The Montreal Canadiens' goaltending keeps generating chatter, and it looks like the days of having a number-one goaltender are over. Martin St-Louis needs to put the netminder who performs the best between the pipes, no matter what happened in the past.
When the Montreal Canadiens returned from the Olympic break, coach Martin St-Louis stated that both of his goaltenders would get a game in the first week to get back in the swing of things and that he would take it from there. Now that Samuel Montembeault and Jakub Dobes have each played a game, the former against the New York Islanders and the latter against the Washington Capitals, it will be time for St-Louis to decide who will be between the pipes on Tuesday against the San Jose Sharks. The California outfit has won two of its three games since the break and is currently involved in the playoff chase, three points out of a wildcard spot in the Western Conference.
Montembeault gave up four goals on 26 shots against New York, which comes to an .846 save percentage: that’s not enough. Granted, he couldn’t do much on the game-tying goal in the third frame when the shot from the high slot was deflected right in front of his crease by Anders Lee, but the two goals from rookie wonder Matthew Schaefer came from a distance. While the blueliner has a great shot, there comes a time when a starting netminder has to come up big and make unexpected saves.
As for Dobes, he allowed two goals against Washington, both to the league's all-time best goalscorer, Alexander Ovechkin. The Czech netminder saved 27 of the 29 shots he faced for a .931 SV. The first goal was on a rebound that fell to the Russian sniper, right under the nose of the Canadiens’ defenders, Lane Hutson and Noah Dobson. As for the second goal, Ovechkin was allowed to walk right into the slot and was all alone when he received the feed from behind the goal line. There’s not much a goaltender can do in that situation.
On top of those numbers, though, there’s also one fact: the Canadiens won with Dobes in net and lost with Montembeault. With Dobes, they were able to protect their lead and kept playing for the full 60 minutes. With Montembeault in the net, they sat back in the third frame, stopping their attack and focusing solely on defence. It’s almost as if they felt they needed to defend more. The last time Dobes lost in regulation was on December 9, whereas Montembeault lost two of his last five games in regulation.
Whichever way you look at it, Dobes should get the start on Tuesday. Of course, the Canadiens still have six back-to-backs to play until the end of the regular season, so logic dictates that those games will be split. Three of the six back-to-backs are coming up in the next two weeks, so we’re likely to see both goaltenders a lot over that span, and once those are out of the way, the Habs will need to go back to the masked man who performed the best and in front of whom the team looked most confident.
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