The Montreal Canadiens have an intriguing young prospect in Mattias Norlidner.
The 21 year old left shooting defender is a terrific skater and offensive minded defenceman that is precisely the type of player the Habs need to add to their blue line.
Their defenders currently are not the swiftest skaters or most offensive type of players. Chris Wideman leads Habs defencemen in points this season with nine and Brett Kulak is tied with Ben Chiarot for second with just six.
Norlinder has the potential to do quite a bit more damage offensively than anyone on the team is right now. He is still young and though he played the past two seasons in pro leagues in Sweden, Norlinder is just getting his feet wet as a pro. While he would be the perfect candidate to play big minutes with the Laval Rocket to learn the pro game here in North America, the only options for Norlinder were to play with the Canadiens or head back to Sweden.
Or so we thought…
It was announced yesterday that Norlinder would report to the Laval Rocket and will play their next three games on a conditioning stint. This is great, as it is much better than him sitting in the press box in Montreal, or suiting up and getting eight or nine minutes per night.
However, it is just a conditioning stint at this point and he is just going down for three games. It was thought Norlinder could not be sent down due to an out-clause in his contract that would have allowed him to go to Sweden instead.
Apparently, that clause no longer exists since Norlinder was on the team’s NHL roster on December 1st. It would make sense to keep him around in Laval as long as they can because the team will need some defensive reinforcements soon.
While Norlinder is pretty far down the team’s depth chart right now, the Habs are struggling and will enter into sellers mode soon enough.
Pending unrestricted free agents Ben Chiarot, Chris Wideman and Brett Kulak should all be traded before the deadline and that opens a ton of room on the blue line for young players.
Jeff Petry, David Savard and Alexander Romanov will likely still be here for the whole season, and if can even get healthy Joel Edmundson will join them. That still leaves two everyday spots up for grabs and it would make a lot of sense to have Norlinder fill one of them to get him accustomed to the NHL game.
He would still have to battle with Sami Niku and Kale Clague, but that is really only if a miracle occurs and everyone is healthy late in the season. The way this season is going for the Canadiens, having too many healthy defenders might never be a problem they run into.
Still, it is interesting that the Canadiens could elect to keep Norlinder in North America for the season. He may have to bide his time with the Laval Rocket for a little while, but he is all but guaranteed a regular spot late in the season after a few trades are made.