Anyone who has exhausted all of their personal days at work at once knows that they have to slog through the rest of the year without missing any work at all (paid vacay notwithstanding), lest they start taking unpaid days. It’s a daunting thought that you’ve used up those “safety net” days and have nothing left to fall back on. The Canadiens are in the process of using all of their personal days, before the year even begins.

Your Habs are now 1-6 in the preseason…but it’s just preseason, right? Yes and no.
Yes because:

• these games don’t count in the standings.
• because there’s line experimentation happening.
• because there’s players on the ice that have no business being in the NHL.
• because there’s enough character that they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

But on the flip side, at this stage of the preseason, the Canadiens are going with their projected opening day roster, or as close as it gets to it. While the games are still meaningless in the standings, they ought to be displaying signs of life, of intensity and urgency. A 4-0 drubbing at the hands of the Lightning displays anything but. Can they simply flip the switch when the games mean something? Steven Stamkos said post game last night that that sort of thing isn’t possible. Last night’s game vs Tampa was wretched on all fronts. You can justify listless play by saying that the veterans don’t want to tax themselves; the team is already banged up and so there’s no need to exacerbate that now. But then wouldn’t that apply to every team? Who *does* want to get hurt now? Who wants to get hurt at any time? Might it not be wiser to look at elite players like Stamkos, Lecavalier and St-Louis, who all appear to be in mid-season form? The Canadiens don’t have a player that can match any of those three stars, so I dare submit that the Habs players and coaching staff may want to take notes from some of the league’s best. I don’t know if there’s a link between preseason success and regular season success. But it’s less about the scoreboard and more about the appearance of readiness.

For the most part, we are giving the Canadiens the benefit of the doubt, and I certainly don’t want to sound like I’m stomping on the panic button because I’m really not. But the Canadiens grace period is quickly coming to an end, and the signs of early problems that were there last week are still there today – and it’s not only the rookies who are struggling.

Zero regulation wins in the preseason can be excused now because it hasn’t cost them anything in the standings, but if the same malaise that grips the team in the preseason carries over to the regular season, they will have no fall back excuses. The preseason is for tuning up and building yourself up individually and as a team. It’s a long 82-game season, but with the razor-sharp margin of success and failure, can they afford to bank on just “flipping the switch”? If they choose to coast through September, they had better be doing so confident that they can spring to life and execute when it matters. As a Habs fan, that’s what I’m hoping for. That’s what I’m expecting, and that’s what I believe we’ll get.

But should the Canadiens sputter out of the gates, there will of course, be no shortage of fans willing to preach more patience, deploy more chaff or simply turn a blind eye. The thing about being an exonerator is that there is almost no shortage of excuses just waiting to be spewed to the masses. Just dig deep enough and you can find something to help you sleep at night. Lose the season opener next Thursday in Toronto in ugly fashion? “It’s just game 1 of 82 – relax!” Follow it up with a drubbing in Winnipeg a couple nights later? “The Jets were amped up for the first regular season game in the city in 15 years – relax!” (actually, that one holds some water in my mind – think back to the Senators’ first game in the early 90′s vs the Habs, and what they did for the rest of that year). Should the Habs start out with the same 1-6 record? “Relax, it’s still October, there’s lots of time to recover, and just wait until Markov comes back!”.

Spare me. Habs fans have found excuses for nearly every shortcoming, no matter how small or big. Here are but a few of the greatest hits that I’m sure you remember:

• Blow a 2-0 series lead, and a 3-1 lead in game 4 which would have provided a 3-1 series stranglehold? Simple, just blame injuries (but those same injuries were in place while the team mounted a 2-0 lead, so umm….?).
• A team too small to handle physical play? Blame radio hosts for perpetuating the belief that size and toughness is even necessary. Or just blame other teams for being *too big*.
• A team that is among the league-leaders in minor penalties? Blame biased refs, after all, the Habs are boy scouts, right? They can’t possibly deserve half of the penalties they take, right?
• There’s a system in place that doesn’t fit the players’ collective style? Nonsense! It can’t be the system! Just look at what they’ve accomplished in the past 2 years with so many injuries! (About that – they’ve accomplished exactly nothing. No banners or trophies are awarded for making the playoffs, losing in conference finals, or taking eventual cup champs to overtime in game 7)
• Lowest scoring team in the playoffs? Pfft! Blame everything and everyone except the system and coach that de-emphasizes offense when it’s clear that top scoring teams win Championships.

Enough. I’m not saying that all of the above is pure fiction without an ounce of merit, but excuses have limits; both in scope and duration. The Canadiens now have all of the pieces in place to have a good, if not great year. Even if the injury bug strikes, there’s more flexibility in the lineup than in previous years that they should be able to chug along in the standings without falling off the table.

The Canadiens are busy mailing it in during the September schedule. They’re using all of their “personal days” at once. The safety net is all but gone. Are they willing and able to gut it out for the rest of the year, knowing that the obvious signs of concern that plague them now will have to be solved in the next week? They have to significantly cut down on taking penalties. They have to vastly improve their 5-on-5 play. They have to protect Carey Price and Peter Budaj. They have to stay healthy. All of these can be taken care of, in large part at least, by implementing a more aggressive style that truly focuses on speed, skill, and puck possession.

If they don’t, at least it will be a lot of fun adding to the list of excuses as to why the Canadiens haven’t found success yet.

Rise, exonerators, rise!