Montreal Canadiens
Montreal Canadiens Place Goaltender On NHL Waivers
The Montreal Canadiens have announced they have put goaltender Cayden Primeau on waivers.
It’s an expected move following the decision to call-up Jakub Dobes from the team’s AHL affiliate, the Laval Rocket.
Primeau was the victim of incredibly poor planning from the former Canadiens management team, particularly Marc Bergevin, who promised the goaltender he’d become Carey Price’s backup within a season if he left the NCAA early.
This led to Primeau leaving Northeastern (NCAA) after just two years, and spending time with various Laval Rocket teams that always had three (or more) goaltenders in the mix.
Of course, we can’t blame the Habs for the lack of saves in some games, and there’s no doubt Primeau has played poorly, especially in the NHL. But we’d be delving into intellectual dishonesty if we ignored the development plan that was put in place for Primeau, who is in the last year of a three-year contract with the Canadiens.
MUST READ: Canadiens Development Of Cayden Primeau A Perfect Example Of How To Mishandle Goalies
At the very least, the AHL assignment should allow Primeau to play enough games to give him a fighting chance to find his rhythm.
In the meantime, Jakub Dobes will serve as Montreal’s backup, providing crucial relief for their usual starter, Samuel Montembeault. There’s no doubt Montembeault needs a lighter workload, especially as the Habs tend to have their fair share of defensive issues, which makes every start a little more tiring.
Dobes is a fierce competitor that spent two years with Ohio State in the NCAA before joining the Rocket last season. His first year in the AHL led to slightly worse numbers than what we saw from Primeau in the same situation, but Dobes did manage to improve his numbers in his sophomore season, which is very encouraging.
It also helps that the Rocket are playing a much more reliable brand of hockey than they did last year.
Regardless, it appears that Primeau’s time with the Montreal Canadiens is coming to an end, and though it didn’t work out, we do hope the 25-year-old goaltender is given a legitimate chance in another organization, either via a waiver claim (which is not likely given his stats), or a new deal with a different team once his contract expires with the Habs.
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Blaming it on Bergevin is ridiculous
my favorite pastime..
I did not know that. Poor guy got shafted.
I can see Philly taking a chance on him.
You either HAVE IT …or you don’t…This young guy just doesn’t have the NATURAL SKILLS that are needed to compete at the NHL level ..!! His college career was Ok..because he could match skills there …HOWEVER ..the NHL LEVEL …is a whole different ball game ..!! I wish him well ..but I suspect his pro career will be at the AHL GRADING from here on out ..!!
Primeau really looked like he had found his game last year. Especially after Allen got traded. I actually thought that, long term, he might surpass Montembeault. It’s OK to be wrong, nobody is paying me to assess players after all. I liked Dobeš in his first game, and I liked his play for the Rocket after a terrible beginning to his AHL tenure. Good to see him rewarded for all his hard work.
I’m not sure we’ll see Primeau back on the big team this year, not unless Dobeš has some bad games and Primeau has cleaned up his. I’m not quite ready to say he is done as a Canadien, but it may be so.
Hi Marc
You asked for feedback on topics of interest so I thought I’d send you a few in an older post as I suspect you get alerts when new posts arrive and I wanted it to be private so this was the best I could do.
1. Rating the organization season to date up to the new year- players, coaches GM. I’m aware that this is something you’ve done but maybe make it so us fans can easily score them on a scale of 1-10 and add a few words (put a word limit as some posters ramble, and I’m looking at me, lol)
2. I enjoy your pieces about prospects. Engstrom is a wildcard, I’m not sure what his strengths and weaknesses are and how he’d fit on our blue line. Clearly behind DR and LM on the blue line prospects
3. A review or redo of entry drafts. I’m amused when hockey people use Best Player Available and all organizations seem to use that phrase. Go back to any year and if the draft was redone it would look radically different than the actual draft despite the intent of teams to take the best player available. It’s the standard justification when teams screw it up- we took the best player available. They don’t know, it’s a very difficult process to forecast. Evenn2022, I’d say we did better in round 2 than1and the best player of the draft is Hutson at this stage with Slaf second. Beck will eventually show as a top 15 I suspect. He’s nhl ready. You can reference bleacher report or hockey writers etc redraft of any year to prove that nobody is highly accurate. You can use final prospect ranking lists to further verify how far off the best are at predicting. Intent is not to shame anyone but establish the truth and reality of the difficulties of drafting. This could easily morph into a measuring tool.
4. A new concept piece where you project the Habs as the baseline and who they will compete with on the long term. Example sharks will have Celebrini , Will Smith Zetterlund Sam Dickinson, Eklund, Bystedt, and Quentin Musty as the young core and top pipeline guys. I don’t know how highly thought of their second rounders are but even keeping it to first rounders and current under 25 yr olds will help Habs fans identify which other teams will ascend with us to become tge next generation of cup contenders. Jersey, Chicago, Anaheim, Columbus, Utah are top contenders with Sabres, flyers, sens etc as second tier. It’s something I do, but not sure if others have similar interest.
5. Models we strive to. What are the gold standards we want to measure against? Which teams have tge best bottom 6 and what it gets them. Islanders, for example , had the best fourth line for years- tgey hit everything they moved, outscored their match ups and were defensively sound and could contribute to the pk. It helped overcome a weak offense and kept them as a playoff bubble team that competed well with more takented rosters.
Who has the best second line. Who has the best 200’ team, best first line, best defensive blue line best offensive blue line and the impact or competitive edge it provides. And then measure us against that standard. It’s not light and fluffy so it may not have widespread appeal and it’s a lot of work. Just an idea.
All the best in 2025.
Dana