It’s Time to Stop the Preseason Madness

There are few consistencies in preseason hockey.  One is a complaint about fitness testing.  One is that people say it’s too long.  Evidently, another one is Montreal and Ottawa matchups devolving into sheer stupidity, most recently evidenced by Tuesday’s contest.

Two of those are going away a year from now.  Fitness testing at the beginning of camp (or in-season) will be eliminated when the CBA extension officially begins next year.  The preseason will also be shortened with teams only playing four games (and veterans only allowed to play in two of those), a compromise in exchange for adding two games to the schedule in the regular season.  It’s time the third consistency goes away as well.

In recent years, about the only known thing going into these matchups is that something stupid is going to happen.  Someone (and it could be Montreal starting it or Ottawa) will go too far and the rest of the game will be spent taking numbers or attempting to get immediate retribution.  That, in turn, sparks more nonsense and around and around they go, just like clockwork.

The preseason is supposed to be about players getting ready for the season, youngsters trying to make a push for a roster spot (or move higher up on the recall order), and coaches trying to learn things about their roster and maybe experiment a little.

How much of that was actually accomplished on Tuesday night?  Montreal learned Oliver Kapanen might have some chemistry with Ivan Demidov, making his roster spot look more likely.  That’s good but what else of value did they learn?  Not much, unless you call spending the bulk of the final 25 minutes on the power play with a little more than half an NHL lineup something of value.  As for Ottawa, what valuable information did they learn?  I have absolutely no idea and I don’t think they do either; that’s how bad Tuesday night was.  And that’s the problem.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself that a solution would be to not dress certain players on either side who may be inclined to start taking liberties.  And you could be right.  But the Habs continue to set their schedule so that they finish with the Sens in the final two games spanning a full week.  That means anyone who doesn’t play in one of those is sitting for a week and a half before the season begins.  That’s not practical from a conditioning standpoint which means they have to play.

When one team says they’re going to dress a certain player, the other responds in kind.  Then the first team wants extra grit in case (or, more likely, when) the first two players go overboard.  The second team then figures it needs extra grit and so on.  You can pick Montreal or Ottawa on either side here; it works both ways.

Rivalries are great and the Canadiens and Senators appear to be building a good one, especially with teams that should be good for a while if their long-term plans work out.  But letting two preseason games act as a way to ratchet up that rivalry when there aren’t consequences for running around is asking for trouble.

Speaking of consequences, there were two fines from Tuesday’s game, both going to Ottawa players while somehow, Jayden Struble avoided even the token fine.  So basically, there weren’t any consequences.  The message from the league just got sent that they can do this all again on Saturday where coaches will spend the game basically praying no one takes a cheap shot on one of their top players and nothing will come of it if something happens.  I don’t know about but that’s not the ideal mindset to have this close to the start of the season.

All of this can easily be avoided.  Montreal needs to stop choosing to play preseason games against Ottawa.  Make no mistake, this is their choice to do so; the league doesn’t set preseason schedules, teams do.  It’s all about cost containment, get in and out with same-day travel, meaning no hotels needed.  That’s why there are two Toronto games and two Ottawa games year in and year out, without fail.  Savings come first but maybe avoiding games that could put players at risk should be the bigger priority.

There are other teams that are close enough to Montreal where you could get away with same-day travel both ways.  No, none are as close as Ottawa but some are pretty close to the distance to Toronto, a team they play a home-and-home with every year.  If they can go 781 kilometres to Toronto, the Habs can go 809 to Boston.  Or 835 to Buffalo.  Or 900-something to any of the Metropolitan teams whose city names start with New.  There are plenty of feasible options here that could allow the preseason to be played with much less nonsense or fear of injury.

As I noted near the beginning, teams are capped at playing four preseason games starting next season while the Habs are at six, meaning they need to drop two.  Here’s a golden opportunity to fix this problem, scrap the Ottawa matchups and move on.  Yes, it might cost a little more but when it comes to these preseason fiascos, it’s time for common sense to prevail over dollars and cents.