Canadiens begin season focused on taking meaningful steps in developing young roster

MONTREAL — Buckle up. This will be a season like no other in Montreal Canadiens history — with the team openly rebuilding for the first time in its 113-year existence.

With no real expectation of competing for a playoff spot, the emphasis will be firmly on player development, and Wednesday’s opener against the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Bell Centre will present first-overall pick in the 2022 Draft Juraj Slafkovsky, 2020 first-rounder Kaiden Guhle and undrafted 21-year-old Arber Xhekaj the chance to take their first meaningful steps on that long, winding road.

Several others with limited experience at this level, like Justin Barron, Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Jesse Ylonen, will have a chance to do the same as the schedule ramps up.

They’ll be part of a Canadiens team hoping to establish an identity coach Martin St. Louis described in detail when he sat down with Sportsnet for an interview on Tuesday:

Enriching the team’s new culture — one that entices players from across the hockey world to want to play for the Canadiens — is also a big objective, according to general manager Kent Hughes.

“We want to see growth in that area. We want to see a growth in culture,” he said. “We’ve heard a lot about people don’t want to be in Montreal — taxes, weather and this — but I’ve always believed that, putting my agent hat on again, I didn’t find a lot of hockey players that were in bad hockey environments that loved it. It didn’t matter how warm it was, or if they were going to the ocean or playing golf after practice versus playing in the coldest environment; guys are happy when hockey works…

“We understand that we’re probably not the favourites to challenge for the Stanley Cup, and when you’re in that type of environment you have to find a way where players are pushing to get better and pushing as a group. So, if we see that, and see that type of progress, that’s a success for us.”

It will take the Canadiens a long time to get there, especially with eight new players in the fold and several of the older ones sidelined indefinitely.

The leadership of this group has turned over dramatically, with franchise goaltender Carey Price and former alternate captain Paul Byron placed on long-term injury reserve and facing the very real possibility of never playing in the NHL again and with 23-year-old Nick Suzuki entering his first season as captain.

He’ll have help from 10-year veteran Brendan Gallagher, but will have to wait for newly-minted alternate captain Joel Edmundson to pitch in.

The 6-foot-5, 221-pound defenceman missed all of training camp with a back injury and is still facing uncertainty as to when he’ll be able to make his season debut, though Hughes did say the medical staff is “very encouraged” by his progress and the fact that he’s been skating on his own for the past week.

Suzuki, who also missed most of training camp with lower- and upper-body injuries, knows it’ll be a process to find the best way of navigating the captaincy and bringing his team together.

For instance, when asked earlier this week about his approach to helping a struggling teammate, he acknowledged taking on such responsibilities will be among many things that will be new for him.

“I’ve never really done that in the past,” Suzuki said, “but I know it’ll be important for me to check in with everyone one-on-one and make sure guys are comfortable coming to me if they need anything.”

Some of them surely will because it’s expected the Canadiens will lose many more games than they win, that injuries will hit as they always do, and that frustration will set in as it naturally would when the results aren’t positive.

Not that the players on this team necessarily feel it will go that way.

“I like our group,” said newcomer Kirby Dach on Tuesday. “I think we have a lot of talent up front and a young and talented defence, and Jakey (Jake Allen) is solid back there in net. I think we can surprise a lot of teams.”

In order to do so, Dach will have to appear more like the player who had enough promise to be chosen third overall in 2017 and less like the player who struggled through his first three seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks before he was traded to Montreal for first- and third-round picks.

A return to form for Sean Monahan, who was acquired this past summer — along with a future first-round pick — from the Calgary Flames after two injury-riddled seasons, would also help.

That he’s pain free following hip surgery in back-to-back off-seasons is a blessing he’s not taking for granted.

“I came back after four months with the first surgery and was supposed to be out six-to-eight. Then I tore the labrum of my other hip three games into last season and kept playing,” Monahan explained to Sportsnet on Tuesday. “Later on, I suffered three fractured ribs. They were protruding out of my back and it was brutal. There were days where I don’t even know what I was doing practising because I couldn’t even tie my own skates.”

