When Montreal Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes shipped veteran Joel Edmundson to Washington back on July 1st, the Habs defense corps appeared to be set.
As it turns out, the Habs general manager was not done dealing and two Jeff Petry trades later the Canadiens had added another young defenseman to the mix. The acquisition of Gustav Lindstrom has set the stage for what should be a fascinating game of musical chairs to find out which defender will be left without a seat.
Before we go any further, it should be noted that Lindstrom is no scrub. The 6’2”, 183 lb right hand shot was an early second round pick and is still only 24 years old. He already has 128 National Hockey League games under his belt, which is more than many of the inexperienced defensemen he will be competing with for a spot in the lineup.
It’s not yet known if the Canadiens will break camp with seven or eight defensemen to start the season. By all accounts, Mike Matheson, David Savard and Kaiden Guhle are locks to be in the top six. Should the Habs decide to carry eight, that role would likely go to Chris Wideman. If they choose to keep only seven, I suspect Wideman would go on waivers and as a result is not really part of this conversation either way.
Assuming Logan Mailloux, Jayden Struble and William Trudeau are all pegged for Laval, the training camp battle essentially comes down to five guys fighting it out for four spots. It’s hard to imagine any of Justin Barron, Jordan Harris, Jonathan Kovacevic, Arber Xhekaj or the newcomer Lindstrom being sent down to the Rocket but barring injury one of them will have to be.
Xhekaj stands out from the others because of his physicality and willingness to drop the gloves and defend teammates, for that reason I think Xhekaj will grab one of the available slots.
There is a glaring need on the right side behind Savard and I believe Kovacevic and Lindstrom have a leg up on Barron in that regard at the moment. Kovacevic was a pleasant surprise last season and played very well on the third pairing, he did not look at all out of place. Lindstrom played a similar role in Detroit on a much deeper team. They are also both 2017 draft picks and further along in the learning curve than Barron, so in my opinion they will lay claim to the next two spots.
That leaves Barron and Harris circling each other for the remaining chair. To be honest, most of these guys will probably be rotating in and out of the lineup. So the same logic we used for Barron earlier applies again here.
With Harris being older, it would hurt his development less to be a healthy scratch from time to time. It’s actually refreshing to see that Barron is not being rushed, unlike what we have seen with some Habs prospects in the past. Hello Victor Mete!
It benefits Barron much more to play a high usage role in Laval then a depth one in Montreal. As a result, I anticipate that it will be Harris that gets the final chair when the music stops.
The truth is this whole exercise is done under the false pretense that everyone is going to remain healthy. We all know injuries are part of the game and in all likelihood we will see all these players on the Canadiens lineup card at some point in the season. Similar to last year though, it appears that Barron may be the odd man out, for now.
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