Montreal Canadiens: How Good Can Kaiden Guhle Be In His Prime?

The Montreal Canadiens selected Kaiden Guhle with the 16th overall selection in the 2020 NHL Draft. He was a big, mobile defender, and loved to throw his weight around to kill plays at the blue line. His offensive game was very raw, but he could skate like the wind and had NHL size.

Fast forward to the 2022-23 campaign, and Guhle was one of the most consistent Canadiens defensemen, when healthy. While he used his body less to throw hits, and more to prevent zone entries and skate the puck out of danger, he exhibited tremendous growth in his game. And when he did catch an opponent, he showed that he still has the ability to throw big body checks.

He is able to pass the puck well and has good vision, accompanied by a solid shot, but there is certainly room for him to grow his offensive game.

Kaiden Guhle’s Ceiling With Canadiens

Guhle can make plays at high speed, and he has the skating to get himself into prime areas to set up plays. Something that will be very telling in developing his offensive toolkit, will be his ability to slow things down when attacking the net, which will allow him to better exploit the open ice. Guhle could stand to be a little more selfish with the puck, as he has a great shot and is able to fire it pretty quickly.

Should Canadiens coaches be able to encourage him to continue shooting, and working on being more deceptive, he will be able to increase his production. In 2022, Guhle played 44 games and added four goals and 14 assists. His plus/minus suffered, but the whole team didn’t play fantastic defensively, which is no surprise; as it was comprised mainly of rookies and that stat is more reflective of team play and not individual performance anyway.

If the Canadiens are healthier this upcoming season, and Guhle plays with a consistent partner, I think he is capable of scoring 10 goals and 25-30 assists. Because of his size, skating and the fact that he is still pretty young, I think in his prime he could produce at a higher rate than that.

He is currently 21 years old, and I think by the time he is 24-25, he could score 10-15 goals and 35-40 assists. He won’t necessarily be leaned upon to produce offence, and he is definitely a defence-first defender, but as a second-pairing staple, you can’t ask for much more than that. Also, that’s not to say that he won’t play top pair. But my heart is set on another player filling the top-pair left defence spot.

I think Guhle is such a talented player, and he is a very important piece for the Canadiens blue line. There is room for offensive growth, and I’d bet on him to do it.

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