Habs Daily: Playoff Team Lessons, Questions Heading Into Draft

Here are the Montreal Canadiens news, highlights, and stories you may have missed on Wednesday.

Montreal Canadiens News

• The Montreal Canadiens expect to take a big step forward this summer. Given the salary cap situation and their tradeable assets, the summer of 2024 is building up to be one of the most crucial stages of the rebuild. Everyone knows the team needs more stars, but they also have to improve their underlying numbers by leaps and bounds if they’re to compete with some of the best teams in the NHL. There’s a strong correlation between maintaining strong possession numbers in the regular season and success in the postseason.  [Lessons The Montreal Canadiens Can Learn From Playoff Teams]

• If the Montreal Canadiens are indeed aiming to be in the playoff mix for next season, they have quite the summer ahead of them. It’s important not to repeat the mistakes of divisional rivals like the Ottawa Senators, who jumped the gun at the first glance of success and sacrificed prime assets only to fail to make the playoffs for the last seven successive seasons. If the goal is to improve, here are the biggest areas of concern heading into the NHL draft in June 2024. [Biggest Questions for Canadiens Headed Into 2024 NHL Draft]

• Owen Beck is the lone Habs prospect still participating in the OHL playoffs. The cerebral centre scored his fourth goal of the playoffs on Tuesday night, pushing his playoff production to four goals and nine assists in 15 games.

That's a big goal from a big player!@CanadiensMTL prospect, Owen Beck gets one back for the @SpiritHockey!#OHLPlayoffs | #LDNvsSAG | #GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/MOrUeyvwwT

— Ontario Hockey League (@OHLHockey) May 2, 2024

• Fellow prospect Jacob Fowler is not as close as Beck when it comes to being ready for professional hockey, but he still looks forward to the day he can don the Bleu-Blanc-Rouge.

Jacob Fowler on playing for the Habs one day.

👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/zjDOPm4s3U

— /r/Habs (@HabsOnReddit) May 1, 2024

National Hockey Now Network

• From Pittsburgh Hockey Now’s partner WPXI Channel 11 and their reporter, Jenna Harner, the Pittsburgh Penguins are going to cut personnel on the business operations side of the business. The report does not reference any hockey operations staff changes. WPXI has learned the Pittsburgh Penguins have made more than a dozen cuts to their business operations staff on Wednesday, including letting go of multiple high-level executives. [Pittsburgh Penguins]
• Just 10 days prior to Tuesday’s Game 5, Nashville Predators defenseman Alex Carrier was the scapegoat for the team’s loss to the Vancouver Canucks in Game 1 of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That night, Carrier let a Connor Garland pass go through his legs right to a wide-open Dakota Joshua, who collected the puck and fired a point-blank shot past Juuse Saros for the go-ahead goal. His blunder cost the Predators a game they probably should have won. But Carrier seemingly redeemed himself on Tuesday, scoring the game-winner in Game 5 as the Predators staved off elimination and sent the series back to Nashville for Game 6 on Friday. [Nashville Predators]

• You never want to lose anyone to injury, but the Colorado Avalanche were able to overcome a few and make it past round one on Tuesday night. Could they get some of the calvary in round two? It sounds possible. Jonathan Drouin, who has been around the team and has been walking with a very noticeable limp, told the French media that he suffered a deep skate cut to his lower thigh and thinks he could return near the end of the second round or start of the third round. [Colorado Avalanche]