The Depth Problem Didn't Go Away. The Season Just Hid It.

Montreal finished 52-35. The final 30 games went 20-10. By almost any measure you'd hand to a front office in June, the season looks like validation. Here's the number that complicates that story: the backup center position produced at zero percent of what a league-average starter provides. Not below average. Not replacement level in the traditional sense. Zero. The same is true at left wing, where the drop from Chris Kreider to Lucas Condotta is functionally a cliff with nothing at the bottom.

This is the structural problem I've been circling since September — the offseason rebuilt the identity of the roster without rebuilding its load-bearing walls. The additions of Kreider, Kirby Dach, and Brett Berard were designed to prevent a repeat of the offensive drought that defined the worst stretches of recent seasons. And at the top of the lineup, the bet paid off. Nick Suzuki finished at 54 points in 49 games. Lane Hutson was the best defenseman on the ice most nights. Juraj Slafkovsky and Ivan Demidov gave the team real secondary options when healthy. That core is genuinely good. The problem is what happens when any piece of it goes missing — which, this season, it did, repeatedly.

When Demidov went down in late September, the depth chart at center had Luke Mittelstadt as the primary option and Laurent Dauphin as the backup. Mittelstadt is a functional player; Dauphin, by the numbers, produced nothing at the level you'd need from a spot starter. The same structural fragility ran through left wing. Kreider is the first option, Condotta is the second, and Slafkovsky — who finished with 40 points in 50 games — is listed third, which tells you something about how this depth chart was constructed: the actual production was concentrated in players who weren't slotted as the depth answer. The depth answer was effectively absent.

What made the season survivable was the strength at the top. Suzuki's 1.1 points per game gave the team a floor. Hutson's 49 points from the blue line at 23 minutes a night gave them structure. Caufield's 47 points gave them a second threat. When those players were healthy and producing, the depth holes stayed hidden — the team went 20-10 over the final 30 games precisely because the top of the roster was executing. But a 52-35 season built on a thin margin between the stars and a backup group that provides nothing is not a solved roster. It's a roster that got away with something.

My read is that the front office knows this. The active storylines this offseason — the volume of signings, the extensions, the asset-management framing — suggest an organization that understands it is building toward something rather than completing it. But understanding a problem and solving it are different things, and right now the center and left wing depth positions enter the new season in the same condition they finished the last one: functional at the top, empty below it. The volatility that defined 2026-27 wasn't random. It had an address. Until the backup depth at those two positions produces something — anything — the Canadiens are one injury away from reliving November all over again.