{"id":6462,"date":"2025-07-18T21:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/6462\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T21:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:37:08","slug":"just-how-good-can-the-canadiens-be-in-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/6462\/","title":{"rendered":"Just how good can the Canadiens be in 2025-26?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">The <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/montreal-canadiens\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Montreal Canadiens\u2019<\/a> 2024-25 season was a success, as the team finished 40-31-11 with 91 points, fifth in the Atlantic Division and clinching a playoff birth with the second Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">While they may have lost in five games to the Washington Capitals in the first round of the playoffs, it was their first trip to the postseason since their Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2021 and a major step forward in the team\u2019s rebuild. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">This summer,<a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/news\/montreal-canadiens-noah-dobson-trade-new-york-islanders-sign-eight-year-contract-extension-nhl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> the Habs acquired an elite defender in Noah Dobson<\/a> from the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/new-york-islanders\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Islanders<\/a> and look poised to continue progressing towards being a contender in top-heavy Atlantic Division. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">On Wednesday\u2019s episode of <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vgZs-gRiTGI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>, Tyler Yaremchuk and Jonny Lazarus discuss the Canadians\u2019 upcoming season and if they\u2019ll be good enough to do some damage in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Tyler Yaremchuk: The one team in the Atlantic Division I have as my fun wild card: how good is Montreal going to be next year? What if Demodov is a 70-point guy and you just add another 70-point guy to that lineup? What if Noah Dobson helps that blue line takes a step forward?<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">I\u2019m not going to sit here to try and really convince our YouTube chat that the Habs can win the Stanley Cup. I\u2019m just saying they might be more in the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/theleafsnation.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> conversation than in the<a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/ottawa-senators\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Ottawa Senators <\/a>conversation last year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Jonny Lazarus: It\u2019s a good point saying they\u2019re more in the Leafs category than in Ottawa, but my one concern with Montreal \u2026 they are all skill right now. I don\u2019t know if I see any heaviness outside of Josh Anderson. I know Brendan Gallagher can be a little bit of a pest. Nick Suzuki, I\u2019ll give a lot of credit to, he has some snarl to his game. It\u2019s a little bit quieter because he flies under the radar. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">I know Juraj Slafkovsky said he wants to play more like Matthew Tkachuk at the 4 Nations, but I don\u2019t see it consistently enough from him. Also, a very slow first half from him in the last two years, then he heats up in the second half. That line of Cole Caufield, Suzuki and Slafkovsky when they\u2019re buzzing, they\u2019re one of the more fun lines in the NHL. They just need to be a little bit more consistent through the NHL season. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Canadiens\u2019 2024-25 season was a success, as the team finished 40-31-11 with 91 points, fifth in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-6462","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\/6462","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=6462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}