When Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes pulled off the trade for Kirby Dach at the 2022 NHL Draft, sending out a young, promising defenceman in Alexander Romanov to try to add a promising core piece, it was widely lauded as a bold, calculated risk. A year later, when they sent out a late first- and early second-round draft pick to the Colorado Avalanche in return for Alex Newhook, it was seen largely as a similar play.
Those two trades have become the archetypes of the Gorton/Hughes regime: moves that looked to take advantage of unrealized potential in other circumstances and create the circumstances for that potential to be realized in Montreal.
It would be easy — and not necessarily wrong — to view the July 1 trade for Zachary Bolduc with the St. Louis Blues in exchange for Logan Mailloux as similar to the Dach and Newhook trades because they are all cases of the Canadiens drawing from a source of excess to address an area of need. Romanov was seen as expendable because Kaiden Guhle was on the way, and the late first- and early second-round picks used to acquire Newhook were a bit redundant seeing as this administration had already made five picks in the first two rounds at that point, with two more first-round picks to come a year later.
However, one important thing separates Bolduc from Dach and Newhook, and that’s the notion of unrealized potential. Dach and Newhook arrived in Montreal not having established themselves in the NHL, without a true identity as an NHL player, and one could argue that remains the case today.
But Bolduc is already a different story.
His rookie season with the Blues made his identity very clear, and the Canadiens were therefore dealing less in the realm of the unknown. Bolduc arrives more as a turn-key player, with the Canadiens knowing exactly what they’ve acquired, which made the high price they paid much more palatable.
And this process happened over the course of Bolduc’s rookie season, because the player he was at the beginning of last season was vastly different from the one he was at the end.
To get a picture of just how much Bolduc evolved last season, we watched 10 of his regular season games spread across the season and all seven of his playoff games.
Gorton pointed to the arrival of Jim Montgomery as Blues coach on Nov. 24 as the turning point for Bolduc, and there is some truth to that.
“Really since Jim Montgomery went there, his game took off,” Gorton said in July. “And we took notice of that.”
But that’s not the whole truth. It took time for Bolduc to find his way under Montgomery. Yes, he scored his first two goals of the season in Montgomery’s first game behind the bench. And yes, he had 19 goals and 12 assists in 56 games under Montgomery, tied with Matvei Michkov for second in goals among NHL rookies over that span, behind only Macklin Celebrini’s 21. But heading into a Jan. 25 game against the Dallas Stars at home, Bolduc had been scratched by Montgomery for two straight games and four times in eight games.
But in his second shift of that game, Bolduc (No. 76 for the Blues) did this to Tyler Seguin.
It was not a vicious hit, but it was important nonetheless, because this was not really part of Bolduc’s game prior to Montgomery’s arrival — or even prior to this hit. Perhaps that was why he was scratched to begin with.
“It’s a learning process.”
Jim Montgomery explains the decision to scratch Zack Bolduc tonight (along with Nathan Walker) as Mathieu Joseph and Alexandre Texier enter the lineup. #stlblues pic.twitter.com/covGcisLqN
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For the better part of the start of the season, Bolduc did not seem to view physicality as an essential element of what he did on the ice. Take, for instance, this forecheck against the Minnesota Wild on Nov. 19. Bolduc has an opportunity to make a hit on two separate occasions, if not three. He made none.
Montgomery seemingly wanted to get Bolduc to use his physicality more often, but it wasn’t until he returned from the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off – which was not a break for Bolduc, as he played four games in the AHL – that he started displaying it consistently.
Mike Matheson got a taste of it when the Canadiens visited St. Louis on March 25.
“It’s part of my identity now,” Bolduc said on July 1. “I’m a guy who can skate, who’s not afraid of the physical side, but I can also make plays for my teammates and score some goals. These are all details in my game I want to improve, but yes, the physical side is part of my DNA.”
But forechecking is not only about being physical. It is ultimately about getting the puck back, and sometimes that means applying pressure with speed, sometimes that means peeling off and taking away a passing option. As the season progressed, Bolduc began making these decisions more intelligently, picking his spots to be physical when it was appropriate.
Watch him against the Canucks on March 20 as he sheds some interference from Conor Garland, chases down Quinn Hughes to force him into a turnover, finishes his hit on Hughes and curls back to the middle to take a pass and get a scoring chance from the slot.
