Montreal Canadiens: Max Domi’s suspension is damaging to the team

The Montreal Canadiens won’t be able to dress Max Domi for the rest of the preseason which will not only impact him but the shape of the roster.

We’re a few days removed from the incident that occurred in the game between the Montreal Canadiens and Florida Panthers. Max Domi chose to send a message to defenceman Aaron Ekblad which resulted in a broken nose, and a five-game preseason suspension.

The first game already went by, but it’s unlikely Domi would’ve been in the lineup anyway. The Brendan Gallagher/Jesperi Kotkaniemi team took to the ice that night defeating the Washington Capitals 5-2 thanks to goals from Jacob de La Rose, Michal Chaput, and Rinat Valiev to name a few.

However, now that the training camp roster number has decreased from 66 to 43, the odds of Claude Julien mix and matching the lines seems more likely. We could see a game where the first two lines had Domi and Kotkaniemi as their centres, or at least we could have. And this is where the damage of the suspension takes place.

The initial uproar by a portion of the Hockey World was due to the fact that Domi isn’t going to feel from sitting out of the preseason. Most players hate the preseason, so in some ways, it could’ve been considered a break to rest and focus ahead of the season opener against the Toronto Maple Leafs. But that’s if Domi was a regular on the team and had been there for years.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg of what can go wrong here.

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It’s fitting the first game of the season is against the Leafs, as they ran into a similar situation after signing David Clarkson. The contract was horrible as he would be making $5.25 million for seven years after only having one 30-goal season to his name. Clarkson wanted to make some kind of impact with the team and chose to do that in the preseason.

John Scott was taking runs at then star winger Phil Kessel and to defend him, Clarkson jumped on to the ice from the bench to fight him. He was given an automatic 10-game suspension, but regular season games, which severely stunted his impact on the team. Granted, the expectations on what he could’ve done weren’t too high, but sitting out for that long didn’t help.

Domi’s situation isn’t as bad, but it’s comparable. He’s one of the new guys on the Habs and is being entrusted with the top line centre role. Although playing with Jonathan Drouin was a favourable experiment, and one that’s looked good so far, it still needs time to develop such that they can be effective as much as possible. The same goes for Joel Armia.

Sure Domi is able to participate in practice, but that’s only practice. Nothing can duplicate a real game experience, and teams start to throw out their complete rosters towards the end of the preseason to see if those trials at training camp are working.

Julien has no outlet to do the same thing now that Domi is out.

Perhaps the Montreal Canadiens throw Drouin back at centre, and he shows improvement. I mentioned this in a previous article, but it’s possible the danger in his play is due to work over the summer and confidence. He’s mentioned the work he’s put in to better himself, and this may be the benefits of it.

That would be a positive for Drouin, but a negative for Domi as he would lose his spot. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of preseason plays out for the Montreal Canadiens with this intact. But it’s moments like these where a head coach has to be versatile and create, so the floor is now yours Julien.