Canadiens: What Does The Future Hold For Laurent Dauphin?

While Montreal Canadiens fans are still cheering about the team winning the draft lottery and subsequently mocking the 8000 trade rumors regarding the first overall pick, Kent Hughes and company also have a couple of other decisions to make this decision and one of them concerns pending unrestricted free agent Laurent Dauphin.

The former 2nd round pick in 2013 was given a golden chance this season after being called up from the Laval Rocket in order to plug in some gaping holes left down the middle to the endless injury list.

Dauphin hadn’t seen an NHL ice since 2019 when then a member of the Arizona Coyotes, the team that drafted him. He only played one game with the big club that year and only 2 NHL games the season prior. Before that he spent the first two years of his career making the odd bounce between the NHL and AHL but was never given a true chance to play.

He would be traded to the Nashville Predators in February of 2019 along with minor league journeyman Adam Helewka in return for Emil Pettersson, a Swedish player who’s never played in North America.

Dauphin would spend the year in the American League with the Milwaukee Admirals. Less than a calendar year later, the Predators would trade Dauphin to the Montreal Canadiens in return for former first round pick Michael McCarron. The hulking winger would finally find a home in the NHL as a regular on Nashville’s 4th line.

As for Dauphin, it would be same old as he stayed in Laval, working hard in order to finally get a call up to the NHL.

In 38 games in the NHL this season, Dauphin finished a respectable tenure scoring 4 goals and 8 assists for 12 points, playing in all kinds on roles. He’s seen time on the second line, on the powerplay, on the penalty kill as well as a checking role on the fourth line. Never did he complain as Dauphin finally seems to have burst the shell and made it to the NHL.

Now the 27 year old is facing free agency and the question is, what do the Canadiens do with him? A healthy Canadiens squad will see next season have Nick Suzuki, Christian Dvorak, Ryan Poehling, Jake Evans and most likely Shane Wright taking turns down the middle.

Dauphin is a centerman first and doesn’t fit well at the wing. That however, can be fixed with the capability of Poehling and Evans to play wing if needed. Poehling and Pezzetta can have rotations on the left side, leaving Dauphin a candidate to nab the fourth line centerman role while Jake Evans can benefit from more time on the right side of the wing.

While “Larry Dolphin” won’t necessarily bring you over the hump, a hard working player who wants to play here and has repeatedly expressed his gratitude to coaches and teammates about playing for his hometown team is nothing to scoff at. Especially when you’re in a rebuild.

The Canadiens are going to need depth as the likes of Mathieu Perreault, Tyler Pitlick and possibly Paul Byron will likely be gone in the offseason. Despite the likes of Cedric Paquette, Jean-Sebastien Dea and Alex Belzile most likely walking in free agency for the Laval Rocket, Dauphin’s place will be better suited as an NHL depth player rather than one taking ice time for a highly touted prospect to develop at the AHL level.

That being said however, Dauphin will really need to step it up at training camp as his job is his to lose. We’re going to see a parade of young and exciting prospects head into the Canadiens’ training camp next season as the likes of Joshua Roy, Jan Mysak, Riley Kidney,  Rafaël Harvey-Pinard and Jesse Ylönen are all going to come in hungry and eyeing a chance to play in the NHL.

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