Before taking off for Florida this morning, the Montreal Canadiens called up Jakub Dobes from their AHL farm team the Laval Rocket. As reported earlier by The Hockey News, the goaltending situation had become an issue for the Habs and something had to be done as a matter of urgency.
Related: Canadiens Goaltending Could Spell Big Trouble
Prior to the Christmas break, starter Samuel Montembeault got the nod for 10 consecutive games while backup Cayden Primeau rode the pine. In his last pre-game media scrum before the break, coach Martin St-Louis got annoyed when he was asked if the organization had lost faith in Primeau, and his refusal to answer the question spoke volumes about the Canadiens’ predicament.
The Canadiens return to action tomorrow afternoon as they’ll take on the Florida Panthers before facing the Tampa Bay Lightning the next day. While Montembeault showed before the break he was able to play back-to-back game, it’s far from being an ideal situation and Dobes call-up seems to indicate he’ll get his baptism of fire in the NHL sooner rather than later.
Dobes joined the Rocket last season after spending two years in the NCAA with Ohio State University. So far, he has played 65 games in the AHL and has a 33-21-7 record. This year, he’s been in net for 14 games and has a 9-3-1 record with a 2.44 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage.
He has yet to play a regular season game in the big league but he took part in two contests during the preseason. In just over 86 minutes of action, he surrendered two goals for a 1.39 GAA. He faced 46 shots and therefore had a .957 SP.
It will be interesting to see what the Canadiens’ long-term plan is with their goaltending. The NHL roster freeze will end when the clock strikes 12:01 AM tonight and we’ll then see if they’ve decided to send Cayden Primeau down to Laval. If they did, he will have to clear waivers before reporting.
As for Dobes, at this stage of his development, he needs to see a lot of action, so using him instead of overloading Montembeault is the way to go, if the Canadiens do not intend to do that, he could just be a stop gap until Primeau gets his confidence back of, until use acquires a veteran back-up to push and challenge the Canadiens’ number one netminder.
There will be cynics out there to say the Canadiens should just have stuck with Jake Allen and traded Primeau, but hindsight is always 20/20. Nobody said rebuilds are a straightforward line with no mistakes made along the way…
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