I think we can officially stop calling this a rebuild.
Fifteen games into this season the Canadiens — still the youngest team in the NHL — have a 10-3-2 record after beating the Utah Mammoth 6-2 Saturday night at the Bell Centre and are in first place in the Atlantic Division. They are also one point behind the Colorado Avalanche, who lead the overall NHL standings with a 9-1-5 record.
After 15 games last season — when the Canadiens were in Year 3 of their rebuilding process — they had a 4-9-2 record, had lost six straight games and were tied with the San Jose Sharks for last place in the overall NHL standings.
It has been a remarkable turnaround, including the Canadiens making the playoffs last season for the first time in four years. They went 7-1-2 in their last 10 games last season to make the playoffs, meaning the Canadiens are now 17-4-4 in their last 25 regular-season games.
Management has built a very good team in a short amount of time.
Cole Caufield scored twice Saturday night, while Oliver Kapanen, Alex Newhook, Nick Suzuki and Kirby Dach added singles. Goalie Samuel Montembeault made 25 saves for the victory.
“You always learn from yesterday,” head coach Martin St. Louis said after the game when I asked how he would explain the turnaround over the last year. “So for me, we were struggling … it’s not fun to struggle. But sometimes that’s what you need to get to a certain place. And with the struggle you actually have answers if you’re looking carefully and you’re taking your time with it and we found some answers and we just went to work and we just stacked the days. That’s all we’ve been doing.”
Now, St. Louis needs to start managing success.
“I feel being process driven, the winning becomes a side effect and I feel that’s where we are,” the coach said. “Am I happy? Of course, I’m happy. The guys are working really hard to get where we are today. But that’s today. We got to earn it every day. That’s what we plan on doing.”
Nobody was happier after the game than Dach, who scored on a breakaway in the final minute, giving him five goals in the 12 games he has played this season after recovering from his second knee surgery in two years. Last season, it took Dach 37 games to score five goals.
“I’m definitely feeling really good,” he said. “It’s just nice to play hockey again and to be around the team and be around the guys and just enjoy the game.”
Dach is a big reason the Canadiens are off to such a good start, but it’s much more than that.
“I don’t think we every really thought about it more as a rebuild in here,” Dach said. “I think we were learning how to play the game. We were learning the rules of the game, we were learning how to win. We took a lot of hard losses on the chin and had to grow from that and we developed a brotherhood and I think we’re pretty tight as a team and we expect and understand what we need from each other each and every night. For at least as long as I’ve been here, for the four years, I think we’re at that point where we’re starting to flip it and it’s a pretty good feeling.”
Caufield, with 12 goals in 15 games, is another big reason why the Canadiens are where they are now. He’s tied with the Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon for the league lead in goals and is on pace to finish the season with 66. Kapanen is leading all NHL rookies with six goals, putting him on pace to finish the season with 33. No Canadiens rookie has hit the 30-goal mark since Kjell Dahlin scored 32 in 1985-86. Ivan Demidov, who assisted on Kapanen’s goal, leads all NHL rookies in points with 4-9-13 totals.
How does Caufield explain the Canadiens’ turnaround from this point last year?
“I’d say everybody’s on the same page with the coaching staff and we’ve had a couple of years where it feels a lot more comfortable and you’re not really thinking about the systems,” he said. “You’re kind of just playing it and it’s just engrained in ourselves now. I think our collective game as a team has definitely taken a big step. We’ve definitely got some more depth and I think our D-core, up and down, has been huge for us in the O-zone and closing down plays in the neutral zone. I think we’re spending a lot less time in the D-zone and that definitely helps. Definitely a full 180 from last year and we’re just going to try and keep that going.”
I asked Caufield if he knew who the last Canadiens player was to lead the NHL in goals at the end of a season.
“No,” he said with a shrug.
When told it was Guy Lafleur (who scored 60 goals in 1977-78), Caufield smiled and chuckled, saying: “It’s been a minute.”
In some ways it now feels like the Canadiens’ rebuild was only a minute.
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