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The final game before the Olympics break for the Montreal Canadiens was in Winnipeg, 21 days before the next contest, so the Canadiens wanted to finish on a high.
The Jets are at the bottom of the standings, but playing better recently. After a weak first 10 minutes, the Canadiens rolled to a 5-1 win.
Wilde Horses
It’s truly hard to believe that Lane Hutson did not make the USA Olympic team. The statistics in his favour could not be more convincing. When Hutson took a pass from Josh Anderson, streaked toward the goal and roofed it from inside three feet, it was his 10th goal of the season.
Goals are far from his specialty, but he’s top 15 in the league in that category. Assists are where he shines, and in that discipline, Hutson is second behind only Quinn Hughes with 48 on the season.
In points, Hutson is at a sparkling 58 points in 57 games. He’s blowing away his rookie season of 66 points. Hutson is third in the league among defenders in points.
The counterargument to his inclusion for the Olympics is that there are two sides to the ice, and it’s imperative that a defender can also take care around his own goalie.
Hutson is a plus-21 on the season. He is 12th in the entire league. It’s easy to doubt that the man who made the choices Bill Guerin is not an analytics lover, but if he were, Hutson is 19th in the NHL in Corsi. There simply is not a single metric where Hutson is not elite. That is, except his height where he is listed as five-feet-nine-inches tall.
If Hutson could practice being taller, he would be seven feet by the morning.
The Canadiens got off to a horrible start. They were dominated by the Jets, but Samuel Montembeault was strong in the first period. Impressive from Montembeault, considering he hadn’t played in 11 days.
If not for Montembeault being strong early, it could have been a vastly different night. Montembeault stopped 36 of 37 on the night.
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His excellence allowed the Canadiens to find their game eventually. Oliver Kapanen had a goal-scorer’s touch for his 18th of the year. If Kapanen would have panicked, he would have simply whacked it in the goalie’s pads. However, he calmly curled the puck away from Connor Hellebuyck, backed out of the melee, and then flipped it upstairs for what looked like an easy marker, but wasn’t.
The Phillip Danault, Josh Anderson and Brendan Gallagher line had a strong contest. Anderson set up Hutson, and he scored himself on a deflection for his 12th of the year.
Gallagher had two helpers early, and then he wrapped up the game midway through the third with a tap in tally on a gorgeous pass from Kirby Dach.
Dach certainly has his patterns. Every time it starts to feel like he is done, he rises up, and then when he looks like he could find stardom after all, he breaks something. There’s an outstanding player in there somewhere, if he could only stay healthy enough to keep his momentum going.
Wilde Goats
For the first time this season, the Canadiens are 15 games over NHL .500. They have played 57 times and have lost in regulation only 17 games. That’s a lot of entertainment for the long-suffering best fans in hockey.
Before last season, oddsmakers in Las Vegas set the Canadiens over/under for 75 points. They finished with 91. This season, the oddsmakers set the line at 91 points. They are on pace for 104 points. Montreal is eighth in the entire league.
No goats for this level of excellence heading into the break.
Wilde Cards
As expected, the trading deadline in the NHL passed with no trades for the Canadiens. The Olympics trade embargo will be in effect until Feb. 22.
There was only one trade on the final day. Rumour was the New York Rangers were asking the San Jose Sharks for Will Smith, or the Washington Capitals for Ryan Leonard in order to release Artemi Panarin.
What the Rangers got was considerably less, quite naturally. Asking for one of the great young players in the league in return for a 34-year-old making over $11 million is laughably inept. The Rangers are in for a long rebuild, if GM Chris Drury thought that was gonna fly.
The Rangers acquired Liam Greentree instead. He is a mid-level prospect who is in his fourth season at the Windsor Spitfires.
The Canadiens were not in the running for Panarin. An aging player, on the clock, isn’t what a club early in their rebuild needs, unless that player is Sidney Crosby.
The only Montreal rumour taking flight, and it makes sense as logical, is Patrik Laine could be on the move with the Canadiens keeping salary to facilitate the trade. Laine has been wearing a contact jersey at practice for the last two weeks. He is ready to play as soon as the Canadiens want him to.
Apparently, they don’t want him to.
The Canadiens rebuild has gone so well they didn’t envision that they would already want some salary cap space to add more talent to a winning hockey team.
One factor that isn’t being considered is that Laine was not healthy for his entire time in Montreal, playing on a bad knee that he hurt at his first training camp. Laine is now healthy, and he does look faster as he continues to skate with the club. However, now Laine can’t win a chance to prove himself that, if healthy, he can be better.
It doesn’t seem illogical to give Laine another look to see if he can provide more. There’s no downside to playing him, considering the Canadiens are attempting to unload him with no return, and paying half of his salary.
The worst that can happen is he plays poorly. That’s great news for the club that picks him up trying to lose more games for a higher draft pick.
To be continued. But not until after the Olympics when trades will be allowed until March 6.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.
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