving the Québécois dude another shot at the job. Kept repeating that he had faith in his goalie. By December it was crystal clear to most of us that there was something very wrong with Montembeault, but the coach, who has a stubborn bent, simply refused to budge. Astonishingly enough, he kept playing him right through to the beginning of March, and you have to wonder how many points the team lost by continuing with Montembeault so long.
Now the upcoming season is looming just weeks away and the Canadiens continue to have three goalies on the roster — Montembeault, Dobes and Fowler. Are they really thinking of making Monty the backup and Dobes the No. 1 netminder? I get that it might be good for Fowler to see more ice time in Laval, but it seems like a seriously risky proposition to play Montembeault at all.
He was literally one of the worst goalies in hockey last season. His goals-against-average of 3.43 put him 60th among National Hockey League goalies who’d played at least 20 games. With a save percentage of .872, he was ranked 63rd in the league.
We may never know what happened to Montembeault. My theory is the infamous Montreal hockey culture pressure got to him. He was the highest-profile francophone Québécois player on the team and the spotlight shone brightly on him. One of the wild things about last season was watching one poor performance after another from Montembeault and then the broadcast would cut to yet another commercial starring the guy from the town of Bécancour just outside of Trois-Rivières.
There is no doubt there is way more pressure on franco players ici. Just ask Jonathan Drouin. Or Patrice Brisebois. Or Guillaume Latendresse.
But maybe it wasn’t that. Who knows? Fact is a change of scenery would do Montembeault a power of good. Naturally enough, general manager Kent Hughes hasn’t been forthcoming about his plans re Montembeault and maybe Hughes has spent the summer trying to find a suitor for Monty and has come up empty-handed.
There have been some notable goalie swaps in the NHL this summer, including Joseph Woll going from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Philadelphia Flyers and the New Jersey Devils trading Jakob Markstrom to the Florida Panthers. The Leafs also signed former Panthers goalie (and two-time Cup winner) Sergei Bobrovsky to a three-year deal. But is there a market out there for Montembeault after last season’s dismal performance? That’s the $3.15-million question (the salary-cap hit for the final year of his three-year contract).
The only thing that is clear in the Canadiens’ goaltending situation is that Dobes will start the season as the No. 1 guy between the pipes, fresh off signing a three-year $16.07 million deal that only kicks in a year from now. This coming season the 25-year-old will be one of the best bargains in the league with an annual salary of just $965,000, an incredibly low number when you consider that he was one of the best goalies in the playoffs this year and was the main reason the Canadiens surprised the hockey world by making it to the Eastern Conference Final.
Whatever happens, you’d certainly hope the Canadiens don’t start the season with three goalies. Of course goalies can bounce back from sub-par seasons. So you never know. The other thing is — do you really want to send Fowler back to Laval? Seems like a step backwards to me, and how will the young goalie react to that?
Bottom line: Don’t overthink it. Dobes is No. 1 and Fowler his backup. Best thing for the two up-and-coming goalies, best thing for the team.
