Montreal Canadiens general manager built his 2020-21 roster around depth. There are no superstar players on the team, but there is lots of depth at every position.
He created that depth by acquiring Jake Allen, Joel Edmundson, Tyler Toffoli, Josh Anderson, Corey Perry and Michael Frolik in the offseason. He added to it before the trade deadline by picking up Eric Staal, Jon Merrill and Erik Gustafsson.
Tonight, the depth of this Habs roster is going to face a very tough test.
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It appears from the morning skate that the Canadiens will be down four forwards for tonight’s game. We knew Brendan Gallagher would be out with his broken thumb. We also got word this morning that Jonathan Drouin is on long term injured reserve as he takes a leave of absence from the team.
Also missing from this morning’s skate were left wingers Paul Byron and Tomas Tatar.
It is no secret that both players have been battling injuries lately. Byron missed the last two games of the Habs recent road trip with a lower body injury and Tatar sat out most of the second half of Saturday night’s game as he couldn’t battle through whatever is nagging him.
If both of those wingers are out, along with Drouin and Gallagher, the Canadiens depth is about to get its biggest test yet.
The lines at morning skate had Artturi Lehkonen playing with Phillip Danault and Josh Anderson. While that’s a reliable defensive line, they’ve never played together before, and only Anderson has more than four goals this season. Nick Suzuki was centering a line with Tyler Toffoli and Cole Caufield. That appears to be a line that could do some damage offensively.
The bottom six is being scraped together. Jesperi Kotkaniemi had Corey Perry and Joel Armia on his wings. That is a couple of slow moving right wingers with Kotkaniemi. It isn’t a terrible line, but they may have to face some pretty difficult opposition tonight.
The fourth line has Jake Evans between Eric Staal and Michael Frolik. Staal has struggled with the Habs and Frolik has played only two games this season. He has been healthy all year, stuck on the taxi squad waiting for a chance to play. It appears that time is now.
With nine games to go before the playoffs, it isn’t an ideal time to run into injuries.
However, Bergevin added lots of depth to this team, and now it is time for those depth pieces to step up and help the team crawl into the postseason.