With a chance to clinch a playoff spot on the line, the Montreal Canadiens took a short trip to the nation’s capital on Friday night. The Ottawa Senators had already clinched their spot, so they didn’t have much to play for other than ensuring the Habs couldn’t pass them for the first wild card position. Still, they were the ones who came out looking like it was a clinching game, and the Habs’ poor start ended up being too much for them to overcome in the end.
After watching how that game went down, I can’t help but wonder if the team would have been better off dressing Arber Xhekaj.
This picture I took of my cat earlier is how I imagine Arber Xhekaj is watching this game from the press box pic.twitter.com/h2Jdq5vBmX
— Matt Drake (@DrakeMT) April 12, 2025
Cat jokes aside, this is the kind of game that Xhekaj was built for, and they left him in the press box. Ottawa came out of the gate looking to play right on the edge, and it seemed to exacerbate the issues that the Habs have had with their starts lately. They looked like deer in the headlights against an extremely aggressive Sens lineup. They found a way to get some goals to keep it respectable, but there was no recovery from their poor first period this time.
Dressing Xhekaj could have provided the ancillary benefit of giving some rest to someone like David Savard, who seems like he truly needs it, and with another game coming up tonight. If you’re walking into a bar room brawl, it seems silly to leave your heaviest hitter at the door when you’ve got some others who you know aren’t really up for it.
It is somewhat understandable, at least. The team was on a six-game winning streak, and the old adage of not trying to fix things that ain’t broke is tough to ignore. I don’t think this ranks very high on mistakes we’ve seen from different iterations of coaching staffs over the last decade, but I do think it was a mistake.
It isn’t the end of the world – the Habs will still have multiple chances to officially book their ticket to the playoffs, including tonight’s game in Toronto. Still, it felt like a missed opportunity in Ottawa.
There is no guarantee that Xhekaj would have turned the tide, but boy would it have been fun to see him try knowing how things turned out without him.
Click the play button below to listen to your full Bottom Six Minutes, also available wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back tonight, when the Habs will finish up this final back-to-back of the season on the road against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
