Will Canadiens embrace the tank, shut down Carey Price?

The Montreal Canadiens were the hottest team on the planet in October: Nine straight regulation wins to start the season, which was an NHL record. Visions of the first Stanley Cup in Canada since the Habs’ last one 23 years ago danced in our heads. 

But P.K. Subban attempted to shake us awake. “We’re not going to be the ones leading this type of parade,” he said, before an October game at the Vancouver Canucks. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: All we’ve accomplished is to have a good start to the season, and that’s it.”

The Canadiens lost that game to Vancouver, snapping their streak.

Since then, they lost Carey Price, perhaps for the season. They lost Brendan Gallagher for several weeks, short-circuiting their offense. They lost the Atlantic Division lead. They lost a playoff spot. They’ve lost nine of their last 10 games, scoring more than two goals only once while going 1-8-1.

They’ve lost the fans, who are leaving seats empty at Bell Centre. And they’ve lost any semblance of confidence or sense of purpose for this increasingly futile campaign.

They’re five points in back of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the final wild card spot in the East, although Pittsburgh has three games in-hand. They’re six points behind the Detroit Red Wings for the No. 3 seed in the Atlantic, and the Wings have two games in-hand.

Sports Club Stats, that daily tracker of playoff probability, gives the Canadiens a 12-percent chance of making the postseason.

That’s bad.

But don’t worry, Price will return this month and the season will reverse course and …

… oh, he’s still favoring his injured leg?

That’s really bad.

Or maybe it’s what the Canadiens need to see. Increasingly, the calls are for Montreal to shut Price down for the season, forget about rallying for a postseason berth, grab a lottery pick and retool their offense for next season.

Maybe it was that loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night – a team that embraced the tank and ended up with Jack Eichel – but now the attention in Montreal is squarely on the Canadiens perhaps doing the same to earn Auston Matthews or another draft blue-chipper.

From Stu Cowan of the Gazette:

If the Canadiens finish the season 23rd overall, they would have a 6.0 per cent chance of getting the No. 1 pick in the draft lottery. The further they fall, the better the odds.

With 30 games left in the season, the Canadiens are only nine points ahead of the Columbus Blue Jackets — the worst team in the NHL that beat them twice last week. The team that finishes last will have a 20-per-cent chance of getting Matthews.

The Canadiens could end up winning by losing — and how sad is that for this storied franchise?

That’s the trick, isn’t it? Pride.

Can anyone imagine the Canadiens actually lowering expectations, accepting fate and looking down the standings instead of up?

Well, Craig Custance of ESPN is wondering if this is what’s happening anyway, and there’s merit to that. General Manager Marc Bergevin hasn’t made a significant trade to shake his team out of its plummet – with due respect to John Scott. Maybe there’s a reason James Reimer isn’t a Hab.

His vote of confidence for coach Michel Therrien seemed tied to the new contract he gave him in the offseason – it’s hard for a GM to justify extending and then firing a guy within months – but it might be a case of deciding not to rectify an unsuccessful season until after the season is done.

In other words: Improving the team in the short term does nothing in the long run.

I think the Canadiens are fooling themselves if they think their fans won’t be down for writing off this season. They see what the Sabres did, and what came from it. They hope that the changes they’re asking for – Therrien gone, vast improvements to the forward group, a healthy Carey Price – will arrive in the offseason.

The promise of October is a faint memory. Look to June. 

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.