The Montreal Canadiens have started the season 0-4-0 and have only scored three goals in those four losses.
Two of the losses have been embarrassing as they completely failed to show up to play the Buffalo Sabres and San Jose Sharks. Those two teams were awful last season and predicted to be near the bottom of the standings this season, but they outscored the Canadiens 10-1 in a pair of games in the past week.
This had to result in some changes, and that was evident in practice yesterday.
Head Coach Dominique Ducharme shook up the lineup at yesterday’s skate after a putrid effort against the Sharks on Tuesday night. He had to change something and it’s a little early in the season to make a big trade or call up a hot player from the minors since they have only played two games so far.
So, he completely revamped the lineup. The lines at practice yesterday, and presumably the lineup tonight looked like this:
Hoffman Suzuki Gallagher
Drouin Dvorak Anderson
Toffoli Perreault Caufield
Lehkonen Evans/Brooks Paquette/Armia
Kulak Petry
Chiarot Wideman
Romanov Savard
There are some interesting things going on with these lines.
First, the good. I have wanted to see Gallagher with a more offensive centre for years. While he became a regular 30 goal threat with Phillip Danault as his centre, Danault was not much of a playmaker. He is an excellent defensive centre, and can keep the play alive on the forecheck in the offensive zone, but he wasn’t setting up Gallagher for great chances off the rush or beating defenders with dazzling stickhandling before sliding a puck to Gallagher as he headed for the net.
Nick Suzuki can do that though. He is an amazing puck handler, setup man and though he isn’t as good defensively as Danault, he has just as much hockey sense and intelligence on the ice. Putting two of the team’s best goal scorers on Suzuki’s line could be fun to watch.
I also like the new defence pairings… well, I at least like them more than the previous ones. Basically, the big switch here is Ben Chiarot and David Savard are no longer together. They are both defence-first(only) defencemen and did not find chemistry quickly. They both need a puck moving partner and Chiarot definitely has that in Wideman while Romanov is a great skater who can handle the puck on Savard’s pair as well.
The defence as a group is far from elite, but if Kulak and Petry can find their chemistry from the 2020 postseason, this is as good as it can possibly get right now.
The bad with this lineup is how it highlights the team’s lack of depth at centre. After losing Danault, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Eric Staal to free agency and replacing them with Christian Dvorak and depth pieces, there really isn’t a third line centre.
If Jake Evans is moving back to the fourth line to play with Artturi Lehkonen and Joel Armia, the team doesn’t have a good option to play the middle of the third line.
Putting Mathieu Perreault between Tyler Toffoli and Cole Caufield just doesn’t make sense. Those two winger can snipe and need a playmaking middle man, but Perreault just isn’t it.
Also, though they may not have any better options, Brett Kulak just isn’t a top pairing defenceman. Joel Edmundson isn’t really either but he played great with Petry last season. He is out of the lineup as his father deals with lung cancer so it is totally understandable but that leaves an irreplaceable hole on the left side of the Canadiens blue line.
I never thought I would call Edmundson irreplaceable but the Canadiens just don’t have anything close to a top pairing left defenceman on this team.
So, the top six looks good and the bottom two defence pairings and structured better. But that third line centre is a glaring hole and Jeff Petry doesn’t have a partner. It will be interesting to see how it all looks tonight against the Carolina Hurricanes.