Easy to forget, given how the playoffs went, that the Montreal Canadiens were pretty damn good last season.

They had the third-best possession number in the league for 2016-17, and that was with Michel Therrien being their coach until mid-February. That number didn’t change much after Claude Julien came aboard, but with a full offseason in which to nail down that system, the number could take off.

Yyeah, okay, systems alone don’t win you everything over 82 games, so that’s why it’s important to note the Canadiens also have Carey Price — who was merely “very good” last year at .923 over 62 appearances and not “transcendent,” as he was in his previous full season — as well as a good amount of talent up front in Jonathan Drouin, Max Pacioretty, Ales Hemsky, and so on. The blue line isn’t great but it’s got some solid guys from Nos. 1 through 6, so that’s not a big issue either.

While they didn’t have the best summer, and there are still plenty of controversies surrounding the management of the team, and there are sexier picks within the division, one has to ask: What, if anything, stops Montreal from being a 100-point team again this year and probably winning the Atlantic?

Any argument against the Canadiens’ third division title in four season, at this point, has to be an argument in favor of another team taking their place. They didn’t really drop off much this summer, even if you expect the loss of Alex Radulov hurts (which it likely does). People expecting the Leafs to take a step forward are right to do so, but how much of a step do we expect here? The Habs were eight points clear of them. The same is true of Tampa, which barely missed the playoffs in a season when almost everything went exactly wrong for them. To predict a big bounce-back season from the Lightning is very understandable.

But for both Toronto and Tampa, the only two other credible picks to win that division, they’d have to get bounces to go their way. They’d need better-than-league-average goaltending from their two goalies. They’d need most of their top guys to keep shooting north of 10 percent (as eight of their top 10 scorers did last year). It’s possible, even plausible, that this comes to pass because that’s their talent level, but is it likely? I’m not so sure.

Same with the Lightning. The talent level is obvious but they need some guys to stay healthy (Steven Stamkos), round back into form (Tyler Johnson, Anton Stralman), and prove they can play the full slate (Andrei Vasilevskiy). If all those things happen, that’s a big stumbling block for the Habs to overcome.

But again, you look at this Montreal roster and see various problems — they don’t have top-end guys up front and no clear No. 1 defenseman, which you usually need to win in the playoffs — but they have enough players who are higher-end for their positions that they can roll with their depth. Price obviously adds a strong pretty reliable safety net as well, if he stays healthy. Plus that whole “They have Julien for the full 82 now” thing is going to work very well in their favor.

Consequently, it’s fair to say that while the Leafs or Bolts need at least a few things to go their way to make a run at the division title, things would probably have to go pear-shaped for the Habs to allow them anything resembling an easy path. That’s not to say there aren’t questions for the Canadiens. How does Drouin look as a center? How well does a D-corps that, talent-wise, scans as largely being defense-first, non-puck-moving guys do in today’s game? How does that forward depth hold up from October to April?

These are all good questions, but if the answers are even something like, “Just fine,” you have to like the Habs’ position to fend off a challenge for that top divisional playoff spot.

I really think the impact of Julien’s expertise can’t be overstated in this discussion. The Canadiens have been a weirdly up-and-down team the past few years. In Price’s MVP year, got killed in most games only to be bailed out every time by their best player. The next year, they got a lot better in terms of how they played the game, but cratered because Price got hurt and one or two key contributors had slightly down years. Last year, everything went well on both fronts and, look at that, they had 103 points despite getting worse the previous summer.