Canadiens putting last season behind them

Last season was last season. That's what the Montreal Canadiens keep saying.
This is a new season. A new team. New players.

"I've been asked questions about last year so many times," coach Michel Therrien said following a 5-2 win against the New Jersey Devils at Bell Centre on Thursday. "Like I always said, I'm looking ahead, I'm not looking behind."
Except at every single turn of this season, the rearview mirror keeps coming up for the Canadiens.
From their 9-0-1 start onward, the Canadiens have followed essentially the same pattern as they did in 2015-16, when they started 9-0-0.
But everything changed last season when the Canadiens lost goaltender Carey Price for the season on Nov. 25 with a knee injury. He was hurt during a 5-1 win at the New York Rangers that gave Montreal a 17-4-2 record.
The Canadiens went 21-34-4 the rest of the way, sliding from first overall in the NHL right out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

On Sunday, the Canadiens were on the road playing the Los Angeles Kings when midway through the third period, top center Alex Galchenyuk collided with Kings captain Anze Kopitar, catching his right knee on the Los Angeles center's right leg when they skated past each other away from the play. Galchenyuk left the game and did not return.
Galchenyuk was in the midst of a breakout season with 23 points in 25 games, giving the Canadiens a legitimate offensive threat in the middle for the first time in years.
Montreal won that game 5-4 in a shootout, leaving the Canadiens atop the NHL standings with a 17-6-4 record, the same number of wins they had when Price was injured a little more than a year earlier. Three days later, the Canadiens announced Galchenyuk would miss 6-8 weeks with a knee injury.
Déjà vu can go both ways, it appears.
General manager Marc Bergevin had an extremely busy offseason, and his primary goal was to avoid a repeat of what happened after Price went down last season should they find themselves in the same situation again. He likely never imagined just how similar the situation would be.
Bergevin traded defenseman P.K. Subban to the Nashville Predators for defenseman Shea Weber, the biggest blockbuster trade the NHL has seen in years. He said one of the motivating factors behind the move was that Weber's leadership and steady presence would help prevent the Canadiens season from derailing in the face of adversity.

The same explanation was cited when Bergevin acquired forward Andrew Shaw from the Chicago Blackhawks, bringing a winning mentality from a winning organization into the Canadiens dressing room.
Now, the Canadiens are facing that adversity. Not only are they missing Galchenyuk, but they lost his replacement as top-line center, David Desharnais, in the very next game to a knee injury, one that will also keep him out of the lineup for 6-8 weeks.
A team that was already thin when it came to offensive centers losing two of them in back-to-back games could be considered somewhat close to what sent the Canadiens' season sideways a year ago, even if no player on the team, and perhaps the NHL, is as irreplaceable as Price.
So while the attention was heaped on center Tomas Plekanec to fill the offensive void and for depth centers Torrey Mitchell, Phillip Danault and Brian Flynn to play bigger roles, this is really the time when players like Weber and Shaw will have an opportunity to make their general manager look good by providing the leadership to help the Canadiens continue to win games.
"I guess so," captain Max Pacioretty said when presented with that idea Thursday morning. "I think you're looking into it a little too much. I think we have to worry about one game at a time playing the right way. We have good depth in this lineup, we like the team that we have."

A few hours later, the Canadiens went out and showed what Pacioretty was talking about.
Montreal, coming off a five-game, 12-day road trip, completely dismantled the Devils, putting a season-high 49 shots on goal and attempting 83 shots to New Jersey's 44. It was, under the circumstances, about as emphatic a message as the Canadiens could possibly send that what they have been saying all along is true. Last season is indeed last season.
"It was a statement game, I told that to the players," Therrien said. "We needed to have a really great effort tonight. When you come back from a long road trip, the energy's not the same. It's always tough. I'm really impressed with their work ethic. That group of guys, their work ethic since the beginning of the year has been phenomenal, and I don't think they get enough credit for that.
"It was important for that group, and even for our confidence, to make that type of statement. And they did."
If that statement is a sign of things to come for the Canadiens, they might finally break free from the grips of a season they've done everything in their power to forget.
This new team with new players will be able to forge its own identity and play its own season.