Wednesday Habs Headlines: Can this season be a success without the playoffs?

Montreal Canadiens news and notes

• The Gazette asks its readers: Can this season be called a success if the Habs don’t make the playoffs? [Montreal Gazette]
• Stu Cowan agrees with Marc Bergevin in saying that the season is already a success. [Montreal Gazette]
• The Habs are on the right path, says Alain Sanscartier. [RDS]
• Jose Theodore considers the Habs’ performance this season to be a very pleasant surprise. [Journal de Montreal]
• Regardless, this is no time for the Habs to give up. [Journal de Montreal]
• Marc Bergevin can only watch as the team that he assembled fights for the wild-card. [TSN]
• Nate Thompson has embraced playing in Montreal. [Montreal Gazette]
• The Canadiens will not be signing Ryan Poehling’s college teammate Jimmy Schuldt.

Wishing we were in the West

• Justin Williams has played a major role in dragging a “bunch of jerks” towards the playoffs. [Ottawa Citizen]
• Just who are these jerks anyway? [The Athletic]
• How the Columbus Blue Jackets caught fire before running into a pack of bears from Beantown. [Columbus Blue Jackets]
• Sergei Bobrovsky is back to his Vezina-calibre self, and not a moment too soon. [TSN]

Around the league and elsewhere

• After notching only four goals in his last 28 games, Elias Pettersson has vowed to work on his conditioning in the offseason. [TSN]
• After another disappointing season, what’s next for the Minnesota Wild? [ProHockeyTalk]
• The team managed to have a little fun at Joel Eriksson Ek’s expense though.

• A Los Angeles-based youth hockey program has suspended fifteen players and three coaches after they were filmed making anti-semitic remarks. [The Athletic]
• Washington Capitals defenceman Michal Kempny is done for the year with a hamstring tear. [ProHockeyTalk]
• Looking back on how much Bob Cole has contributed to hockey during his career. [The Athletic]
• Robin Lehner helped finish one amazing 7-year-old fan’s checklist. [ProHockeyTalk]
• Is this the year a “weird-ass” team wins the Stanley Cup? [The Athletic]
• Drew Doughty just wants this season over with. [Sportsnet]

The latest on North American professional women’s hockey

• With the CWHL imminently folding, the NWHL has announced their intention to expand to Toronto and Montreal. [ESPN | Sportsnet | Globe and Mail]

• The Canadiens have issued a statement in the wake of the folding of the CWHL. [Montreal Canadiens]
• Many believe that the NHL is key to the future of professional women’s hockey. [31 Thoughts]