Montreal Canadiens Can Find Perfect Fit For Roster On Waivers Today

The Montreal Canadiens made a couple of roster moves earlier this week. Shipped out of town, well more liek across town to the Laval Rocket, were Justin Barron and Mitchell Stephens.

Arber Xhekaj was called up to join the big club and Tanner Pearson returned from injury as well to fill out the roster. While this may not seem like big moves at all, it did leave the team with a far more awkward lineup for head coach Martin St Louis to deal with on a nightly basis.

Replacing Barron with Xhekaj leaves just David Savard and Johnathan Kovacevic as right shot defenders on the roster. That's not the biggest problem to have but the team does have just three natural centers on the roster right now.

With Stephens out, and Kirby Dach and Christian Dvorak injured, only Nick Suzuki, Sean Monahan and Jake Evans regularly play center. That is not ideal and it led to some heavy minutes being played by all three of them on Tuesday night against the Ottawa Senators.

Simply put, the Canadiens need to find another center to join the roster. Centers can be difficult to find and don't just appear out of nowhere and onto your roster.... unless they appear on waivers.

Well, the Canadiens may just find exactly what they need on waivers today. Adam Ruzicka has been placed on waivers by the Calgary Flames and is free for the taking today.

The huge center has just nine points in 39 games this season, which is why he has ended up on waivers. However, the 24 year old looked much better in previous seasons. He scored 20 points in just 44 games for the Flames last season and had 11 goals and 20 points in just 16 AHL games in 2021-22.

So, he has some offensive promise and at 6'4" and 215 pounds he brings plenty of size down the middle of the ice as well. The Slovakian native was a fourth round pick of the Flames in 2017 and steadily rose up through the ranks to become a regular NHLer and has not played 114 career games, scoring 40 points.

The Canadiens literally don't have enough centers and just sent Joshua Roy down to the Laval Rocket which opened up a roster spot. They will not be getting Dvorak or Dach back from injury this season and are likely to trade Monahan in the next couple of weeks. They really need to add some depth to have someone play center for the last 35 games of the season.

Plucking a 24 year old behemoth off waivers for free, especially one who showed some offensive promise in the past two seasons is a no brainer for a rebuilding team who needs to ice a full lineup.