Montreal Canadiens: Trading Ryan Poehling, Nick Suzuki or Jesperi Kotkaniemi Is Inevitable

The Montreal Canadiens have gone from no center depth to plenty of it pretty much overnight. There is no way to find ice time for everyone, so trading one of their young centers is inevitable.

The Montreal Canadiens went decades without having proper depth at the center ice position. When Saku Koivu was a rookie, he was playing third line center behind Pierre Turgeon and Vincent Damphousse who both scored 38 goals and had 96 and 94 points respectively.

That is some solid depth at center ice. However, that was 1995-96 and within a year the Habs would trade away Turgeon for a mediocre return which left them hoping Marc Bureau would become a third line center. He did not and thus began the Canadiens 24 year search for proper depth down the middle.

They were building in the right direction coming out of the 2005 lockout. Koivu had 70 points in 2005-06, Mike Ribeiro had 51 on the second line and a young Tomas Plekanec was playing a solid third line role. However, Ribeiro would be traded following that season and it left them with an aging Radek Bonk as their third line center.

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During their centennial season in 2008-09 they added Robert Lang and it gave them a solid trio with Koivu and Plekanec. However, Koivu was 33 and not quite at the top of his game anymore and Lang was a 38 year old on the last year of his contract so there was not going to be any longevity with this group.

By the 2017 playoffs, the Habs had a cast of centers that included a 23 year old Phillip Danault who had 40 points in the regular season as their number one center, a 33 year old Plekanec who had scored 28 points as their second line center, and some sort of concoction of Andrew Shaw, Brian Flynn and Torrey Mitchell as their bottom two centers.

Fast forward to today, just three years later and the Habs suddenly have a plethora of options at center. In their most recent game, Max Domi was moved from center to left wing to make room for Nick Suzuki to be the second line center. Danault has improved his game to the points he is the middleman on one of the best two way lines in hockey, Jesperi Kotkaniemi was drafted third overall in 2018 and Ryan Poehling is knocking on the door for an NHL job.

There simply isn’t going to be room for all of them. The easiest solution would be to just move one of them to the wing but that doesn’t always work as well in practice. Some players are simply more effective down the middle than they are on the wing. Suzuki has already proven to be a more  dangerous player when he plays center and should stay in the middle.

Danault is another one of those players that just makes sense to keep in the middle. He is the team’s best face-off man and his two-way ability is far more valuable as a center who can be trusted to shut down the opposition’s best center on a nightly basis than it would be as a winger.

General manager Marc Bergevin has already committed to making Poehling a center long term and made it clear to the media after he sent Poehling down that they want to clear a path for him to be a center at the NHL level and not a winger. Kotkaniemi has only played center at the NHL level and his size, vision and creativity make him an ideal fit for a top six center position in the future.

So, where will they all fit? You don’t want to stunt Poehling’s development by forcing him to be a fourth line center for years. It doesn’t make sense to develop Kotkaniemi as a center while he is 18 and 19 years old only to try and turn him into a playmaking winger later on down the road. Suzuki literally just pushed Domi to the wing because his playmaking abilities are best utilized if he is playing center and Danault is one of the best shutdown centers in hockey.

They are all more effective as centers than they are as wingers and are far more valuable while playing down the middle. We have seen teams with extra center depth in the past and instead of moving a player to the wing, they would make trades.

We saw it with the Pittsburgh Penguins who carried Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal for several years but inevitably had to trade one of them and moved Staal to the Carolina Hurricanes. The Boston Bruins drafted Tyler Seguin second overall but he was stuck behind Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci on the depth chart so he was shipped out to Dallas.

When Nathan MacKinnon was first drafted he was the Colorado Avalanche’s third line center because they had Paul Stastny, Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly. They tried O’Reilly on the wing for a while and then did the same with Duchene but neither were player were as effective as when they play center. So, they let Stastny walk via free agency to clear up the logjam.

Of course, the Avs eventually traded both O’Reilly and Duchene as the team fell on some hard times, but the original plan to just move O’Reilly or Duchene to the wing simply didn’t work out as planned.

When the New Jersey Devils drafted Nico Hischier first overall in 2017, it gave them several options at center. They already had Adam Henrique, Pavel Zacha, Travis Zajac and Brian Boyle. Instead of just moving them to the wing they dealt Henrique to fill a void on defence by acquiring Sami Vatanen.

That is exactly what I could see the Habs doing with one of their young centers. The Habs have a huge void on left defence and need a young player that is capable of playing top pairing minutes. Acquiring that player via trade would require a great young player being offered up and the Habs just so happen to have a plethora of young options at center.

I don’t know which one it will be, but it makes too much sense for them to eventually deal from this huge position of strength to finally fill the team’s newest void that they haven’t been able to fill in years.