Montreal Canadiens: Three Lineup Tweaks Dom Ducharme Must Make Now
Reduce Ben Chiarot’s Ice Time
In the postseason bubble, the Canadiens upset the Pittsburgh Penguins in four games and then lost a hard fought series with the Philadelphia Flyers in six games. This wasn’t a deep playoff run but it was still a surprise as the Habs were the 24th ranked team in the regular season, so they weren’t expected to give the Penguins much trouble.
A big reason they were able to defeat the Penguins and make the Flyers sweat a little bit was the play of their top three defensemen. Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry played huge minutes every night and they were terrific.
Claude Julien coached this season like the trio were still playing as well as they did in the bubble. Dominique Ducharme can not afford to make the same mistake.
Chiarot has not been nearly as effective this season. The top pairing of him and Shea Weber have routinely struggled to keep up with the speed and skill of the opponent’s top line, but they continue to be matched up against Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Elias Pettersson, Mark Scheifele or whoever is good in Ottawa.
They haven’t been good enough. Weber has been a top pairing defender for more than a decade but at 35 years old he may not be quite as prepared to play as many minutes per night as he usually does. He currently leads the Habs in ice time with 23:08 per game. While Weber could use a lighter load, it’s Chiarot who needs to be moved down the lineup.
He is averaging the third most ice time per game for the Habs. He plays one second less per night than Petry and if he didn’t spend so much time in the penalty box, he’d be ahead of the American defender and second on the team in average time on ice.
That has to stop right now.
Chiarot is not a great skater and can’t be responsible for trying to shut down Matthews and Mitch Marner. His puck moving abilities are not the best which doesn’t make him an ideal partner for Shea Weber. He is a poor man’s Shea Weber and both of them need to be on the ice with someone who can routinely skate the puck up ice or make a stretch pass to a teammate in the neutral zone.
They don’t belong together and Chiarot isn’t playing well enough to show he belongs in the top four. There are other options as Brett Kulak has shown chemistry with Petry in the past and young blue liners Victor Mete and Alexander Romanov should be given a chance to play regularly and see if they can provide a better partnership with Weber than we have seen thus far this season.