The NHL just gifted Montreal a golden opportunity

The NHL just gifted Montreal a golden opportunity as the schedule has officially been released for the 26-27 season, and while you've probably seen that, there are specific aspects that make this year even better than we ever anticipated for Montreal winning. We also got to talk about the goalie situation, and not only Yevgeny Volokhin out of Russia, he's got some great praise on a recent prospect ranking, but also the current situation with Jakob Domesh, Jacob Fowler, and how Montreal could very well be heading into this season with a very unexpected trio. Honestly, we thought this would be done by now, but it is not, and we're going to dive into some reasons why, what Habs analyst even thinks could be going on, a whole lot of that, and more coming up on this episode of Habs Digest. Very excited for all this. The goalie talk is some of our favorite. Jesse, I know you're a goalie guy. I'm a pretty big goalie guy. We got the Price jersey, usually Patrick Waugh behind as well. That's over there in the closet, so let's just keep going. Let's ride that hype train. Let's actually start with Yevgeny Volokhin. As I mentioned the other day, Marc Dumont is ranking the top Habs prospects. A lot of fans voted on this stuff, so it's fantastic. It's linked down below. I really recommend you go check it out in the entire series as it comes out, but Yevgeny Volokhin, Jesse, comes in at number 19, and I just want to start by saying, and you probably agree, I imagine, the fact that this guy with his numbers is at number 19 in our system is pretty crazy. I'll dive into something that Marc Dumont said in just a minute about how good he is, but I just love talking about this guy because I do feel like he's a little underrated. And it's definitely encouraging because we've seen him just get better and better as he continues to progress here, actually elevating his save percentage to 946, going from the MHL to the VHL. Now the test is really going to be at the KHL. He did have a little bit of a bounce back. He just needs a bigger sample size here going, Josh, but we know we got are we getting Voli the goalie coming over here soon enough? It's going to be really interesting to keep an eye on because we know like Jakob Dobesh and obviously like Jacob Fowler, they want to hold down this Montreal Canadiens crease just for years to come. But like, I know we're going to get into this in a minute, but you'd have to think, Josh, like at some point, something's got to give. Even here between Dobesh and Fowler, in my opinion, Dobesh, he's thrown himself in the conversation. This is a number one quality guy at the NHL. If he's already shown this at 25, what can this young guy become? As he's getting into his prime, very important to note here. So again, with one of those potential goalies leaving, who would it potentially be? We don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We've got to enjoy having Fowler and Dobesh right now. One of the best, youngest duos in the entire NHL. Could that potentially create an opportunity for Volokhin to come in? Times up pretty nicely, Josh, because his KHL contract is finishing in 2028. And we see that his countryman Bogdan Khmutkov just recently signed his ELC. He's playing over the KHL. And right now, everything that Evgeny Volokhin's doing, he's following just in the exact same pathways. This is a guy that is probably going to have to cut his teeth a little bit in the NHL and the AHL. But the way he's going, he could very well get an opportunity with the big boys. And what I love about this is you mentioned the progression, right? Which is what I love. And again, yeah, KHL is it's weird, right? Like bad numbers doesn't necessarily mean he's been playing bad because that Sochi team a couple of years ago was really not good. But I love this. Yeah, I love this line. If he were producing these numbers in North America, we'd be discussing them as one of our most important prospects in the system. His path to the NHL remains covered with fog of war, but we'd be foolish to ignore Volokhin's potential moving forward. And I think it's very well put here because while yes, the relative strength of the MHL, VHL and KHL is not what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. It still means something. Well, the KHL is the top league over there. The VHL is their equivalent of the AHL. And if someone was even putting up a 920 say percentage at the age of 21 in the AHL, you'd be like, Hey, that's pretty good. Jacob Fowler, anyone? So we're looking here at a guy that is worth keeping an eye on. Is he guaranteed to be a world leader? Maybe not, but like it's hard to ignore these numbers, right? We hear all the praises of Zhirovsky coming over. I mean, I know he's doing it in Russia. If he was doing it here, it'd be better. Same thing with Demi, maybe the same with Volokhin. Um, but I want to also talk about what you just mentioned, right? With Fowler and with