Cowan: Young Canadiens have each other's backs — and it shows

Before the start of this season, I wrote a column saying the Canadiens had the talent to be a 100-point team and wouldn’t have to wait until the final game to clinch a playoff spot — like they did last season when they finished with a 40-31-11 record for 91 points to earn the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

I noted that the additions of defenceman Noah Dobson and forward Zachary Bolduc would help the team, along with having forward Ivan Demidov to start the season. I also noted that having Jakub Dobes as a backup to Samuel Montembeault to start the year would help after Montembeault was forced to play 21 of 23 games during a stretch from Nov. 2 to Dec. 23 last season because head coach Martin St. Louis had lost confidence in backup Cayden Primeau.

The Canadiens reached the midway point of this season with Saturday’s 2-0 loss to the Blues in St. Louis giving them a 22-13-6 record for 50 points. That put them on pace to finish the season with exactly 100 points, which makes me look like a pretty good prognosticator.

But if you told me before the season started that Montembeault would struggle as badly as he has, with an .865 save percentage, and that the Canadiens would lose forwards Patrik Laine, Kirby Dach, Alex Newhook and defenceman Kaiden Guhle to long-term injuries, there’s no way I would have predicted they’d have 50 points at the midway point.

The Canadiens have been inconsistent — something that can be expected from the youngest team in the NHL and with so many injuries. That was on display again during the weekend, when they played one of their worst games of the season in St. Louis and followed it up with one of their best in a 4-3 overtime win over the Stars in Dallas on Sunday. The Stars had beaten the Canadiens 7-0 at the Bell Centre on Nov. 13.

After Sunday’s win, the Canadiens were in second place in the Atlantic Division, one point behind the Tampa Bay Lightning while holding a game in hand, and ranked sixth in the overall NHL standings. The Canadiens were even in goal differential, while the Lightning were plus-32, another example of how inconsistent the Canadiens have been.

But the Canadiens keep winning games and are eight points ahead of their pace from last season, when they had a 20-18-4 record after 42 games. They went 4-1-2 on their seven-game holiday road trip and will be back at the Bell Centre on Wednesday, when they face the Calgary Flames (7:30 p.m., SN, RDS) for the first of three straight home games this week.

The Canadiens have a ton of young talent, but the biggest reason they keep winning is that they play for each other and never give up. They have a 13-4-5 record on the road and are 8-6-2 in back-to-back games — including a 4-3-1 record in the second game of back-to-backs. That’s impressive for any NHL team — even more so for a team that was missing Laine, Dach, Newhook and Guhle, along with Jake Evans and Josh Anderson (also on the injured list now), for Sunday’s win in Dallas.

Since the Canadiens’ rebuild started four years ago, president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton, general manager Kent Hughes and head coach Martin St. Louis have focused on building a winning culture.

“If you have no culture, you might find some pockets of success, but you’ll never sustain that consistency with it,” St. Louis said after the Canadiens made the playoffs last season. “So for us, it’s been the foundation for this rebuild.”

Alexandre Texier has been impressed by the attitude in the locker room since joining the Canadiens as a free agent on Nov. 23. Texier has 3-5-8 totals in 20 games since joining the team.

“They’re just positive and they just move on and try to learn,” the 26-year-old Texier said before the holiday road trip. “They’re a young team and they’re learning. At some point, you’re going to find your way.”

Rustin Dodd of The Athletic wrote an excellent story last month under the headline, “How do you hold a star athlete accountable?” One of the people Dodd interviewed was Deirdre G. Snyder, a lecturer at Cornell University who studies management communication and organizational behaviour in the business world and has asked the question: Where does team accountability actually come from? Snyder co-authored a paper saying the most effective mode of accountability didn’t come from a manager but instead from the emotional connections that employees had for each other.

“It’s teams that know each other, trust each other, have an emotional connection to each other,” Snyder said. “The leader matters. But the leader matters because they can create this culture. I’m gonna feel more motivated to do it if I’m doing it because I don’t wanna let my teammates down.”

That’s a great way to describe this young Canadiens team — and why I’ll stick with my prediction for a 100-point season.

scowan@postmedia.com

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