Montreal Canadiens head coach Dominique Ducharme met briefly with the media on Thursday as he was in town for his charity’s annual golf tournament.
Ducharme made a couple of headlines when he mentioned that both Carey Price and Jonathan Drouin will be ready for the beginning of training camp, or shortly thereafter. The Canadiens camp is scheduled to begin on September 22, while their first preseason game is September 25.
Price was not expected to be available on day one due to injury and Drouin’s status has pretty much been a mystery since he took a leave of absence from the team in March.
Ducharme made one other comment that I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise, but certainly caught my attention. When asked about the makeup of the team heading into next season compared to last year, Ducharme said he felt it was very similar. He said although Shea Weber is gone, David Savard is a very similar player who can take on that role.
Then came the part I found interesting as he clearly stated that Jake Evans can fill the void left by Phillip Danault.
I mean, somebody has step into the role that was vacated when Danault signed a six-year contract with the Los Angeles Kings that comes with a $5.5 million annual cap hit. I guess it makes the most sense that Evans is that player, and while Weber’s minutes will be replaced by Savard and Tomas Tatar’s role on left wing will be picked up by Mike Hoffman, there were no centres brought in to replace Danault so the candidate had to come from in house.
Evans played well for most of last season, but when I think of a player replacing Danault, I think of someone playing the toughest of minutes against the best opponent’s every single night. They will also likely play on the same line as Brendan Gallagher.
Evans can play a defensive role, and showed he fit quite well with Gallagher and Danault when moved to the wing in the first round of the playoffs. That didn’t last very long as Evans was injured in Game 1 of the second round, but he certainly did his job when asked.
Still, it is a huge leap to go from the wing on that line for a few big games to playing with Gallagher against the other team’s best every night. Evans is 26 years old and has just 60 games of NHL experience so there is definitely room to grow, and his usage will be one of the more interesting developments to watch early in the season.
Will Evans line up with Gallagher and if so who is on the left side? It wouldn’t make sense to have Mike Hoffman or Jonathan Drouin on such a defensive line, so would it be Tyler Toffoli? It probably makes more sense to leave Toffoli on the top line with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield.
Maybe that means one of Joel Armia or Artturi Lehkonen will play with Evans and Gallagher. Their defensive games would fit right in and make it a shutdown trio that has a touch of offence as well.
It will be interesting to see how the line combinations come together for the Canadiens. I expected more penalty killing time for Evans with Danault gone, but with just 16 career points in 60 NHL games, I wasn’t pencilling his name in next to Gallagher at even strength.
That was before Ducharme met with the media earlier this week. Now I think Evans will be given the opportunity to do everything Danault did last season. It will be fascinating to watch his development as Evans suddenly plays a key role in the Canadiens success in 2020-21.