Montreal Canadiens: 5 Players Who Have to Step Up in the Playoffs

Number 2: Shea Weber

Shea Weber can be grouped into over-hated players along with Carey Price and Jonathan Drouin. These players are the Over-Payed and the Over-Played.

There have been people that have speculated the team is better with these guys out of the line-up, and that is frankly pretty ridiculous. The problem seems to not lay with the players, but with the coach.

Price is an effective goalie when he is rested and healthy. Weber can still play physically demanding hockey. Drouin still has a lot of skill. But should these guys be a top-six forward, top-pairing defenseman and the player asked to carry a weak scoring team? No.

Each of these players is useful, but they have to be used correctly. And that is especially true with Weber.

Weber has played in over 20 minutes a game on average every year in the NHL after the 2007-2008 season. That amounts to 24,958 minutes played in the NHL. Those are not easy minutes. They include 9 seasons where Weber registered over 100 blocked shots and 12 seasons with over 100 hits (the only seasons less than 100 hits have been this year and 2017-2018, where he was limited to 26 games due to injury).

Injuries have become a problem for the 35-year-old defenceman. In 2018, Weber missed 49 games due to a foot injury, and the next year he missed 24 games due to knee surgery. This year, he already missed 6 games due to a sprained ankle and has missed the last games of the season this year with a lower-body injury. That is 90 games and counting of missed games just with Montreal.

This year has been his worst year as a Canadien. He has still eaten up big minutes, 22:42 on average, and has played against some of the top forwards in the league. But all those minutes have been filled with defensive gaffs and terrible turnovers.

This has been Weber’s worst year offensively too, as he has only 6 goals and 19 points, the lowest totals of his career since his rookie campaign. Weber has never been known for his offence, but it is nice to have, especially for a Montreal team that has struggled to score during his tenure as captain.

Now, if the Montreal Canadiens are going to make it past Toronto they are not going to need Weber’s offensive prowess as much, but they need him to be at the top of his game defensively. Weber is going to be drawing up against Matthews and Marner or Tavares and Nylander, and those are the lines that Montreal needs to shut down.

I have been an advocate of Weber all of this year. This off-season was a short one, end of August (for the Montreal Canadiens who were eliminated in the first round) to mid-January as opposed to April to October. The schedule was short but compressed, something that was compounded by the COVID break. That can take a toll on an older, physical defenceman.

When you think of players that are still successful later in their careers, Corey Perry or Jason Spezza or Joe Thornton come to mind. They play a step behind the rest of the league, but they use their hockey smarts to make up for their lack of foot speed. This should be no different to Weber, who was never known for his speed or skating prowess.

When you think of players that are too old for the NHL, you think of the ones that are too slow. When you think about tired and worn-out players, you think of bad decisions, and that is what Weber has been this year. Not saying that Weber will return to former glory, but it is hard to see Weber being this bad in the future.

Weber has always been a smart player, that has always depended on positioning and hockey sense to succeed in the defensive zone. That is something that should translate well into his later years, but that has not been the case this year.

Ducharme and Bergevin seem to like the whole legacy, not currency, and it seems like Weber will have a big part in the first round. Should Jeff Petry and Joel Edmundson be given the first pairing distinction? Yes. Would Weber be most efficient with fewer minutes and a more sheltered role? Absolutely. Will either of those things happen? The jury’s out on that, but possibly no. And if it is a no, Weber is going to have to have a major return to form.

Well, that is the defensive side of the game. But that is only half the battle. You have to score some goals if you want to win some games.