MONTREAL — On the seventh day, the Montreal Canadiens rested.
Playing four games in six nights to start the season, with three coming against division rivals and two coming against teams they will potentially be competing with for a playoff spot down the road, was a tough ask of a team that had so many questions that needed answering this season.
The Canadiens are still seeking a lot of those answers, and that’s normal after only four games. The team took a day off Tuesday after completing a difficult stretch to begin the season with two wins and two losses. Their schedule gets very light as of now, with three games in 11 days, so coach Martin St. Louis will have a lot of time to correct some issues that have popped up.
Let’s take a look at how some of those questions are looking at this early stage of the season.
How will the defence be deployed?
Yeah, no answers here.
For a third straight game Monday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Canadiens switched their defence pairs in the second period. In Boston, the explanation was that on the road, the Canadiens couldn’t control the matchups, so splitting up Mike Matheson and Kaiden Guhle made sense. Against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday, the switch-up was largely temporary, but it happened. And then it happened again against the Penguins, more permanently this time over the final 40 minutes of play.
“Guhles and Matty are on the ice, not together, that’s two defencemen that are very hard to play against defensively, so I like that,” St. Louis said after Monday’s 6-3 loss to the Penguins. “When you play a team where you’re worried more about just one line, you can kind of keep them together. But there’s a lot of teams that bring a second wave that you kind of pay attention to, so sometimes it benefits us to separate them.”
The thing is, St. Louis knew going into the game that the Penguins’ second wave is dangerous, anchored by an Evgeni Malkin that is off to a tremendous start to the season. This was not a surprise.
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The pairings the Canadiens switched to in three straight games don’t only separate Matheson and Guhle, they separate all three of their pairings and provide far more balance across the board. But most importantly, it essentially makes the new pairing of Guhle and Lane Hutson the de facto top pairing.
St. Louis’ explanation does not mention the things he probably can’t say. Yes, the new pairings allow him to have one of Guhle or Matheson on the ice more often, but it also prevents him from having Justin Barron and Arber Xhekaj on the ice at the same time, and it allows him to get Hutson on the ice more often because he is paired with Guhle, his most reliable defender.
Jayden Struble is getting healthy, and out of Xhekaj, Barron and him, Struble had the best training camp. How will Struble get back in the lineup? Will Xhekaj come out? Will Struble have to play on the right instead of Barron? Will the three of them rotate in and out?
And lost in this shuffle is David Savard, who loses Hutson as a partner and gains Xhekaj when the pairings change. He played his third straight game Monday in which his ice time was below 17 minutes, something that happened only four times all of last season.
So, many questions remain on how the Canadiens defence will be deployed, but what’s no longer in question is the impact Hutson has had on these decisions. Speaking of which …
How will Hutson adjust to the NHL?
St. Louis mentioned after the game against the Penguins how badly their fifth goal hurt the Canadiens. It’s hard not to pin that goal on Hutson. Yes, he was playing deep in the offensive zone and one of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield or especially Juraj Slafkovský should have recognized that and covered for him.
But the pass Hutson made out of the corner to Suzuki relatively high in the zone was an example of knowing how to manage risk and knowing when to accept the simple play that’s in front of you, something Hutson himself recognized he is still learning about at the NHL level.
“I definitely feel comfortable possessing pucks and hanging on to it when I should,” Hutson said Monday morning. “But I’m also learning that sometimes the play right ahead of me is the best one instead of the one that I see that I can maybe make myself. That’s something I’m still adjusting to and learning. We have so many great players here that you want to get the puck to guys when they’re in good scoring positions and good spots.”
Suzuki was definitely in a good scoring position, and the Canadiens were down a goal late in the game, but there was a play right in front of him that was available to Hutson, which was to rim the puck along the wall to Slafkovský waiting for it on the other side of the ice. There was far less of a chance of that play resulting in a turnover that turned into an odd-man rush going the other way.
But as Hutson himself recognized, that’s a learning curve he is currently going through and something the Canadiens are more than willing to live with. Because the reality is Hutson’s impact on the Canadiens has been vastly more beneficial to the team than detrimental.
Lane Hutson and Sidney Crosby chase the puck during Monday’s 6-3 loss to the Penguins. (Eric Bolte / Imagn Images)
“Offensively, it seems like there’s always a chance we’re going to score when he’s out there. That’s fun to play with, fun to watch,” Guhle said. “Defensively, I didn’t realize how smart he is. Obviously he’s a smaller guy and still has room to grow physically. But I think his brain is next level. He doesn’t put himself in bad spots; he’s got a really good stick and I just think his hockey IQ is off the charts. Playing with him, there’s nothing to really not like.”
