The Montreal Canadiens roster went through a lot of turnover in the offseason.
There were major changes at every position but goaltender, though even Carey Price is absent for the first month or so of the season.
The Canadiens were able to plug holes on defence with David Savard and on the wings they brought in Mike Hoffman to fill in for Tomas Tatar. The one spot they didn’t really plug the hole was at centre.
Phillip Danault, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Eric Staal left as free agents and the Habs idea to replace them was by trading for Christian Dvorak. They also expected Jake Evans to take on a much bigger role and perhaps Ryan Poehling would force them to keep him on the NHL roster as a fourth, or even third line centre.
When Poehling failed to take that roster spot in training camp and Evans was quickly moved down to the fourth line after a few games, it left a huge void on the roster.
Mathieu Perreault was moved to third line centre to play with Tyler Toffoli and Cole Caufield. I will admit this had me pointing out the team desperately needed a more creative centre to play with two of their best goal scorers and that the team should even be scouring the waiver wire to look for upgrades.
Then Perreault scored a natural hat trick in the next game.
The 33 year old Quebec native played the last seven season with the Winnipeg Jets and it was primarily as a bottom six winger. He rarely played centre and often did not have players as talented as Toffoli and Caufield on his line. The last time Perreault was really inside the Jets top six was the 2016-17 season and he scored 45 points in 65 games that season.
Since then, he maxed out at 39 points in 70 games the following season and then finishing his final three season in Winnipeg by scoring 64 points in 187 games.
His three goal night with the Habs was just one game, but maybe there is a bit more offence that Perreault has to offer than we realized when he signed his one year contract with the Canadiens. With the paper usage and better linemates than he has had for years in Winnipeg, maybe Perreault can be an offensive centre for this team.
Saturday night’s game where the fans were chanting his name has certainly given him an opportunity to prove himself capable of handling this role. If he can, the Canadiens suddenly have three very dangerous offensive lines.