This isn’t a mea culpa column.
However I’m updating my view on this Samuel Montembeault fellow. Just a little over every week in the past, I wrote on this very area: “
I nonetheless don’t consider in Monty.
”
That was after he’d performed two video games, following a month off from the group, a pause prompted by his completely atrocious play within the fall.
He’s performed 4 video games since his return, which means the pattern dimension has doubled, and right now I’m able to say that he’s again! He was en feu Tuesday evening in Washington, stopping 39 of 42 pictures from the Capitals for a .929 save proportion.
The Caps took the sport by the throat within the third interval once they had been down 2-0, utterly dominating the Habs and capturing 15 pucks at Monty. He let in two objectives, each by Ethen Frank (who?), however they had been deflections. He needed to take care of one other 10 pictures from the Capitals in extra time and Washington lastly gained it late within the OT after Montembeault and his teammates had survived a four-on-three energy play. The save he made on Brett Leason within the third interval, whipping his leg out simply in time to cease the puck, was unreal. Briefly, it was one in all his greatest video games as a Hab.
Montyyyyy pic.twitter.com/nyumH0lUZB
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) January 14, 2026
Now that is the place you, the critic, say, “Hey, wait a minute, haven’t you been trashing this p’tit gars de chez nous all fall? Shouldn’t you simply apologize?
Once I mentioned and wrote that he was the worst goalie in hockey, some mentioned I used to be being too harsh. However the reality is, within the first half of the season, he was the worst goalie in hockey. The numbers don’t lie. There was one thing very unsuitable with Montembeault and it’s fairly clear what it was.
He made Group Canada for the 4 Nations Face-Off
final 12 months, and his play was a key purpose the Canadiens made that stunning run into the playoffs final season. Come this season, you couldn’t watch a sport with out seeing a number of Monty commercials. All of the sudden, he was The Man, or quite Le Gars. And the strain received to him.
It
is
a lot more durable for native francophone gamers ici. They take heed to the radio en français, and so they hear about their sport once they go to household events. They go to Tim Hortons and get an earful. Some, like Jonathan Drouin, can’t deal with it. For some time, it seemed like Montembeault couldn’t both. Each time a ahead got here racing towards him, you felt like he was backing into his web, making himself smaller. He misplaced his confidence and his mojo, and goalies can’t do their job in the event that they don’t face each shot believing they’ll cease it.
In some way he received that confidence again. Who is aware of what occurred? We would have to attend for his autobiography to seek out out what the catalyst was.
The underside line is that it’s nice information for the group. I like the way in which younger Jacob Fowler appears to be like with the large group, however clearly you’d quite have the veteran taking part in properly, too. And now
the goaltending answer is easy.
Truly, it’s exactly what I instructed final week.
Ship Jakub Dobes again to Laval and hold Montembeault and Fowler right here. The one modification I’d make to final week’s proposal is that then I mentioned Fowler must be No. 1 and Monty the backup. Given what’s occurred, I’d now say you simply rotate the goalies each sport. And if one of many two begins taking part in approach higher than the opposite, he will get extra video games. Simple peasy.
And let’s be clear on one factor: maintaining three goalies isn’t an choice. I received into an enormous argument with a bunch of oldsters on X this week once I mentioned the three-goalie carousel was dumb. Nicely, it’s. Goalies have to play repeatedly.
And it turns all the things right into a cleaning soap opera. Each sport, it’s a drama. Who performs? Who will they ship down? That’s precisely what occurred on Monday, when Dobes was between the pipes for the group’s 6-3 victory over the Vancouver Canucks. After the sport,
a journalist requested Dobes about the potential of him being despatched right down to Laval
and Dobes mentioned he wouldn’t perceive it if that occurred. A couple of minutes later, when Martin St. Louis was requested in regards to the remark, he received a bit huffy in his post-game information convention, grumbling that it was a nasty query to ask Dobes proper after a sport.
(On a aspect notice, this isn’t kindergarten, Marty. Dobes is an expert athlete who ought to have the ability to subject a tricky query. And Canadiens administration doesn’t get to resolve which questions are requested, though they, after all, type of suppose that’s the way in which issues ought to work.)
This is a perfect state of affairs for the group. Montembeault and Fowler look excellent and hopefully they will hold that going for the a lot harder second half of the season. The Jap Convention is large open, so that is no time to get stalled by poor goaltending.
bk****@*******ia.com
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