{"id":142796,"date":"2025-09-14T07:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T07:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/142796\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T07:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T07:09:09","slug":"canadiens-fans-treated-to-ivan-demidov-show-at-prospects-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/142796\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens fans treated to Ivan Demidov show at prospects game"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 In total, it was five phone calls.<\/p>\n

They came from friends and family members throughout the day, all of them inquiring about Ivan Demidov<\/a>\u2019s status for the rookie showdown at the Bell Centre Saturday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t know he\u2019s playing?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

Turns out not everyone in Montreal is as tuned into hockey in September as they are in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then again, if the Bell Centre wasn\u2019t completely sold out for the first Canadiens game in the building since April 27, it wasn\u2019t far from it. You\u2019d have never known there were a few empty seats in the house listening to that crowd over the two-and-a-half hours prospects of the Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets were duking it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fans weren\u2019t exactly sitting on their hands. They weren\u2019t sitting at all when Demidov was within a sniff of having the puck on his stick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Each time the 19-year-old Russian corralled it to make plays \u2014 and he made a lot of plays, including the ones that set up linemates Florian Xhekaj and Oliver Kapanen for goals before scoring a highlight-reel one of his own \u2014 they were chanting his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember last year was the same,\u201d Demidov said after the game.<\/p>\n

When I asked him if he\u2019s getting used to it, he said, \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, we will. Over, and over, and over again, as the fifth-overall pick in the 2024 Draft sprints towards NHL superstardom.<\/p>\n

If that seems hyperbolic to you, go watch the highlights.<\/p>\n

Not just the ones from Saturday night, over which Demidov toyed with Jets prospects through the first two periods before embarrassing them in the third. The ones he piled up in the KHL before unexpectedly arriving in Montreal towards the end of last season were telling enough. As were his first ones in a Canadiens uniform last spring.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why my phone was ringing Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why my ears were ringing by the end Saturday night\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crowd\u2019s insane when (Demidov) has the puck,\u201d said Xhekaj.<\/p>\n

The anticipation of him getting it creates the kind of buzz that\u2019s been reserved for only the greatest Montreal Canadiens<\/a> of all time.<\/p>\n

That phenomenon is as special from the last row of the Bell Centre as it is from the closest seat to the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you send (Demidov) on the ice, you get the impression something\u2019s going to happen. And something does happen, and we get a chance to score,\u201d said Laval Rocket head coach Pascal Vincent, who was running the Canadiens\u2019 bench. \u201cWe had a lot of chances to score tonight, and he was responsible for the majority of them. What he can do on the ice isn\u2019t luck. He\u2019s a guy who\u2019s worked on his game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s still young, he\u2019ll continue to improve. But he\u2019s a player who can make the difference on every shift. For a coach, that\u2019s fun to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moments later, Vincent acknowledged the privilege wouldn\u2019t be his beyond this weekend.<\/p>\n

But for fans of the Canadiens, the Demidov show has only just begun.<\/p>\n

\u2022 All that buzz about Xhekaj gaining 15 pounds over the off-season to set himself up to play the rough-and-tumble game that could earn him an NHL job this fall. Probably not enough of it about his skill and hockey sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was anything but out of place next to Demidov and Kapanen in this game.<\/p>\n

In addition to registering a goal and an assist, Xhekaj also threw his big body around plenty.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Jacob Fowler played half the game, faced 11 shots and stopped 11 shots. The 69th\u00a0pick in the 2023 Draft and reigning NCAA goaltender of the year couldn\u2019t have asked for a better Bell Centre debut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"3232 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n

Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n

Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2022 A lot to like about David Reinbacher\u2019s game, even if it appeared a bit rusty at times. As Vincent said, the fifth-overall pick in 2023 got beat one-on-one a couple of times, which was reflective of him missing as much time as he did with a serious knee injury last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the poise, the skating and the hockey sense stood out regardless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe going to be really good,\u201d said one scout we spoke with. \u201cYou can just see it in his movement, and in the way he always seems to know what he\u2019s going to do in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems like Reinbacher knows his game is only going to improve with each passing day, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was playing quick,\u201d Reinbacher said. \u201cDid some confident plays, tried to make some plays. And for sure not every play is happening or goes through. For sure there\u2019s stuff that you want to improve. Forget it, it happens. That\u2019s the process. Gotta watch the game and be ready for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Pascal Vincent on Owen Beck: \u201cI thought what we saw from Owen Beck tonight was a preview of what he can be in the future. He\u2019s a guy who skates, who goes to the net, who\u2019s physical, who can play on the power play as well as the penalty kill, who can play on the wing or at centre. He\u2019s got a lot of interesting tools, and he\u2019s a cerebral guy. We\u2019ll see where he goes with all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would call that assessment of the 33rd-overall pick in 2022 bang on.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This, too, from Vincent, put this weekend\u2019s experience for Canadiens prospects in perfect perspective: \u201cFor some guys, unfortunately, it\u2019s the only time they\u2019re going to wear an NHL jersey. Just to experience that is the story you\u2019re going to tell your kids and grandkids. And at the same time, I feel we can evaluate players on how they react when you\u2019re on the big stage. So, there\u2019s a lot of components, but it\u2019s such a privilege for those guys to be there and for them to wear that jersey. When I told Luke Tuch that he was going to be the captain \u2014 he\u2019s a very serious guy, by the book, he\u2019s a good influence on everyone \u2014 he said, \u2018Coach, you have no idea what it means to me to have the \u2018C\u2019 on my jersey, wearing the Montreal Canadiens logo.\u2019 I don\u2019t know what it means to him, but I know it\u2019s big. It\u2019s a huge privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 In total, it was five phone calls. They came from friends and family members throughout the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-142796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}