Montreal Canadiens: Piecing Together Habs Planned Opening Night Forward Lines

The Montreal Canadiens training camp is well underway and preseason games are set to begin this evening. We have seen a few days of informal skates and intrasquad scrimmages, but we will finally see some game action tonight.

The team will play eight exhibition contests between today’s game versus the New Jersey Devils and their final tune-up contest which will be on Saturday, October 8th. It will surely fly by, with those eight games being played in 13 days.

With 74 players invited to camp, the Habs are going to have to make some cuts early on to get things to a manageable number, but at least they have plenty of options to play those first few exhibition games.

Obviously, a lot will be decided in those games. The team will take a look at their six dozen players in camp and try to somehow reduce it to 23 by opening night. However, they clearly have an idea of what they want to see on October 12th when they face the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Bell Centre.

Canadiens scrimmage lines hint at what to expect in regular season

The Canadiens are yet to play a single preseason game, so nothing is set in stone. But they do have lines in the early days of camp that strongly hint at what they want to use in the regular season.

A trio of Christian Dvorak, Evgeni Dadonov and Brendan Gallagher has been together since day one. That could definitely be the team’s second line, and a line that faces some tough competition on a nightly basis.

We know Nick Suzuki, the newly named captain, will be the team’s first line centre but he hasn’t participated yet due to injury. We also know Cole Caufield will be on that top line, and he has been on a line with Filip Mesar and Mike Hoffman. It appears Mesar, the recent first round pick, is holding a spot for Suzuki right now.

We have also seen Jake Evans centering Jonathan Drouin and Joel Armia in the training camp scrimmages. That could be a bottom six line that takes on defensive assignments as well.

Another trio that has been together throughout camp so far is Rem Pitlick with Kirby Dach and Emil Heineman. At first glance, it doesn’t jump out as an NHL trio, but perhpas Heineman is just holding a spot for Josh Anderson who is yet to take part in a scrimmage? If so, a third line of Pitlick, Dach and Anderson could make a lot of sense.

All summed up, that would be an opening night lineup of:

Caufield – Suzuki – Hoffman

Dadonov – Dvorak – Gallagher

Pitlick – Dach – Anderson

Drouin – Evans – Armia

The only thing missing from this lineup is a couple of injured forwards in Paul Byron and Sean Monahan. It doesn’t sound like Byron will be ready by opening night anyway, but Monahan might be. If he is, it will be interesting to see how they fit the veteran centre into this lineup.

Does he even make the lineup if he is healthy? Does he move to the wing? If not, who does move from centre? All questions that will need to be answered if Monahan returns. If he doesn’t, the lines listed above appear to be the ones the Canadiens plan on using in the regular season opener.

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