Montreal Canadiens: Should We Be Reading More Into Habs D Pairings?

Montreal Canadiens training camp is underway and so is the penciling of line combinations by fans.

With Paul Byron out, it is fairly easy to guess the 13 forwards who are likely to start the season with the team with little debate, but putting actual lines together is always a fun exercise this time of year.

With the trio of Tyler Toffoli, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield together, Christian Dvorak playing with Jonathan Drouin and Jake Evans pairing up with Brendan Gallagher, there haven’t been a lot of surprises up front.

The back end seemed like an easier thing to predict. We mostly all thought Joel Edmundson would be paired with Jeff Petry again and that David Savard would take on Shea Weber’s role with Ben Chiarot, leaving Brett Kulak and Alexander Romanov to from a third pairing. But that isn’t at all how the team chose to begin camp.

When the players hit the ice for the first time on Thursday, we saw Romanov skating with Petry, Kaiden Guhle with Savard and Mattias Norlinder with Ben Chiarot which left Kulak with Gianni Fairbrother.

Joel Edmundson skated on his own and is listed as day-to-day with a minor injury.

There are two possible reasons for the odd pairings. First, and admittedly most likely, is the team just wants its top young defence prospects to experience playing with a seasoned NHL veteran for a few days. Eventually, Edmundson will return and skate with Petry while Chiarot and Savard will be put together.

But, what if there is more to these pairings? Chiarot and Savard have never played together, so if the team is going to use them a lot together in the regular season, why not let them build chemistry from day one of training camp?

So, perhaps there is a little more to this.

Maybe the team isn’t sold on Kulak being an everyday NHL player this season and they want to see if a young defender is ready for a bigger role. Maybe they think Romanov is ready to step into the top four and they plan on having a third pairing with a young guy like Guhle or Norlinder with a steady veteran like Savard or Chiarot.

That would give them pairings of Romanov with Petry, Edmundson with Savard and then Chiarot with either Guhle or Norlinder while Kulak serves as the seventh defender.

It’s not the most likely scenario. I’m still guessing we see Edmundson-Petry, Chiarot-Savard and Kulak-Romanov.

However, every day these pairing last, and it sounds like they will heading into preseason Game #1, the odds of a young D making the opening night roster grow. Maybe the young defenders are just getting a few days with a veteran on their pairing, but the longer these pairing stay together, the closer one of those young defenders is to getting a spot in the lineup on opening night.