At the end of the Montreal Canadiens training camp last season, Cayden Primeau wasn’t sent down to the Laval Rocket in the AHL, which had been his fate for the last four season. It wasn’t because he had earned his spot with the big club though, it was because he had to clear waivers to go down to Laval. GM Kent Hughes explained to the media that considering the level of interest expressed by other teams in the off-season, waiving him would be losing him.
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Last Season
Having a threesome of goaltenders isn’t ideal for an NHL team though and even though Hughes wanted to address the situation and trade a goaltender, he wasn’t ready to do it just for the sake of it. The GM thought he had found the right trading partner but Jake Allen refused to waive his no-trade clause to facilitate a move to the New Jersey Devils… until the trade deadline, that was.
With Allen gone, Primeau saw more action in the tail end of the season. He played a total of 23 games and kept an 8-9-4 record with a 2.99 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage. The average SP in the league was .900 and Primeau found himself in the 70th percentile. His percentage of high-danger saves was .883, well above the .788 league average, making him better than 83 percent of his fellow netminders in that department.
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As a bonus, he also posted his first career shutout against the Anaheim Ducks on Feb. 13, only being tested on 13 shots though. Just short of a month later, he recorded his second in a 41-save effort against the Columbus Blue Jackets at the Bell Centre.
Officially the Backup
This season, Primeau has the edge coming into camp. Even though the Canadiens’ brass doesn’t like to label its goalies, its obvious the seventh-round pick at the 2017 camp is already penciled (if not inked) in as the team’s backup. After playing 51 games with the Rocket last season Jakub Dobes will be spending a second season in the AHL along with newly signed 27-year-old undrafted Swiss professional goaltender Connor Hughes. Top prospect Jacob Fowler will be tending the net for Boston College for a second season and Quentin Miller will presumably return to the QMJHL for a fourth season, this time with the Rimouski Oceanic.
It’s crunch time for Primeau as he’s entering the final year of the three-year pact he signed with the club before the 2022-2023 season. This year will be make or break for the youngster, if he hopes to become a bona fide number one in the NHL he will need to make significant progress.
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The Canadiens lost 36 games by a single goal last season (nowhere near as many as the league worst San Jose Sharks who failed 54 times under those circumstances), meaning just one more save could have led to a better outcome. In his 23 games last year, Primeau had a .900 SP and above in only 12 games. Consistency will have to improve, especially if the Canadiens are to “stay in the mix” for longer, as Hughes and Jeff Gorton mentioned at last seasons’ post mortem.
What to Expect
Definitely expect a lot more action. His 23 games last season should be dwarfed by the number of matches he features in this year. Even though Samuel Montembeault will get the lion’s share of the work, the days of Martin Brodeur playing 78 games in a season (no joke, Brodeur played 70+ games 11 times in his career including ten consecutive seasons) are over. Last season, the leader in games played was Juuse Saros, who played 64 games. Half of the first string goalies didn’t step in the crease for more than 55 games.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in net for around 30 games this year, this should give Hughes enough time to decide what he wants to do with Primeau going forward. Some believed for a while that Primeau would turn into the Canadiens’ number one, but for a guy picked 199th overall, making the NHL is already quite an accomplishment. It looks increasingly more likely that Fowler will be the chosen one, but even if he is, the Canadiens will still need someone to be his backup.
Like many goalies, Primeau seems to be improving when he sees more action and I fully expect this trend to continue. If his SP remains above .905 with an increased workload, he will have had a good campaign.
From eight wins last season, I believe we’ll see a healthy augmentation, perhaps to around 12-13 wins if he does man the net for around 30 games. It will, however, depend on how Martin St-Louis decides to use his goaltenders and what kind of matchups the 25-year-old gets.
Yesterday, Primeau was one of the players who contributed to the GoFundMe campaign for Matthew Gaudreau’s widow and unborn child. While he isn’t exactly making the big bucks yet, the goaltender still donated $1,000 to the fund. Teammate Mike Matheson also contributed, donating $1,321 presumably because Johnny wore number 13 and Matthew number 21.
Whatever your expectations are toward Primeau this year, chances are they’ll be lower than the ones he will have set for himself in this key season for his future.
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