Montreal Season Preview

[Vik (Habs)]

It's been a year of big changes for the Habs. Not often do you see an entire team of players moved out in a single year but that's just the case in Montreal where not a single player from last season's opening lineup will make an appearance in Toronto for the season opener. Here's a look at the two lineups...

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Joe Pavelski          Marc Savard           Ales Hemsky
Brenden Morrow        Mike Fisher           Andrei Kostitsyn
Alexander Frolov      Kyle Okposo           Colten St. Clair
Valtteri Filppula     Thomas Hundertpfund   Rene Bourque

           Luca Sbisa            Matt Niskanen
           Sheldon Souray        Eric Brewer
           Nigel Williams        Nick Boynton

                      Samu Perhonen
                      Magnus Hellberg

Note: I wasn't around for the opener last year so lineup is a bit of a guess.

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Sami Vatanen          Mike Richards         Wayne Simmonds
James Livingston      Brooks Laich          Jared Boll
Heikki Liedes         Reid Boucher          Justin Kirkland
Daniel Winnik         Rasmus Kulmala        Devin Setoguchi

           Ryan Suter            Oskar Lindstedt
           Mattias Backman       Julius Honka
           Egor Malenkikh        Michael Matheson

                      Simeon Varlamov
                      Pascal Leclaire

It's kind of amazing how a team that added Mike Richards and Ryan Suter still manages to look so much worse. Arguably, we should've seen this coming when the team gave $1.5M to Reid Boucher, veteran of 0 EHEC games, in free agency along with deals north of $1M for the likes of Troy Brouwer, Slava Voinov, and Johan Alm, none of whom managed to stick around to see the opener.

In addition, the team has made several trades which don't in any way reflect an attempt at being competitive, most notably sending star winger Ales Hemsky along with rugged forward Justin Kea to Florida in return for some magic beans (which we're told the GM tried to eat until he was eventually convinced they weren't literal beans) and acquiring Jaroslav Halak from Tampa Bay in return for cap space (which the GM thought was room to place hats in).

As a result, the team is clearly forcing young players into bigger roles than they can handle. When asked about it, GM Vik said the youngsters would be sheltered and well taken care of. When asked how Oskar Lindstedt getting top pairing minutes could be considered sheltering him, the very literal GM said that he had ensured that Lindstedt had been able to acquire a home in Montreal and what pairing he was on hadn't factored into it.

Last year, Canadiens fans could at least hope against hope that the team might find a way to win enough games to sneak into the playoffs. This year, we're told Vik has been begging Edmonton Oilers execs for tips on how to win a draft lottery.

How did it all go so wrong?