Quebec-born Montreal Canadiens goalie Sam Montembeault might not even play at the 4 Nations Face-Off as Canada’s third option.

Montreal will play host to the 4 Nations Face-Off. But when Canada plays Sweden in the first game of the tournament on Wednesday, don’t expect much of a hometown advantage in Montreal.

Technically, the province of Quebec will be represented by just one player — and there’s a good chance he won’t see a second of ice time.

If all goes according to plan, Samuel Montembeault will not even be on the bench.

To some, he shouldn’t be on the team.

Only one other goalie in the NHL has lost more games than Montreal’s Montembeault this year. Heading into the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Montreal Canadiens goalie ranks 34th overall with an .897 save percentage and 39th with a 3.00 goals-against average (3.00) among netminders with at least 20 games played.

Among Canadians, there are a whopping 10 others who have better numbers.

Those include Washington’s Logan Thompson, Los Angeles’ Darcy Kuemper and Colorado’s Mackenzie Blackwood — all passed over in favor of Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Montembeault.

There is no question that Binnington and Hill haven’t been great this season. But at least they have won the Stanley Cup.

Which raises the question: was Montembeault’s selection over Ontario’s Thompson, Saskatchewan’s Kuemper and British Columbia’s Blackwood based on something more than merit?

Canada already has plenty of players from Ontario, Saskatchewan and B.C. What they were missing was a player from Quebec.

“It doesn’t get mentioned very much, this is Hockey Canada,” longtime hockey analyst John Shannon said on Oilers Now with Bob Stauffer in early December. “And I know it’s not a topic that gets brought up a lot in the province of Alberta, but if you look at the ratio of French-Canadian players to Anglos on the Canadian team, I don’t think they had any choice but to pick Samuel Montembeault for this roster.”

It’s no secret that Canada always strives for representation from across the country. On the 4 Nations Face-Off roster, there are seven players born in Ontario, four each in Alberta and B.C., three each from Manitoba and Nova Scotia, and one each from Quebec and Saskatchewan.

Arguably, Quebec should have even more.

This year, 6.1 percent of the NHL is represented by Quebec-born players. That is the second-most of any region behind only Ontario (17.6 percent), and it’s up from the 5.3 percent from last season. And yet, you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the overall stats.

Sadly, this isn’t a great year for Quebec-born players.

The top-scoring forwards out of Quebec are Jonathan Marchessault and Pierre-Luc Dubois, who are tied for 60th overall among all NHLers with 44 points. Depending on your criteria, the best Quebec-born defenseman is either Thomas Chabot, Mike Matheson or Kris Letang.

In other words, we’ve come a long way from when Martin Brodeur, Mario Lemieux and Guy Lafleur were among the best in the world.

It’s certainly a far cry from when three French-Canadian players (Patrice Bergeron, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Corey Crawford) represented Canada at the 2016 World Cup or when Quebec had four players (Bergeron, Vlasic, Martin St-Louis and Roberto Luongo) in the 2014 Olympics.

This time around, Quebec’s lone representative will be Canada’s third-string goalie who had a 2.99 goals-against average and .901 save percentage at the time of the roster announcement on Dec. 4. A couple of months later, and the decision looks even more suspect.

There were suggestions that Montembeault was picked with an eye towards the 2026 Olympics. But Montembeault is 28 years old. He’s the same age as Blackwood and a year older than Thompson. But being from Quebec and playing for the Montreal Canadiens doesn’t hurt. No one from his province was better, aside from maybe 40-year-old Marc-Andre Fleury.

Well, hopefully, that will change. Last year, the top player selected out of Quebec in the 2024 NHL draft was Sacha Boisvert (18th overall). This year, Caleb Desnoyers and Justin Carbonneau are the top-ranked players out of the QMJHL, and both are expected to be first-round picks.

Maybe they will one day represent Canada at an Olympics or some other best-on-best competition. If they do, hopefully, they have the numbers to support the decision.

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