The Canadians start the season focused on making meaningful steps towards the development of the young roster

MONTREAL – Buckle up. This will be a season like no other in Montreal Canadiens history – with the team openly rebuilding for the first time in its 113-year history.

With no real expectation of battling for a playoff spot, the focus will be firmly on player development, and Wednesday’s opener against the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Bell Center will see 2020 first-rounder Juraj Slafkovsky Kaiden become the first overall winner in the Draft 2022 will give Guhle and undrafted 21-year-old Arber Xhekaj a chance to take their first meaningful steps down this long, winding road.

Several others with limited experience at this level like Justin Barron, Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Jesse Ylonen will have a chance to do the same as the schedule ramps up.

They will be part of a Canadiens team that hopes to forge an identity, which coach Martin St. Louis detailed when he sat down for an interview with Sportsnet on Tuesday:

According to general manager Kent Hughes, a big goal is also to enrich the team’s new culture — one that entices players from around the hockey world to want to play for the Canadiens.

“We want to see growth in this area. We want to see growth in the culture,” he said. “We’ve heard a lot about people not wanting to be in Montreal — taxes, weather and stuff — but I’ve always believed that after I put my agent hat back on, I haven’t found many hockey players who were in bad hockey environments who loved it. It didn’t matter how warm it was or if they went to the sea after practice or played golf or played in the coldest environment; Boys are happy when ice hockey works…

“We understand we’re probably not the favorites for the Stanley Cup and when you’re in that kind of environment you need to find a path where the players are pushing to get better and push as a group. When we see that and see that kind of progress, that’s a win for us.”

It will take the Canadians a long time to get there, especially with eight new players in the roster and some of the older ones sidelined indefinitely.

The leadership of this group has changed dramatically, with franchise goaltender Carey Price and former reserve captain Paul Byron placed on long-term injury reserve and facing the very real possibility of never playing in the NHL again, and the 23-year-old Nick Suzuki is entering his first season as captain.

He will be joined by 10-year veteran Brendan Gallagher but will have to wait for newly appointed reserve captain Joel Edmundson to step in.

The 6-foot-5, 221-pound defenseman missed all of training camp with a back injury and still faces uncertainty as to when he can make his season debut, although Hughes said medical staff were “very encouraged” by his progress and the fact that he’s been riding alone for the past week.

Suzuki, who also missed most of training camp with lower and upper body injuries, knows finding the best way to navigate as captain and bring his team together will be a process.

For example, when asked about his approach to helping a struggling teammate earlier this week, he admitted taking on such responsibilities will be among many things that will be new to him.

“I’ve never really done that in the past,” Suzuki said, “but I know it’s going to be important for me to meet with everyone in person and make sure the guys are comfortable coming to my place when they need something.”

Some of them will certainly do it because the Canadians are expected to lose many more games than they win, injuries will occur as always, and frustration will set in, as would naturally happen if the results weren’t positive.

Not that the players on this team necessarily feel it’s going to be that way.

“I like our group,” said newcomer Kirby Dach on Tuesday. “I think we have a lot of talent up front and a young and talented defense and Jakey (Jake Allen) is solid at the back of the net. I think we can surprise a lot of teams.”

To do that, Dach needs to seem more like the player who showed promise enough to be picked third overall in 2017 and less like the player who fought through his first three seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks before becoming a First traded to Montreal – and third-round picks.

A return to form for Sean Monahan, who was acquired from the Calgary Flames last summer – along with a future first-round pick – after two injury-plagued seasons, would also help.

Being pain free for consecutive offseasons after hip surgery is a blessing he doesn’t take for granted.

“I came back after four months with the first operation and was supposed to be out for six to eight. Then I ripped the labrum from my other three hip games last season and kept playing,” Monahan told Sportsnet on Tuesday. “Later I suffered three broken ribs. They were sticking out of my back and it was brutal. There were days when I didn’t even know what I was doing while practicing because I couldn’t even tie my own skates.”