Dobesh and also with Samuel Montembeau, because there was a great article from the Gazette for Herb Zyrkowski talking about how it's looking more and more like we could actually start the season with a three goalie rotation, which is odd. It's not something I thought we'd actually be thinking about. Now there's a lot of time before the season starts, but even guys like Frankie Corrado are a bit surprised. This is an excerpt from the article saying, I was a bit surprised that Monty's still there given the need for teams to see if there's an improvement at the goaltending position. There were a lot of teams looking for goalies for sure. We thought Edmonton would be one of the candidates. He said, I don't know why that didn't come to be. Our team's being picky or the phone never rang. Montreal didn't like an offer. It's hard to say. Now I will say Kent Hughes obviously is going to want to get as much value as he can. And there's no debate in my mind that the value on Monty is at an all-time low. So I wonder if part of this is maybe, hey, see what he can do at the start of the season. But Jesse, the longer we go into this off-season, I'm genuinely curious as other teams are filling out their goaltending needs, will we actually end up trading this guy? You're exactly right on that, Josh. Right now, Monty's a little bit of that insurance policy. He's just saying, Kent Hughes is saying to himself, just Samuel Montembeau is worth more to us than a fifth round pick or just whatever we're getting back from that. Just given the fact that we got two young goalies. So not only do we want to see how they play, see if we can kind of raise up his trade value. From there, Josh, I'm shocked if there's not an early season trade. We want to see, okay, October, November, what the boys can do. He's there just to make sure. I think at a certain point, really the camel's back needs to break here because we've just been riding so many three goalies for just so long. We want to move on. When you have certain prospects, especially, I have to say why this is so important, why Montembeau will be traded, just because of how good Dobesh and Fowler is. And really, they're going to get the majority of the play, but we want the focus and we don't want distractions, especially for a young goalie. And sometimes it's having a lot of outside noise. Having, you know, again, a guy with Samuel Montembeau, not extremely old himself and 29 years old, again, it can just put a little bit more pressure than I think is really needed in this situation, given the trust that I think that both Fowler and Dobesh have already earned within the organization and with many fans as well. So it's going to be interesting, really interesting to see how this plays out. But of course, Cahill is always the strategist. He's not going to be able, he's not going to want to trade somebody when their value is at the lowest. Exactly that. And I think there's no actual big time pressure yet to make the move. I mean, Monty seemed to take his new role with a lot of grace like this last year. There were no complaints. Apparently he was amazing in the locker room. So, you know, if he's, if he's okay with it, I'm sure he wants to play and I'm sure that he's voiced that like, yeah, obviously who wouldn't, right? Like he's, he's due a contract very soon, right? Not after this year, but you know, that is the question, but there's no pressure on the roster right away. And as the article goes on, it says, look, Fowler can still go down to Laval without clearing waivers, but that raises issues, right? Would playing games in the minors actually help them versus playing the backup of Montreal? And at this point, I don't think it would. I think being the backup, you're still going to get probably 30 plus games, especially with the new 84 game schedule, which we'll talk about in a minute. Like I think that 30 games in the NHL is going to be worth a lot more than 50 or 60 in the AHL, which probably wouldn't even get that many, right? So anyway, I think right now there just isn't that much pressure to make a move. We have the roster space. We have the cap space. This is Monty's final year. So he's going to want a contract, but I think you're right. I'd be surprised if he wasn't moved to some point soon, just so he can show his talents, try and get an extension somewhere. But let us know your thoughts down below. But as we talk about the schedule, this is, you know, you guys probably saw the release, saw when we play the Leafs in the season opener and we play Carolina in the home opener, right? So these, you know, they're doing that on purpose, right? You play the Leafs to start the season. There's a big time TV matchup. Then you play your Eastern Conference Finals opponent at home. Sure. But there's an interesting wrinkle here, Jesse. And I mean, this is unreal. This comes directly from Mike Blake McCurdy at hockeybiz.com. I'm tired, rested games. Montreal is number one in terms of basically being rested