{"id":336218,"date":"2025-12-10T06:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T06:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/336218\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T06:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T06:19:12","slug":"canadiens-recall-of-jacob-fowler-not-as-risky-as-it-appears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/336218\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ recall of Jacob Fowler not as risky as it appears"},"content":{"rendered":"

DENVER \u2014 From 3,000 kilometers away, not even I could shake the funny feeling that, despite having to overcome a three-goal deficit with 20 minutes to play, the Montreal Canadiens<\/a> would be just fine against the Tampa Bay Lightning if they could somehow manage not to allow one more shot on net.<\/p>\n

I somehow doubt Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes were laughing as they watched the very next one come from a terrible angle to cleanly beat Samuel Montembeault just 1:22 into the third period.<\/p>\n

If it wasn\u2019t right then and there that they decided to call up Jacob Fowler<\/a> to the Canadiens, I\u2019d be shocked.<\/p>\n

The president of hockey operations and the general manager were probably thinking about it after Jakub Dobes was beat for a third time on Tampa\u2019s first 14 shots. And if they weren\u2019t sure before Montembeault gave up that terrible one to Darren Raddysh at the start of the third period, they had to have been dead certain after Raddysh beat him with another one from 60 feet out to cement this 6-1 embarrassment on home ice.<\/p>\n

Enter Fowler, who\u2019s joining the Canadiens ahead of games in Pittsburgh and New York, along with Owen Beck and Adam Engstrom.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old has a 10-5-0 record with the Laval Rocket this season, and he\u2019s sporting the fourth-best save percentage (.919) of any American Hockey League goaltender to have appeared in at least 10 games.<\/p>\n

There are no expectations for Fowler to be the saviour, just some that he can provide a parachute for Dobes, who doesn\u2019t even have a ripcord to pull right now.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. Dobes has been relatively solid, if not great compared to Montembeault, whose confidence has been stripped completely bare since suffering a groin tear in last season’s playoffs.<\/p>\n

But asking the Czech netminder to be both 1A and B for the Canadiens, at 23 years old, with just 36 games of NHL experience under his belt, is simply asking too much of him. And it stands to reason Gorton and Hughes aren\u2019t asking anything else of Fowler than to make his NHL debut at some point over this short trip through Pennsylvania and New York and lend some support to Dobes.<\/p>\n

They might have done it weeks earlier had the Canadiens\u2019 defensive game not been even more fallible than it was on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Of course, that performance \u2014 and some of the poor ones that preceded very strong efforts against Winnipeg, Toronto, and even St. Louis \u2014 was influenced by the all-too-familiar deflation of feeling like any and every shot against could go in.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens had five great ones to the Lightning\u2019s one on Tuesday before Dobes got beat by Brayden Point.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like it was his fault after Jayden Struble abandoned the main principle of defending \u2014 playing the man instead of the puck \u2014 to allow Point a free path to the net. Nor was Dobes to blame for the breakaway goal Pontus Holmberg potted just under four minutes later.<\/p>\n

But he was visibly shaken after that, and the Canadiens were clearly rattled because this has happened too often to them so far this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel (the deflation),\u201d coach Martin St. Louis told reporters at the Bell Centre after the game. \u201cI physically, myself, feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He talked about shaking it off and getting back to the game, which the Canadiens didn\u2019t do before they left Dobes flailing to try to stop a Nikita Kucherov shot that made it 3-0 Lightning with just under three minutes to play in the first period.<\/p>\n

A lapse in concentration from Brendan Gallagher, a breakdown in attempted recovery from Mike Mathson and Alex Carrier, and Montembeault\u2019s inability to clean that up left the Canadiens down 4-0 and playing the rest of the game with no margin for error.<\/p>\n

They had started the second period with three shots on goal and given up none before Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous took advantage of that situation for that 4-0 goal, and they finished it with a goal and a 10-3 shot advantage before the first shot Montembeault faced in the third period broke their will.<\/p>\n

It only cratered Montembeault\u2019s confidence further, and there\u2019s no way Gorton and Hughes could watch that \u2014 and the second goal given to Raddysh moments later \u2014 and come away thinking his best path to redeeming it is over the next couple of games the Canadiens have to play this week.<\/p>\n

Montembeault\u2019s had a break of late to work on his game. It was a longer break than anticipated due to illness that made him unavailable to start against St. Louis.<\/p>\n

But now he needs another one.<\/p>\n

Recalling Kaapo Kahkonen to offer it, only to later expose Kahkonen to waivers to return him to Laval, would be too risky given the goaltending needs of several other teams in the league. Potentially losing Kahkonen for nothing would leave Fowler much more exposed in the AHL than he will be over what\u2019s more than likely to be a short stint in the NHL.<\/p>\n

The upside is there for the goaltender to extend his stay with a great run of play, to provide Dobes some support and gain some critical NHL experience. The risk that Fowler\u2019s confidence would be cratered by a bad NHL debut can\u2019t be as great as some would make it out to be.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s all it would take to seriously set Fowler back, then he\u2019s already been severely overestimated by the Canadiens as their future starter.<\/p>\n

If Gorton and Hughes were so concerned about it, Fowler wouldn\u2019t have been recalled.<\/p>\n

At least one person beneath them would\u2019ve told them not to lose a half second of sleep over it.<\/p>\n

Remember Boston-based amateur scout Billy Ryan pounding the table for Gorton and Hughes to take Fowler in the 2023 draft?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Canadiens had other priorities with their first three picks \u2014 taking David Reinbacher fifth overall before trading the 31st\u00a0and 37th\u00a0that year for Alex Newhook \u2014 but if they didn\u2019t hesitate to snag Fowler at 69th\u00a0with their first opportunity to take a goaltender, it had as much to do with his ability as it did his character and mental resilience.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to put it to the test and incentivize the Canadiens to immediately redeem the defensive alertness with which they played in the three games prior to Tuesday\u2019s game against Tampa.<\/p>\n

With an unrelenting schedule and ground to be held in an insanely tight Eastern Conference playoff race, it\u2019s what this team needs right now.<\/p>\n

It needs Engstrom keeping Struble on his toes, Beck bringing the level of detail that still makes him an appealing prospect, and a goaltender with swagger.<\/p>\n

Fowler built his up at every other level and isn\u2019t going to lose it overnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 From 3,000 kilometers away, not even I could shake the funny feeling that, despite having to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-336218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336218","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=336218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}