TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun discusses the Montreal Canadiens’ situation in net, the referees for the Milan Olympics and the officiating standard, and who will handle potential discipline during the men’s Olympic tournament.
GINO REDA: Is 21-year-old Jacob Fowler really the answer? Maybe a stopgap until Samuel Montembeault can get back on his feet, or until the Habs can upgrade on the trade market? Or is this a Hail Mary by a desperate team?
To speak to that, here’s Insider Pierre LeBrun. Pierre, what’s the Habs’ plan here?
PIERRE LeBRUN: Yeah, Gino, I think calling them desperate is a bit of an exaggeration.
The plan as I understand it, was always to bring up Jacob Fowler at some point. But yeah, I don’t think they thought it’d be in early December. I thought that in a perfect world, Fowler would get a taste of the NHL at some point in the second half of the season.
So, from that perspective, this has been expedited by the fact they can’t get enough saves from their regular NHL goalies. Let’s just call it for what it is. But having said all that, I think certainly there’s a sense that Jacob Fowler has met every challenge in his young career head on, and a lot of people close to Fowler don’t feel like this will be too big for him. We’ll see.
If it is too much – and don’t forget, it’s not just the goaltending, the Habs haven’t been great defensively either – but if this is too much for Fowler, they’ll send him back to Laval and the AHL at some point. But in the meantime, yeah, it buys them some time.
They still believe in Sam Montembeault. It’s not like the previous three years where he was a very durable and good goaltender that the Habs have forgotten that. They think that’s still in there. They hope that a little reset here might help him bounce back, and that’s certainly what they need.
But if that doesn’t happen, and if Fowler has to go back at some point here, then I think finally, yes, the Habs will have to look at the trade market.
The hard thing with the trade market, Gino, is that if it was that easy to upgrade your No. 1, the Edmonton Oilers probably would have done it a year ago, right? It’s just difficult in season to just solve that riddle, and so that’s part of the reason why the Habs obviously hope to be able to figure this out internally before they have to look at the trade market.
REDA: Montembeault has certainly fallen off of the radar for Team Canada.
Meanwhile, Canada drops the puck at the Olympics two months from Friday, and as soon as international games get going, Pierre, officiating often becomes a huge story. How are they going call the games? Who’s going to be calling the games?
Do we have a better idea now of who’s going to be calling them, Pierre?
LeBRUN: Yeah, we do. It’s interesting, Gino, they haven’t announced the officiating crew yet. They want to wait closer to the tournament in Milan because of injuries, and there have been injuries, as you know, to NHL refs this year, so it’s a smart idea to wait.
But what we now understand is they have, in fact, selected all 26 on-ice officials for the Olympics – 13 from the IIHF, 13 from the NHL, 50-50. And from those 13, it’s six refs and seven linesmen.
From the NHL’s side, my understanding is that the refs that have been selected for Milan are Wes McCauley, Gord Dwyer, Chris Rooney, Brian Pochmara, and Kyle Rehman.
Of further interest to me is, it’s my understanding that the NHL and IIHF have had a lot of dialogue about the officiating standard at the Olympics. Again, this is an IIHF tournament and the IIHF rulebook is different in many ways than the NHL rulebook.
But the communication between the league and the IIHF, as far as I understand it, is that they agree, both sides, that they want to officiate the game closer to an NHL standard come the Olympic tournament. We’ll see if that’s real, we’ll see if that’s realistic, but that’s the communication that’s being had right now between the NHL and the IIHF.
That to me could be very interesting, especially if all of the countries involved are made aware of this when it comes to certain roster selections for their teams, so we’ll see where that goes.
REDA: What about when something happens that could lead to supplemental discipline? International discipline is usually a lot more harsh than what the NHL hands out.
Who gets the call when there’s a chance of supplemental discipline at the tournament?
LeBRUN: So, as part of the Olympic Agreement between the IIHF and the NHL and NHLPA, there’s a disciplinary committee that’s basically made up 50-50 of IIHF and NHL. So it’s a 50-50 split of people from both sides that make up the committee that decides suspensions.
But as our friend Darren Dreger pointed out at the Board of Governors meeting, Gino, at the end of the day, there still has to be someone that makes that final call.
Our understanding is it will be George Parros, so it’s NHL Player Safety that would have that final call. Again, another interesting part of all this because there are things that happen in Olympic tournaments, and now we understand how that will be played out.
REDA: It’s always important for the players going into the tournament to know what to expect so they’re not surprised by it.
That’s the early edition of Insider Trading. The full version of IT with Pierre, Dregs, and C.J. is coming up on the early edition of SportsCentre.
