You know hockey is right around the corner when Crave drops the first couple of episodes of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens, and once again, the show doesn't disappoint.
At midnight, streaming service Crave dropped the first two episodes of the third season of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens, and fans won’t be disappointed with the first two episodes of the docuseries. Unsurprisingly, the first episode focuses on the start of the 2025-26 season and on the Lane Hutson contract, while the second episode covers the rocky road the Montreal Canadiens’ goaltenders traveled last year.
It’s great to see that the series didn’t shy away from what was the main story of the Habs season last year, although it gives the impression that both goaltenders had issues from the start of the year, which wasn’t really the case. There’s no mention of the fact that Jakub Dobes, who played six regular-season games in October, was flawless in that month.
Yes, his performance dipped in November, but that came after the team kept going back to Samuel Montembeault, time and time again, despite his struggles. It would have been shocking for Dobes’ confidence not to be rocked by that, to be fair. That’s my sole criticism of the first two episodes; it feels like a bit of revisionist history, going straight into the "neither goaltender can make a save" narrative.
There are a few interesting quotes in those first two hours, especially when GM Kent Hughes is discussing the Becancour native’s struggles:
It’s not about knowing whether Samuel Montembeault can climb Everest; we know he can. The question is whether he can climb it during an avalanche.
That’s quite an accurate way to put it, as the show mentions, playing goalie for the Canadiens is one of the hardest jobs in professional hockey. It even quotes the great Jacques Plante, who once asked how people would feel if every mistake they made at work was highlighted by a huge flashing red light over their head and 15,000 people screamed at them. It then cuts to Montembeault, who adds that it’s now 21,000 people at the Bell Centre.
While there’s no doubt that Montembeault would like to put that nightmarish season in the rearview mirror and never think about it or discuss it anymore, it’s highly unlikely that will be possible. If he had managed to right the ship, it wouldn’t be an issue, but the start of the new season, and even training camp, will still be about seeing if he can climb Everest during an avalanche, because he didn’t do it last season.
I was surprised to see the docuseries give a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at Dobes’ burst of emotion after a November 4-3 overtime loss to the New Jersey Devils. As you’ll no doubt recall, the netminder failed to fight back the tears in his postgame media availability:
It happened last year; it happens this year, losing to those guys in OT. Just disappointed in myself; that’s pretty much it.
In an interview that must have been done a while after the event, Dobes recalls that the day after, a lot of the guys, including Arber Xhekaj, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky, would start fake crying after he said something; clearly that was all in good fun to help him move past the situation. But before they could tease him, they apparently told him that Caufield had cried in the dressing room too when he was sent down to Laval, and that Slafkovsky had done it in an interview a couple of years ago. The camaraderie is alive and well in Montreal.
The second episode also shows the Canadiens' first game against the Washington Capitals after Alex Ovechkin and co. eliminated them in the spring of 2025. The Habs had to wait until November 20 for an opportunity for revenge, and they weren’t successful. In case you forgot, Washington won 8-4. This season, Montreal won’t have to wait that long to avenge their elimination this year, as the Stanley Cup champions Carolina Hurricanes will be the first visitors at the Bell Centre on October 6, the third game of the season. Will the Habs suffer the same fate? Time will tell.
At the end of the second episode, much is made of a Montembeault bounce-back performance against the Vegas Golden Knights. Still, the series isn't a Hollywood blockbuster with a happy ending, and the preview of episode three shows the netminder being sent down to Laval and Jacob Fowler being called back up. It will be interesting to see just how deep the series goes into the conditioning stint and whether they spoke to Montembeault himself about it.
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