when other teams are tired. We played 14 games while we're rested with the other team being tired. And not only that, not only that, Montreal is tied for fourth for the fewest back-to-backs this year after having some of the most last year with only 10, only Winnipeg, Calgary and Vegas have fewer back-to-backs, but also we play 19 of our 84 games against a team that is on their back-to-back. So on their second half of a back-to-back. So, I mean, I don't want to get ahead of myself because obviously it's never easy. This whole season is a grind, but Montreal did well in their back-to-backs last year. It's part of the reason we finished third and to see the NHL give us, I mean, I'm not used to this, right? I'm not used to getting a bit of an advantage of the schedule, but all I'm going to say is that Montreal better be and honestly will be ready to really take advantage of this, especially with their youth. And 84 games really is just more hockey to love at the end of the day here. So nice to see the Montreal Canadiens catching a break because we know for even a couple years of having one of the more difficult schedules and a big factor in all of this, Josh, is just the fact that the Montreal Canadiens are obviously a big crowd generator and they want them playing on those Saturday nights at opposing buildings. And that's a fact of it on those Saturday nights on those weekends, right? So again, just amazing to see that this is actually going to tangibly have a huge effect on the team. I think it's only right that it bounced back and I think, you know, at a certain point here for the Montreal Canadiens. But speaking of the season, they're going to look to improve on what was a very strong season last year, 48-24-10. Of course, it's going to help without the Olympics going on. It's going to be a little bit less of a hectic schedule. Some young guys there as well. So they're definitely going to be looking to improve. I'm definitely singling on the calendar that first home game against the Carolina Hurricanes. Josh, like, I'm all for getting a little bit more of a rivalry going with the Carolina Hurricanes right now here. I don't think that there's enough of it. We want to get a little bit of that bad blood. We haven't forgotten. We're going to even improve. We're going to be a better team than we were just even from last playoffs. These young guys are just getting older. They're getting stronger. As a result, we also have to circle on the calendar the Heritage Classic. You know, we're going to be doing the live watch along on the channel for that one. That's going to be so much fun. Coming back to Montreal here as it should. So it's just going to be absolutely just the fact that they're being able to participate. That is amazing to see. So Josh, like, this really bodes well. Like, this isn't just nothing here. The fact that the guys are going to be having just a little bit more rest, getting to play against those teams that obviously are a little bit more tired. It's going to matter a lot for this team here going forward. They're getting the breaks. They're getting the respect that they deserve. And you know what? I think the star players, you know, that's just the next chapter to come with this added respect that the Montreal Canadiens are getting. Yeah, like you want to go through adversity, right? But you don't want to hand it to you. And this is not handing it to them. It is an advantage. I mean, especially like when we look at this and we see, I mean, look, I'm not going to give Toronto the, you know, look, still it's kind of, it feels bad when you had 19 and they got five and like Winnipeg got five and Minnesota got seven. It does over the long term. It absolutely will. It's so easy to look at one year or two and say, this is bad. Like you got to look at a 10, 15 year sample size where you see anything and you're right. It will balance out. The only thing that might not balance out is total travel miles where the East coast teams are definitely always going to be at an advantage versus Seattle. Who's always going to come in first, you know, but still, I, I really like this and you want to go through adversity, but you also take this when it's given to you, but you need to be ready and you need to take advantage of it. And I'm sure Montreal is going to be ready to go. Lots of live watch long throughout this year. One more game, by the way, that I do have circled on the calendar when Vancouver visits Montreal, I believe it's in March. I have to go double check that, but it's going to be an emotional night for Brendan Gallagher, his return, but there's going to be a whole lot of great stuff coming this year. And don't you forget, we're here every single day, all season long, all off season long. That's why you're subscribed to us. Thank you for already being subscribed. Thank you for liking this video and thank you for watching every single day. I'm Josh Goss, my co-host, Jesse Poirier. We'll catch you in the next one.