2024-01-17 19:07:30
It wasn’t entirely planned that way.
When Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes arrived at the helm of the Canadian, the organization already had defensemen like Kaiden Guhle, Alexander Romanov, Logan Mailloux, Arber Xhekaj, Jordan Harris and Jayden Struble in its nursery. With the exception of Harris, these are all guards who have a frosty side that makes them difficult to play against.
This pleased the former administration.
Not stopping there, the new management added Lane Hutson, Adam Engström, David Reinbacher and Bogdan Konyushkov in the draft, in addition to getting their hands on Justin Barron with a trade.
On the eve of the start of the season, during a lengthy interview with Radio-Canada Sports, Hughes agreed that the talent he has on hand on defense is the main building block on which the Tricolore can build.
Things haven’t changed since.
However, looking at how good teams are put together, we realize that it is very rare to see teams flourish with a very rich breeding ground of hopes in defense and at the same time very thin in attack.
At a time when they were struggling a bit and Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry were at their peak, the Anaheim Ducks decided to stock up on young defensemen. Thus, between 2010 and 2014, they selected Cam Fowler, Hampus Lindholm, Shea Theodore, Josh Manson, Brandon Montour, Sami Vatanen and Marcus Pettersson.
The Ducks had so many defensemen that they made the mistake of thinking Theodore was too much, and they outright gave him to the Vegas Golden Knights in the expansion process.
In principle, this bank of young people in such a prized position should have allowed them to establish their competitiveness over several seasons. But despite appearances in the final four in 2015 and 2017, and even if Vatanen allowed the Ducks to get their hands on center Adam Henrique, these assets left one after the other and the Ducks became lame.
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Jayden Struble lends a hand to goalkeeper Cayden Primeau.
Photo: The Canadian Press / Graham Hughes
Quantity and time
Several fans are worried about the lack of additional resources available to the CH in attack. Finding yourself with such an arsenal of young defensemen, but with so few offensive prospects, puts the organization in an unusual position.
That’s why Hughes talked Monday about the possibility of transferring some of that capital to the blue line in offensive assets.
The Habs are not at all at the same stage of their evolution as the Ducks were in the mid-2010s, but there will be a similar exercise to carry out to sort through their many young defensemen and determine which ones can be used to strengthen the team in other departments.
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If we have the opportunity to balance the books, we will explore these avenues, indicated Hughes during his mid-season review. Do I have the impression that we have a gun to our head to act immediately? No way. When we traded Alexander Romanov, people may have been surprised at the time that we did that. We didn’t do it because we didn’t like Romybut because we thought we had enough depth in defense coming from the left side and we had the chance to get a center player who could be very useful to us.
Hughes said the more encouraging the development of his defensemen – whether in Montreal or elsewhere – is, the more time it gives him to make informed decisions about who should stay and who should go.
In this regard, the CH has the luxury of quantity. He will have room for error in designing his defensive squad, because if some young players don’t fully meet expectations, others will. The emergence of Struble is a good example.
Time is a double-edged sword. First of all because he will soon press in the case of Barron, who will become eligible for waivers starting next season. Martin St-Louis had seen progress on the defensive level, but it was not verified constantly enough. Recently, he preferred to insert the left-handed Guhle on the right rather than using Barron.
Taking the time to properly evaluate is important, but the staff must also not miss their opportunities and still have in hand a young player who has lost his value.
More complex exchanges
It’s unlikely that Montreal can add edge talent on offense without giving up one of its best young guards. It would be a real tour de force to add a top 6 attacker to the backs he is ready to part with.
We could use some of our young players if we feel we have a surplus at a certain position, or use some of our draft picks. We have 22 over the next two drafts. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t use them all. We would use some of them to do what we did for the acquisition of Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook, added the GM.
Two draft picks were necessary to acquire Newhook. The arrival of Dach was done in two stages: giving Romanov to the New York Islanders for a first round pick, and then using this first pick to get Dach.
This may seem even more complicated to accomplish, but Hughes found in his discussions that being the most interested in a player is not enough to get him if what he has to give in return does not align with the needs of the other party. This is what happened in the Pierre-Luc Dubois case. What the Canadiens had to offer didn’t match what the Winnipeg Jets were looking for.
Hughes therefore keeps the door wide open for this type of two-way trade, so that his young defenders and his draft picks allow him to get the coveted forward.
These big moves may be more appropriate in the summer rather than at the trade deadline, but the surplus of defensemen and draft picks will certainly come into play in the coming months.
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