Montreal Canadiens: Three Players Most Responsible For Habs Awful Record

Christian Dvorak

The Canadiens made a lot of changes over the offseason and many of them were down the middle of the ice.

Gone are Phillip Danault, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Eric Staal and the only replacements were Christian Dvorak and Cedric Paquette. No one expected Paquette to bring much offence or play any higher than a fourth line centre position.

That made Dvorak the second line centre by default and he had some high expectations coming into the season. The former Arizona Coyotes forward scored 17 goals and 31 points in 56 games last season, which is a pace that would have seen him score 25 goals and 45 points over a full season.

That was with Lawson Crouse on his wing. What could he do with offensive wingers like Jonathan Drouin and Josh Anderson?

Uhh, apparently not much. After 21 games this season, Dvorak has scored just three goals and eight points. Over a full season, he would have 12 goals and 32 points at this rate. That’s simply not good enough. He was brought in to bring more offence than Danault, while sacrificing something defensively.

However, he has not been good at either end of the ice. It can’t be easy to step into a new team and succeed right away, but Dvorak is among the league’s worst plus-minus players, telling us he is on the ice for a lot of goals against while not scoring much at all.

He was expected to be good at both ends of the ice, but he hasn’t been good at either end yet.