He did something very similar to Josh Morrissey in Game 3 of the Blues’ first-round series against the Winnipeg Jets, except in this case, he flat-out beats Morrissey to the puck and secures offensive-zone possession time for the Blues.
Bolduc also proved in that playoff series against Winnipeg that he can be an effective F2, that he doesn’t always have to be first on the forecheck to make a contribution.
He can do that by using his physicality, as he did here against Vladislav Namestnikov…
…and he can do it by using his hockey sense, speed and timing, as he did here to pick off a pass meant for Nikolaj Ehlers.
That playoff series against Winnipeg clearly showed physicality is now part of Bolduc’s identity, but to say it is part of his DNA is wrong, because DNA is something you have in you from birth. Bolduc did not have this in his game as late as February. It is something he developed, something he willed himself to do, which is a positive.
If he can apply that to other areas of his game that Martin St. Louis and his coaching staff will want to work on, it will bode very well for the Canadiens.
Here are a few other traits we noticed in Bolduc’s game that might mesh well with the way Montreal wants to play.
Quick puck decisions
Bolduc is not exactly a dazzling puck handler, but what he does do extremely well with the puck is … get rid of it.
That might not sound like a compliment, but it is, especially for a player coming to a team coached by St. Louis, who wants his team to play fast. That means skating fast, yes, but even more than that it means thinking fast.
Bolduc often makes decisions on what to do with the puck before he gets it, identifying passing targets in spite of heavy pressure or tight spaces, or both.
Like here, where Bolduc is being pressured on the wall collecting a rim and takes no time at all to chip it out in stride to Alex Texier, who would have collected the pass and made an easy exit if he had his stick on the ice.
Or here, where Bolduc unexpectedly gets the puck on a bit of a botched zone entry on the power play and immediately identifies Jimmy Snuggerud as the open man in a quiet area of the ice despite the confusion, allowing Bolduc to eventually get a scoring opportunity, only to have his stick blow up on him.
Net-front presence
Early on in the season, Bolduc’s assignment on offence seemed quite simple. Every time the Blues established possession in the offensive zone, Bolduc religiously went directly to the front of the net and generally would not budge from there. He was good at it. He battles for position, is difficult to move and remains active to free up his hands for rebound and deflection opportunities.
But as the season went along and Bolduc’s game evolved in kind, he was seemingly asked to do more than simply go to the net and create confusion. He was getting more involved in the play, cycling pucks, popping out into open ice, generally being a part of the offence and not simply taking up space in the most important area of the ice. He still went to the net regularly, it was just no longer the only thing he did.
And with that diversity in his role came more opportunities to unleash what is by far his biggest weapon…
His bomb of a shot
There’s not really much point in adding video of Bolduc’s shot because just about any highlight video of him you can find makes that quite evident. Bolduc is a shooter, can beat NHL goalies from distance with regularity and has an excellent understanding of how to play the bumper position on the power play. His shot facilitates that understanding of the bumper role because Bolduc can drift further out to find space to get his shot off, secure in the knowledge he can beat a goalie from that distance, whereas most players need to stay somewhere close to the middle of the slot to have that same assurance.
It is a serious asset for the Canadiens to have.
Adding two lefty shooters in Bolduc and Ivan Demidov to what they already have in right shooters Patrik Laine and Cole Caufield means the Canadiens should have a lefty and a righty sniper on both power-play units.
Bolduc was tied with Jordan Kyrou for the Blues’ team lead in power-play goals last season with 7. He knows what he’s doing.
Bolduc makes ’em pay on the power play. #stlblues
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— FanDuel Sports Network Midwest (@FanDuelSN_MW) December 6, 2024
Takeaways
There are still areas of Bolduc’s game that need improvement. But what his rookie season showed perhaps more than anything else is that he has a capacity to improve, to understand what he needs to do to set himself apart in the NHL. It is not enough to be a sharpshooter who can score from just about anywhere on the ice — there needs to be more to one’s game.
The version of Bolduc that began the season didn’t have that added element to his game. The one that finished the season most definitely did, and that is the version the Canadiens have seemingly acquired: a young forward who arrives in Montreal with the benefit of some polish in St. Louis.
The Canadiens are still trying to figure out how and where Dach and Newhook fit in their plans. They will have to figure the same thing out with Bolduc, but he appears to be on a bit more of a linear, projectable path to getting there.
(Photo: Jeff Curry / Imagn Images)