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Montreal Canadiens: Andrew Shaw’s promotion is a good move

By Omar L

MONTREAL, QC - DECEMBER 02: Andrew Shaw
MONTREAL, QC - DECEMBER 02: Andrew Shaw /
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The Montreal Canadiens had a few changes at Friday’s practice, and the decision to play Andrew Shaw on the top line could prove to be one that works.

This battle for third in the Atlantic Division is going to be an ongoing journey for the Montreal Canadiens. They’re benefitting from playing in the obviously weaker in the East, but they’ll constantly have the Boston Bruins at nipping at their heels.

Currently, the Habs are tied with Boston for third but are out of a spot because they have more games played. Continuing to lose games isn’t an option, and the team was fortunate enough to get a point from the Calgary loss.

Montreal wasn’t necessarily playing poorly, save for the second period against St. Louis, but you can tell that Claude Julien was going to make a tweak. Good news is that Jonathan Drouin looks to be back and ready to face Edmonton on Saturday. He was reunited with Alex Galchenyuk at practice leaving Jacob de La Rose as the odd man out.

However, it wasn’t Paul Byron on Drouin’s right. The top line had a new face on it, and it was Andrew Shaw.

After that ‘bomb’ dropped, fans took to their keyboards to share their thoughts on it. The fact of the matter is this, Drouin and Galchenyuk have had their moments of, “oh my goodness did you see that?!”, but they haven’t dominated another line.

Byron supplied further speed to the trio, but save for the games against Detroit; we didn’t see too much offence generated. Going further, the points that were put up were mostly off the rush opposed to the result of pressure in the enemy zone. For the most part, they were an opportunistic line.

The Final Piece

To be honest, Drouin and Galchenyuk looked their most dangerous when Artturi Lehkonen was playing with them. Marc Dumont from The Athletic tweeted out a very telling graphic Friday evening on the difference in production for Drouin and Galchenyuk based on who they lined up with

Ignoring Corsi for a second (the blue bar), both players had the most scoring chances when playing with Lehkonen. All three can make plays with the puck, but Lehkonen also has that willingness to work along the boards and get right into those dirty areas for deflections or rebounds.

Unfortunately, he’s still out with an injury, and the Montreal Canadiens haven’t provided any timeline on when he’ll return. Lehkonen was skating on his own last week, but that still doesn’t give us any answers. This is where Shaw comes in.

Plan D

Lehkonen and Shaw play a very similar style. The 26-year-old has been doing all those things all season long and has seven goals and eight assists to show for it. Shaw could be a possible stop-gap to get Drouin and Galchenyuk back to that level of danger they had with Lehkonen.

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Another thing that he would bring is that 54.8 faceoff percentage. It’s a broken record by now, but Drouin and faceoffs aren’t the perfect matches right now with his 40.8%. Julien has been making use of Shaw’s ability to win in the circle on the top unit of the power-play, and it’s transitioned over to even-strength.

If you look back at the highlights and watch Shea Weber‘s goals, you’ll get another sense of how important a faceoff win can be in a game. Therefore, if Drouin loses, Shaw can come in, win it, and the Montreal Canadiens have possession instead of having to spend time working to get the puck back.

It’ll be interesting to see if this will be more than just a random experiment at practice. I think it could work; there’s no better team in the NHL to try this on than the Edmonton Oilers.

Next: A Tough Decision Ahead

What do you make of Shaw playing Drouin and Galchenyuk? Will it work? Let us know your thoughts down below.

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