You’ll have to forgive your Habs fan friends, folks. They’re feeling a little whiplashed today.
One minute, the Canadiens are the greatest thing since sliced pizza. The next minute, they’re awfuller than awful. One day, their goalies can’t stop a beach ball. The next day, they can catch a BB in the dark.
And so on. As the weekend drew to a close and the smoke cleared, your Montreal Canadiens had just taken on Sidney Crosby and the hot Penguins with six rookies in the lineup, failed to hold a three-goal lead at Madison Square Garden but escaped with a point, and shut down the high-flying Edmonton Oilers back at the Bell Centre less than 24 hours later.
The sweetest part of the win over the Oil is that now Joe Veleno (a.k.a. Max Pacioretty’s younger brother) gets to tell his grandkids that he once scored a goal off a sweet pass from Connor McDavid.
Are they up? Are they down? What day is it? They played what Martin St. Louis said was their best game of the season one day after a sloppy mess at Madison Square Garden. “Marty was obviously really pissed,” Veleno said.
Canadiens forward Joe Veleno, centre, celebrates his goal with Mike Matheson, from left, Jake Evans and Josh Anderson during the second period against the Edmonton Oilers in Montreal on Sunday night.
As he should be — but you can’t get pissed at these guys for long. They’re down four key regulars long-term. They’re so young they can get through a road trip sharing one razor. They’re the 2025-26 Canadiens, and God bless ‘em — just thank your lucky stars they are not the Vancouver Canucks.
While the Habs are completing a model rebuild, the Canucks are deep into a de-build with the trade that sent Quinn Hughes to Minnesota.
I spent the entire month of March 2024 with an old friend in Coquitlam, B.C., the gentleman who got me into hockey during the Canadiens’ Miracle Cup run of 1971. We watched every game the Canucks played that month. I kept an eye on Hughes because the Canadiens had drafted a smallish defenceman in Lane Hutson. Was it possible that Hutson could also become a star in a league known for size and brute force?
We saw no reason to doubt that we were watching a Canucks team that was on its way. Vancouver would finish the season with a 50-23-9 record and 109 points, good for first in the Pacific Division and third in the Western Conference. Up front, they had two high-scoring centremen, J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson. Hughes was cruising to a 17-goal, 92-point season and a Norris Trophy.
True, they had let captain and 30-goal scorer Bo Horvat get away in a deal with the New Islanders, but they had parlayed the first-rounder from that trade into an exchange with the Red Wings that brought defenceman Filip Hronek to Vancouver. Surely, it was only a matter of time — right?
Today, following the trade of the unhappy Hughes, the Canucks’ debuild is almost complete. Miller was traded back to the Rangers last season, an admission that the festering cold war between Miller and Pettersson was destroying the team from within. Miller’s departure didn’t help Pettersson’s game — he became the most overpaid black hole in the league, with 15 goals and 45 points last season in exchange for his US$11.6-million cap hit through the 2031-32 season.
The Canucks are the worst team in the NHL, with no end in sight. Yes, you can argue that they didn’t lose the Horvat trade, or the Miller trade, or the Hughes trade — but taken together, Vancouver’s piecemeal, scattergun approach to team-building has been an abject failure, the polar opposite of the Canadiens’ cohesive, comprehensive method for building a contender.
Astonishingly, the Canucks fan base doesn’t appear to be screeching for the scalps of the entire management team. If this catastrophe happened in Montreal, president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and GM Patrik Allvin would be on their way to the airport with their tails on fire.
Be happy for what you have as the holidays approach, O fans of the mighty Habs. If your up-and-down team is driving you nuts, just remember: you could be a Canucks fan.
The passing of boon companions: It’s been a rough December for old pros. In my circle of the sports media world, we lost longtime Gazette editor and reporter Paul “Father” Carbray and legendary TSN reporter Michael Whalen.
Carbray helped ease my re-entry into newspapers after 15 years out of the business. Whelan helped ease every day we were covering either the Canadiens or the Expos — but especially the latter. An urbane, well-read, cosmopolitan generalist and master storyteller, Whelan and his cameraman/sidekick Glen Koshurba could always guide you to the nearest interesting spot for dinner or spin yarns through the longest of rain delays.
Happy trails, Paul and Mike. They don’t make ‘em like you anymore.
Heroes: Jakub Dobes, Juraj Slafkovsky, Lane Hutson, Ivan Demidov, Alexandre Texier, Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki, Naomi Urness, Alice Robinson, Michael Whalen, Paul “Father” Carbray, Bobby Rousseau &&&& last but not least, Jacob Fowler.
Zeros: NFL injuries, Mike Matheson’s sticks, FanDuel, Sherrone Moore, Jim Harbaugh, Dillon Brooks, Wayne Gretzky, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.
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