But those skates have been laced up tight and moving quite efficiently since Monahan touched down in Montreal, which bodes well for his bid to rebound from an eight-goal, 23-point output with the Flames last season.

Gallagher, who also dealt with hip issues—among several other he detailed for us—is feeling the best he has in a couple of years and poised to author a redemption story.

Whether or not Christian Dvorak, Mike Hoffman, Joel Armia and Jonathan Drouin can do the same is questionable.

Dvorak will have a key role in insulating the 21-year-old Dach, and he’ll have to be a lot more like the player who proved extremely reliable in Arizona than he did in his first season following his trade to Montreal last year.

Hoffman, who scored between 22 and 36 goals in six of his eight NHL seasons before posting just 15 goals in his first year of a three-year, $13.5-million pact with the Canadiens, will start on a line with Monahan and Dach and be given a chance to play an integral role on the power play. He has to make good on it.

Armia, who’s in Year 2 of a four-year, $13.6-million deal, struggled mightily last season and will start this one nursing an upper-body injury, which is problematic.

And Drouin, who had a good start to last campaign before suffering a season-ending wrist injury, is in the final year of his contract and starting it in the press box as a healthy scratch.

Even if all four players, along with Gallagher, Monahan and Dach find their scoring touches — and Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Josh Anderson form an explosive first line — the effect on the team’s standing could be minimal.

If you push veterans David Savard and Chris Wideman aside, the Canadiens are relying on 14 games of NHL experience on their blue line for Game 1 of their season. Youngsters Guhle, Xhekaj, Jordan Harris and Johnathan Kovacevic are immediately facing off against Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and one of the league’s most potent offences, and the task won’t become all that much easier for them as the season moves along.

Edmundson and Mike Matheson, who came to the Canadiens in the trade that sent Jeff Petry to the Pittsburgh Penguins this past summer, would be a safety valve if they were playing.

Instead, Hughes said Matheson spent Wednesday morning getting an MRI for a lower-body injury that currently has him listed as day-to-day.

Even if Matheson’s results (expected over the next 48 hours) reveal his absence will be short-term, starting behind the eight-ball and playing catchup is a rough jump out of the gate. That it’s a lower-body injury he’s dealing with is anything but ideal for a player who counts on his skating as his best asset and is expected to play upwards of 25 minutes a night after never averaging more than 22:19 in any of his previous six NHL seasons.

“We’re not talking about months and months here,” Hughes said of Matheson’s potential absence. “If we learn otherwise, that would be a concern.”

He said that Corey Schueneman, who earned his first 24 games of NHL experience last season, is a reliable depth option. Without mentioning him by name, he intimated Otto Leskinen could be another.

But neither can mitigate the inexperience the Canadiens are dealing with on their blue line and it’ll be quite some time before Hughes can address this need—with this being the beginning of a new season and trades rarely materializing before late November.

It’s going to be trial by fire for the kids on defence.

It won’t be easy for Allen and backup goaltender Sam Montembeault, as a result.

And then there’s Slafkovsky, who went goal-less during the pre-season, at times appeared out of his element and is facing a lot of pressure to fulfill his promise immediately.

His development is of utmost importance, and Hughes, St. Louis and the rest of the Canadiens’ staff will be monitoring it—and managing it—very closely.

At least the GM likes what he’s seen from the 6-foot-4, 238-pound winger so far.

“I don’t want to say evolution, because it hasn’t been that long, but we’ve seen the start of a process of adjusting from hockey in Europe to hockey in North America, where he’s playing a little bit more north-south, a little bit more physical,” he said, “and we like that.”

“We think that he can continue in that direction, and that’s great. If he does that and continues to make strides, then he could be here for the full season,” Hughes added. “And if at any point in time we feel that that’s no longer the case or we can’t get him enough ice time and he needs to be somewhere else, then at that point in time we’ll make that decision and we’ll send him to Laval.

“But I love giving young guys an opportunity to show, ‘Hey, I’m going to get better day by day and I’m going to push myself and I’m going to deal with those pressures in a controlled environment.’ He’s going to have to do that. All of them have to do that.”

Because that’s what this season is really about for the Canadiens.

It’s never been exclusively about that before at any point in their history, but it’s a new era for the organization.