But those skates are tight and moving fairly efficiently since Monahan landed in Montreal, which bodes well for his attempt to bounce back from an eight-goal, 23-point performance with the Flames last season.

Gallagher, who also dabbled in hip issues — among several others he detailed for us — is feeling as good as he has been in a few years and ready to write a redemption story.

Whether Christian Dvorak, Mike Hoffman, Joel Armia and Jonathan Drouin can do the same is questionable.

Dvorak will play a key role in isolating the 21-year-old Dach and he needs to be a lot more like the player who has proven extremely reliable at Arizona than he was in his first season after joining Montreal last year Has.

Hoffman, who scored between 22 and 36 goals in six of his eight NHL seasons before hitting just 15 goals in his first year of a three-year, $13.5 million pact with the Canadians, will start with Monahan and Dach and be given the chance to play a significant role in the power game. He must do well.

Armia, who is in the second year of a four-year, $13.6 million deal, struggled last season and will start this season with an upper-body injury, which is problematic.

And Drouin, who got off to a good start last season before suffering a season-ending wrist injury, is in the last year of his contract, starting it off as a healthy scratch in the press box.

Even if all four players find their chances along with Gallagher, Monahan and Dach – and Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Josh Anderson form an explosive front line – the impact on the team’s reputation could be minimal.

Putting aside veterans David Savard and Chris Wideman, the Canadians are relying on 14 games of NHL experience on their blue line for Game 1 of their season. Youngsters Guhle, Xhekaj, Jordan Harris and Johnathan Kovacevic are immediately joined by Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and one of the league’s strongest forwards and the task doesn’t get much easier for them as the season progresses.

Edmundson and Mike Matheson, who traded to the Canadiens who sent Jeff Petry to the Pittsburgh Penguins last summer, would be a safety valve if they played.

Instead, Hughes said Matheson spent Wednesday morning getting an MRI for a lower body injury, which currently lists him as daily.

Even though Matheson’s results (expected in the next 48 hours) show his absence will be short-term, it’s a gross leap out of the gate to start behind the backball and catch up. Dealing with a lower-body injury is far from ideal for a player who counts on his skating as his best asset and is expected to play more than 25 minutes a night after failing in any of his previous ones has played an average of more than 22:19 six NHL seasons.

“We’re not talking months and months here,” Hughes said of Matheson’s potential absence. “If we learn something else, that would be a problem.”

He said Corey Schueneman, who racked up his first 24 games in the NHL last season, is a reliable option for depth. Without naming him, he hinted that Otto Leskinen might be someone else.

But neither can mitigate the inexperience the Canadians are struggling with on their blue line, and it will be some time before Hughes can address that need – as this is the start of a new season and trades rarely materialize before the end of November come.

It will be a test by fire for the kids on defense.

As a result, things won’t be easy for Allen and backup goalie Sam Montembeault.

Then there’s Slafkovsky, who was goalless in preparation, seemed out of his element at times and is under a lot of pressure to deliver on his promise straight away.

Its development is paramount, and Hughes, St. Louis and the rest of the Canadians’ staff will be monitoring – and directing – it very closely.

At least the GM likes what he’s seen so far of the 6-foot-4, 238-pound winger.

“I don’t want to say evolution because it wasn’t that long ago, but we’ve seen the beginning of an adjustment process from hockey in Europe to hockey in North America, where it’s played a little further north. South, a bit more physical,” he said, “and we like that.”

“We think he can continue in that direction and that’s great. If he does that and keeps making progress, he could be here all season,” added Hughes. “And if at any point we feel like that’s no longer the case or we can’t get him enough ice time and he needs to be somewhere else, then at that point we’re going to make that decision and we’re going to send him to Laval.” .

“But I love giving young people the opportunity to show, ‘Hey, I’m getting better every day and I’m going to make an effort and I’m going to handle that pressure in a controlled environment.’ He will have to do that. Everyone has to do that.”

Because that’s what this season is really about for the Canadians.

At no point in its history has it been exclusively about it, but it is a new era for the organization.