To say it has not been a busy off-season for Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes is a major understatement.
I was reading nhl.com’s piece Friday on the projected lineup for next season and I nearly choked on my Corn Flakes when I saw the lead paragraph on the “key arrivals” to the Habs. Are you ready? Are you sitting down?
They are forward Brett Berard and defenceman Reilly Walsh. Berard, 23, had zero points in 13 games with the New York Rangers last year and spent most of the season in the American Hockey League with Hartford. Walsh, 27, spent his season in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). He has played one NHL game way back in 2022 with the New Jersey Devils.
The headline reads (I’m not making this up): Canadiens add Berard to core seeking another lengthy playoff run.
Yes, Berard is that dude I mentioned who got no points last season.
Then comes nhl.com’s projected lineup for le bleu blanc rouge this coming season and … it’s pretty well last season’s lineup, minus Brendan Gallagher.
The first line is, of course, Nick Suzuki centring Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky. The second line has Jake Evans at centre, flanked by Alex Newhook and Ivan Demidov. The third line is Phillip Danault in the middle, with Alexandre Texier and Josh Anderson on the wings. The fourth line would be Oliver Kapanen as the pivot and Zachary Bolduc and the newly re-signed Kirby Dach on the wings.
On the blue-line, the first pairing is Mike Matheson and Noah Dobson, followed by Jayden Struble and Lane Hutson, with Kaiden Guhle and Alexandre Carrier filling out the 5/6 pairing.
The caveat here is, of course, there’s still close to three months to opening night, so in theory Hughes can add to the roster between now and then. But we all know late summer is not usually a great time for blockbuster trades, and even if Hughes pulls off a deal or two, you are looking at best at one or maybe two additions to this lineup.
The first thing that jumps out at me in this formation is it breaks what for me is a fundamental rule going forward with the Canadiens — the second-line centre cannot under any circumstances be named Jake Evans. Evans is a fourth-liner, a good fourth-liner, and in a pinch a third-line centre.
He is not the fellow to be distributing the puck to maybe the most important forward on the team, Russian phenom Demidov. A season with DemiGod on a line with Evans at centre is one that stunts the explosive winger’s growth.
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The roster also includes Dach and I was in full agreement with commentator Pierre McGuire on this one. I thought the team should simply walk away and admit the Kirby experiment failed. We’re seven years into this project and the jury’s in. Dach has always been about potential and he’s never delivered consistently on the ice, either for the Chicago Blackhawks or the Canadiens.
Dach and the team had been set to go to arbitration, but this week the Canadiens announced they had signed the winger to a one-year $3.6 million deal. The silver lining is perhaps Hughes will be able to deal Dach before the season, given he’s signed at a fairly reasonable price.
The other thing those four lines are lacking is toughness. Yes, Anderson is there, but this past playoff once again underlined Andy can be a force when he’s flying on all cylinders, like he was in the Tampa Bay series. However, he always fades because he just doesn’t have the mojo to keep that rough’n’tumble style going full frontal for long.
Short version? One good line and Demidov. Shorter version yet? Not good enough.
The other thing that remarkable playoff run showed us is the blue-line corps need ideally one or two big, strong and skilled D-men. The template? Shea Weber at 28. Oh, and where is Arber Xhekaj in the nhl.com projected lineup?
The Sheriff, who is a restricted free agent, was given a qualifying offer from the Habs for $1.3 million, which is exactly the same salary as last season. There are numerous recent reports teams have been calling about Xhekaj and many of us believe Hughes and his boss, Jeff Gorton, like what the D-man brings to the table — all grit, all heart, all the time — but coach Martin St. Louis appears much less enamoured of the guy. He didn’t dress for a single game in the Conference final against the Carolina Hurricanes. If the coach doesn’t want to play him, why keep him?
So, yeah, all this worries me. I’ve spent a month arguing with fans online who insist there’s no reason to lose sleep over Hughes’s inactivity, that HuGo knows best and all will fall into place if we just let things unfold as they should. Maybe. I hope so. But this doesn’t look like a lineup that takes you back to the Conference final. Just saying.