Montreal Canadiens: Jordan Harris climbing the depth chart

The Montreal Canadiens are getting plenty out of their young, inexperienced defense core to start off the 2022-23 season. With players like Kaiden Guhle stepping up massively, the youth movement in the defense core continues to find ways to get it done.

As the Montreal Canadiens continue on, they are hoping that Jordan Harris can continue to take strides in the right direction. He has continued to get better as the season has gone on early on in 2022-23 for the Canadiens.

He’s not on the first-pairing like Guhle, but Harris has been steady in his position. He’s been playing alongside pre-season wavier claim Jonathan Kovacevic, finding ways to be effective on both ends of the ice. His performance has been very calm and collected.

Harris got the first-game jitters out, looking better in each game after that. As the team continues on with the 2022-23 season, expect Harris to keep finding ways to perform well and be a solid defender on the Habs back end.

Montreal Canadiens defender Jordan Harris keeps getting it done.

The Massachusetts-born defender gets pucks on net and finds ways to create scoring chances. It’s one of the things that has made him look so good to this point. While he may not be putting up a ton of points, he has registered 12 shots on goal and is getting the puck on net, hoping to create scoring chances with tips, redirects, and rebounds.

For Harris, he has played in all four games to this point, picking up an assist along the way. He has performed to a plus-two margin as well in terms of plus-minus. Harris has averaged 19:22 of ice time so far.

Harris has played well and been solid on both ends of the ice. He’s gapping up well on zone entries and being able to get the job done, playing controlled enough not to take penalties. He has one on the year but has been pretty fluent overall.

His performance to this point has allowed Harris to jump up to the second pairing. He came into the season on the third pairing, but with Arber Xhekaj struggling, the Habs have opted to bump up Harris and Kovacevic into the second pairing slot.

The solid performance early on has been great, but there is still room to keep improving. The Habs have to be excited to see how Harris continues to perform. There’s reason to believe that he will keep getting the job done, with solid performances shown early on.

If this happens, he may just keep proving he’s an NHL-caliber defender worth top-4 minutes.