The Montreal Canadiens have won a fair amount of games in the last two years solely on the backs of their goaltenders. This has been less pronounced this season, but not entirely absent, and they received a healthy dose of their own medicine on Saturday night against the Calgary Flames. The Habs dominated from pillar to post, and saw a terrific Dustin Wolf performance rob them of any chance they had of winning.
Luckily, it just may be a good thing for them to experience the other side of goaltender robbery.
When Joshua Roy executed this beautiful spin-o-rama, turning a seemingly nothing play into a scoring chance, I was sure he had a goal on his stick. But Wolf just stared him down and got his blocker on it anyways. This was one of many saves on the night, and it took perfect shots with either lateral movement, or a lot of net-front traffic to actually score on him. Cole Caufield managed to find a slump buster, and David Savard found one through traffic, but there was no beating Wolf with anything else on the night.
And perhaps it’s a good thing for the Habs to experience that feeling themselves. They’ve seen their share of games where they’re run over at even-strength, but one of their goalies rob the opposition constantly en route to an unexpected win. Most of the teams they’ve done that to have gone on to significantly better records this year, precisely because they’re capable of dominating even-strength play with regularity. If they play the way they did against Calgary with regularity, the Habs could reasonably expect to have a much better record of their own. Showing that they’re capable of that kind of performance is worth more than two points in the standings.
Frankly, Wolf stealing the two points is a hidden benefit for Montreal. With the Senators and Coyotes both winning their games on Saturday, the Habs could find themselves in top-five draft lottery contention very soon. Tank wise, it was a pretty big night, and the fact that they managed to play mostly excellent hockey while losing just makes it look better in retrospect.
They should strive to replicate precisely their game against Calgary. It was excellent. But for the remainder of this season, it would actually be better for them to get “goalied” more often.
Click the play button below to listen to your full Bottom Six Minutes, also available wherever you typically get your podcasts. We have a couple of days off now, but will return when the Canadiens continue their road trip this Tuesday against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers.
