Habs Keep Looking Forward

   Walking into General Manager Darren Sawyer's office there are rosters and depth charts pinned to the wall, papers scattered around the desk and a stack of DVD's in the corner by the television. Sawyer is on the phone with one of the teams OHL scouts, “think he'll be there in the fourth?” Sawyer ask's with a chuckle, “yea didn't think so.”, he says in reference to the teams lone draft pick this season being in the fourth round. He hangs up the phone, takes a deep breath and says “well we got close, I though we had a shot”.

In the end the Montreal Canadiens missed the playoff for the second straight season, missing the playoffs by five points. However this season, as apposed to the last, the Habs were in the running right until the last weekend. Some would think its not a surprise that Montreal missed the playoffs again, in fact most pre-season predictions had this more in the running for the first overall pick then a playoff spot. He recalls a conversation early in the season with another GM, while discussing a trade the fellow General Manager told Sawyer he thought that the Canadiens would be good in a year or two but no way would they make the playoffs this year. However Sawyer had the playoffs as one of the teams goals this season. “We wanted to see this team move forward this year. Our top goal was to not be in the bottom 10 teams this season. We had traded our first round pick and there was no way wanted to watch someone draft a top prospect with our pick. The second thing we wanted to see was the team finish with a record above .500. We did that. The last goal was to make the playoffs. We fell just short of that one”. Sawyer credits the coaching staff with getting all they could out of each player this year but the team just didn't have enough horses to run with the better teams. They lost a lot of games because of players out due to exhaustion.

So will next year be the year the Canadiens make the post season or will it be a third straight disappointment? On the surface it would be easy to see that the teams overall defence needs to improve if they want to play more then 82 games. They gave up 234 goals this season, seventh most in the league. Although goaltending is a weak point for the franchise as a whole, starter Niklas Backstrom would be considered the problem. However, the lack of a depth behind him is a concern. There is expected to be some changes made to the blueline this offseason. Prospects Brian Dumoulin and Griffin Reinhart are a year or two away from being in Montreal and the team will have to wait and see how young players like Michael Stone, Dylan Olsen, Tyler Cuma Nick Crawford and Taylor Doherty develop over the summer. A pleasant surprise has been the play of Bobby Sanguinetti. An RFA at the end of the season he seems to have done enough to earn an extension and might be someone that can be a sixth or seventh defencemen. One or more of those players could make the jump to the NHL next year. As for the current crop of guys Hamonic, Butler and Summers seem to be safe, but in reality that would leave the two, three and four spots open. There is talk that Keith Ballard will be made available for trade in the offseason or released, but either way he's probably played his last game as a Canadien.

The forward group has been better then expected. With no real scoring threat other then Ryan O'Reilly the team managed 224 goals about middle of the pack in the league. Rookie Carl Hagelin is going to be a very good winger in the league as he develops and proved to be a great addition. The issue after that becomes who will fill in the other spots in the top six. The team will probably wait and see how a player like Andrew Cogliano develops and chances are you'll see rookie Alex Galchenyuk get a shot as well. However, none of those players are expected to be game breakers next season. The team may need to look at the free agent route or trade to fill out a legitimate first line. Kyle Clifford, Mattias Tedenby, Casey Cizikas and Jordan Schroeder could make a push to play in the NHL next season, but the team will not rush then into a spot. One forward not expected to be back next season with Montreal is Chad LaRose. If all that looks a bleak for next year, the future of the organization looks good with Ryan Strome, Christian Thomas, Calle Jarnkrok and Louis Leblanc expected up with the big league team on a regular basis in a couple season's.

It will be interesting to see what the goals for next season will be and more importantly if the Canadiens will be able to reach the one that got away this season.