Stu Cowan: Hard to imagine this Canadiens team winning a playoff series

The Canadiens are going to the playoffs.

The Canadiens lost 4-3 in overtime to the Edmonton Oilers Monday night at the Bell Centre, but the single point they earned was enough to clinch a playoff spot in the all-Canadian North Division. The Canadiens will wrap up their regular season Wednesday when they play the Oilers again at the Bell Centre (5 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

This condensed, 56-game season because of COVID-19 has been unlike any other in NHL history with the Canadiens playing their final 25 games over 44 days.

“It’s a lot of hockey, there’s no question about it,” the Canadiens’ Josh Anderson said after Monday’s morning skate in Brossard. “But you got to create your own energy sometimes. This year, without the fans, it’s hard to get that adrenalin going and everything like that. But you got to find ways to win. That’s why we’re in this league. We just got to go out there and compete and find energy off each other and I think that we’ll be fine.”

The first goal for the Canadiens at the start of this season was simply to make the playoffs. But the team — and Canadiens fans — had bigger goals than that, especially after getting off to a 7-1-2 start. The Canadiens have gone 17-20-8 after the first 10 games and they haven’t been able to win more than three games in a row at any point.

“I think we just had some tough stretches as a team,” the Canadiens’ Paul Byron said Monday morning. “Facing adversity, sticking together, coming through together as a team, I think it’s found a way to bond our team, make us close. It certainly pushed a playoff-like atmosphere on our team. Going late into the season every game’s so meaningful. We know the teams that are behind us are chasing us and we’re still trying to chase Winnipeg ahead of us (for third place in the North Division). I think it’s good for the mindset, it’s good for the team to really get that attitude going forward.”

Byron returned to the lineup Monday night after missing the previous nine games with a lower-body injury and scored a goal.

“There’s nothing really like this season, there’s no training in the world you can do to prepare for what we’ve faced this year and we’ll probably never have a challenge like this again,” Byron said. “But I think it’s made our team stronger, fighting through adversity and getting through it as a team is something that’s big for our team. I love the guys in our room, I think we have a great group and we’re certainly capable of accomplishing something special, I think.”

Carey Price (concussion), Shea Weber (upper body), Brendan Gallagher (fractured thumb) and Phillip Danault (concussion) remain on the injured list, but head coach Dominique Ducharme said they all should be ready to play when the playoffs start next week. Ducharme added there is no timeline for when Jonathan Drouin — who left the team indefinitely last month for personal reasons — might return.

The Canadiens, overall, have been a mediocre team this season. Heading into Monday’s game they ranked 17th in the NHL in offence (scoring an average of 2.81 goals per game), 17th in defence (allowing an average of 2.91 goals per game), 18th on the power play (19.6 per cent) and 17th in penalty-killing (79.2 per cent). They did rank sixth in shots on goal — with an average of 31.3 per game — but have too many forwards who struggle to score.

Tyler Toffoli (28), Anderson (17) and Gallagher (14) have scored 38 per cent of the Canadiens’ goals this season. Anderson has gone 11 games without a goal and Gallagher hasn’t played since April 5.

The Canadiens haven’t won a first-round playoff series since 2015 and there’s almost no reason to believe that will change this year.

However, as Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin likes to say, anything can happen in the playoffs. A perfect example of that came two years ago when the Columbus Blue Jackets swept the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round. The Lightning had by far the best record in the NHL during the regular season that year (62-16-4), finishing 30 points ahead of the Blue Jackets (47-31-4), who finished two points ahead of the Canadiens for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

Anderson was part of that Blue Jackets team.

“I think we had a game plan right from the start,” Anderson recalled. “We knew who we were facing, the No. 1 team in the league who had a bunch of skill. We had certain guys with different roles. If I wasn’t producing, I was going out there and playing as physical as I can and try to make their skilled guys not have fun. I just tried to get in on their top D-men like (Victor) Hedman. We just had a game plan. Everybody bought into the system and everyone did a great job in their roles and that’s why we had success in that series.”

That might give the Canadiens — and their frustrated fans — some hope heading into the playoffs.

Then again, the Blue Jackets lost to the Boston Bruins in the second round two years ago.

scowan@postmedia.com

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