MONTREAL — After a great pre-season debut last Saturday against the Toronto Maple Leafs’ A squad, and an even better start to Monday’s Hockeyville game against the Ottawa Senators in Trois-Rivières, Que., David Reinbacher’s game tapered off slightly.
He made a couple of errant passes in the second half of the Montreal Canadiens’ 3-2 overtime win over the Senators. He lost his positioning a couple of times and forced partner Lane Hutson to bail him out. And he ultimately didn’t execute as crisply as you’d think he’d need to in such a limited window to make the impression he must make to kick off his NHL career.
But consider how the 21-year-old reacted to those instances, because the Canadiens are certainly thinking about it as they evaluate his preparedness for the next level.
Surely, they noticed Reinbacher never panicked; that he didn’t try to overcompensate for his mistakes; that he just kept playing his meat-and-potatoes game — closing out time and space of his opponents, getting position and stick on them, winning the puck, moving it in the other direction, and supporting the rush with his quick feet.
The good plays Reinbacher made, and his refusal to dwell on the lesser ones, stood out just as much as the first words Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis used afterwards to describe what he’s seen from the player so far.
“He’s calm,” St. Louis told reporters at Colisée Videotron.
That calmness is as important as anything else the Canadiens need to see from Reinbacher during this shortened training camp, because it’s not easy to stay calm when you’re chasing a dream that’s been delayed by devastating injuries. Heck, it’s practically impossible to remain calm when you feel like you have barely any time to prove your worth and a couple of plays get away from you. But it’s also essential to remain calm to show you have the mental fortitude to keep your focus and execute the next play.
Especially in the NHL, where the pressure is relentless and mistakes are largely unavoidable.
If you’re able to calmly and quickly move on from even the ones you should’ve avoided, it proves you’re confident.
Reinbacher made it clear he was confident before he even stepped on the ice for these games, and we’re not suggesting that just because he answered a question about his readiness for the moment with an I’ll-show-you declaration.
Since camp started, Reinbacher has carried himself with much more swagger than at any other point in his career since he first arrived in Montreal three years ago. He’s much more comfortable in his own skin, much surer of himself under even more pressure than he’s been in the past, and that’s served as reassurance that he’s getting closer and closer to being prepared for the next step.
Reinbacher's path to the NHL has only been slightly cleared by Kaiden Guhle’s injury, which will keep Guhle sidelined for at least the first two weeks of the regular season. But he also has some other advantages that tilt things in his favour in a competition with Arber Xhekaj, Jayden Struble and Adam Engstrom.
The first is that Reinbacher is right-handed, and the Canadiens are short on right-handed defencemen. The second is that management has an opportunity to feed the confidence he’s exhibited by extending his runway.
If the Austrian is ever going to reach the potential the Canadiens first saw in him, doing that feels essential. And the Canadiens definitely want Reinbacher to reach it after drafting him fifth overall in 2023 and watching him suffer one setback after another ever since.
But Reinbacher still has to earn this, and his best way to do that is by continuing everything he’s done since he returned to Montreal.
During the second intermission of Monday’s game, Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes told Ron MacLean that players called him to say Reinbacher looked great.
“That’s carried through to first practices and games so far,” Hughes said.
A couple of mistakes Reinbacher made just minutes after those words were spoken surely didn’t undo that perception. Neither did his reaction to those mistakes.
Florian Xhekaj is pushing…
And punching.
And hitting.
And standing out in every way a player in his position — with nothing to lose and everything to gain — would want to.
Xhekaj is pushing so hard he might just end up pushing someone out of a chair.
What people should keep in mind is that even if Xhekaj doesn’t make the opening-night roster, it won’t mean he hasn’t done that. If he continues to play the way he has, he’ll force Hughes to make space for him sooner rather than later.
The GM might have to wait for better conditions to make that space. It’s not always easy to jettison a player and his contract out the door at the start of a season, when cap space is as limited as it gets for most teams.
But Hughes will do it as fast — and as responsibly — as he can if he really wants Xhekaj in his lineup. And right now, Xhekaj has to be tempting him with every strong shift he’s putting together to make it sooner.
And it’s not just because he’s bringing the nastiness and edge so desperately needed at the bottom end of Montreal’s lineup. It’s also that he’s playing with the attention to detail and discipline required of an NHL regular.
Samuel Montembeault poised to redeem himself with Canadiens?
Judging by his performances through this camp, it sure appears as though Montembeault is ready to rebound in a way that felt inconceivable just months ago.
But it’s going to take more than a handful of practices and abbreviated appearances in pre-season games to truly convince anyone he’s fully put his struggles behind him and is back to being the goaltender who was among the best in the league in 2024-25.
So long as Montembeault appears like that guy, though, there’s no rush to get him out the door.
Not that Montembeault, who’s in the final year of a contract that pays him only $3.15 million, has to be in Montreal long-term. But if he maintains this level of performance, he’ll only boost his trade value. And in the interim, he’ll also provide the type of veteran support Jakub Dobes could use while buying Jacob Fowler a lot of playing time with the American Hockey League’s Laval Rocket.
From an asset management perspective, this is the path of least resistance to avoid starting another season with three goaltenders in Montreal. Fowler, 21, can go down without having to pass through waivers, and the Canadiens can eventually cash in on Montembeault’s upswing and bring Fowler back up.
Waiting it out also seems like the prudent choice, with Dobes only having 81 games of NHL experience (regular season and post-season combined). Even if the 25-year-old Czech picks up where he left off last spring — on fire — the insurance a performing Montembeault can provide will be hard to turn away from.
He has performed well so far. And barring a sudden reversal, or a trade too good to turn away from, there’s incentive to give the 29-year-old Becancour, Que., native more time to prove it’s more than just a good start to camp.
There’s still the better part of a week to go before the Canadiens can fully commit to going down that path. But they have to like that Montembeault has at least made it a path they can consider going down.
