\u201cIf we\u2019re not the youngest team, we\u2019re one of the youngest teams in the NHL again this year with a lot of potential. We\u2019re sticking to the plan, but if an opportunity comes to get better quicker that doesn\u2019t impact our plan, that\u2019s a good plan as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expectations are that we provide, as we did last year, an outstanding experience for our fans, but most importantly that we progress and keep building to have a good team for the very long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were no guarantees then of a trip to the playoffs this season. A miss, Gorton said, would not be qualified as a failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like the word failure,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all want the playoffs, we all want to keep moving forward. We\u2019re trying to build something for a long period of time. I like our group; let\u2019s see where it takes us. We\u2019d be disappointed (to not make the playoffs). We want it, the players have been outspoken about that, I wouldn\u2019t expect anything else.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players don\u2019t want to hear \u2018rebuild\u2019 or anything like that, I understand that. The players are focused, they like their team, they like their group. You can see how tight-knit they are, they\u2019re ready to go. I think 750 players in the League all think they\u2019re making the playoffs, and our players are no different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eighty-one games into the season, Montreal is buzzing in anticipation of the playoffs. With seasoned veterans, talented and perhaps overachieving youth and strength in goal, the Canadiens have been an engaging story.<\/p>\n
The intriguing next chapter is straight ahead.<\/p>\n
Top photo: Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki holds his 100th-point puck Sunday in his team’s UBS Arena dressing room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf we\u2019re not the youngest team, we\u2019re one of the youngest teams in the NHL again this year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-604446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}