It’s also worth mentioning how difficult it is for a young player like Hutson to play within what the game is calling for when every time he touches the puck, the Bell Centre crowd swells in anticipation. That’s not easy and is another thing Hutson will need to learn how to handle as he moves along.
“He’s a really fun player to play with. He helps us forwards so much,” Brendan Gallagher said of Hutson. “You try to give him the puck as much as you can. We’re still learning a few of his tendencies and trying to help him out, but for us, he makes our lives so much easier the way he can create and find you in the O-zone. Whenever you’re on the ice with him you’d better be ready because the puck’s coming.”
When asked how Hutson can deal with that pressure to perform, Gallagher put it quite succinctly.
“It’s not pressure,” he said. “He’s just a good player.”
One thing’s for sure, Hutson has the support of his teammates, even after a game in which his risk/reward calculation might have been a bit off. They recognize how much more dangerous he makes them as a team, and it’s widely recognized in that room that he’s smart enough to adjust.
How will Kirby Dach pick up where he left off?
So far, not great.
It’s understandable though, after so much time missed coming back from a pretty devastating knee injury.
Still, so much of what the Canadiens hope to accomplish depends on Dach being a play driver in a second-line centre role, and thus far, he just hasn’t been that. It’s still very early, that needs to be kept in mind, but there’s a lot of room for improvement in Dach’s game right now.
“I think he’s getting back into game shape,” St. Louis said. “You can train all summer, you can have a training camp, but it’s hard to replicate NHL regular-season games. … It’s going to come with Dacher. I’m not worried about it.”
Dach’s linemate Alex Newhook recognized after the game against the Penguins that the line has been inconsistent, even if he refused to pin that on Dach.
“I think we go through spurts where we kind of show what kind of line we can be,” Newhook said. “I think we’re having a bit of a difficult time right now just sustaining offence, keeping pucks in the offensive zone, keeping pucks alive. But I think we’re really close. It’s a couple of bounces away, a couple of won pucks away from scoring and being difference-makers.”
Dach definitely can do more. It’s early and it is legitimate that he might need time to find his game. But in the meantime, it’s going to be difficult for the Canadiens to compete if he’s not a difference-maker very soon.
Can Josh Anderson bounce back from a forgettable season?
This may not be unanimous, but the answer is yes. And it’s because of a change of mindset.
St. Louis mentioned he had a conversation with Anderson early on about his role changing. He’s largely been leaned on as an offensive player over his time in Montreal, but with more offensive depth this season, his role was about to change.
Instead of pushing back, Anderson embraced it. He was getting a role on the penalty kill, something he had early in his career in Columbus, and he was excited about it. He would be in a bottom-six role, meaning he would have to do more than score, and he was excited about it.
If you forget his $5.5 million salary, he is best suited for an energy line role, and that is exactly what he has on a line with Gallagher and Jake Evans. They have been the Canadiens’ most consistent line through four games, playing the role they have been given perfectly.
So much of the expectations the Canadiens have for success this season is based on their depth up front. Not too many third lines in the league have close to $14 million tied up, but for the Canadiens, at this moment, that is a strength more than it is a hindrance.
And even though Anderson has one goal and no assists through four games, he is having an impact. In the first period against the Penguins on Monday, after needing more than 11 minutes to register a shot on goal, Anderson got the puck in the neutral zone, chipped it in deep, went after it and hammered a Penguins defender as he attempted to retrieve it. It generated a rise in a crowd that had been largely dormant, and that energy fuelled the following shifts to help change the momentum of the game to that point.
“He’s playing to his strengths,” Gallagher said. “He’s a very competitive guy, he wants to win and he’s finding ways to contribute every single night. You’re not always going to be showing up on the scoresheet. These are the best players in the world, you’ve got to find other ways to contribute. Andy does so many things for our team that probably go unnoticed by people outside this locker room. But inside here, he’s got so much respect. We put a lot of responsibility on him and he shows up every night and plays hard for his teammates.”
The version of Anderson we’ve seen through four games will help this team win, even if he hasn’t lit it up scoring-wise just yet.
(Top photo of Kris Letang scoring on Sam Montembeault: Matt Garies / NHLI via Getty Images)
