How Canadiens’ David Reinbacher, Oliver Kapanen personify state of the rebuild

Montreal Canadiens rookie camp is right around the corner; the long, dry summer of content is nearing a close.

But for now, we are still in it, and we had so many submissions for our mailbag that we felt it was wrong to do just one.

So, here’s Part 2 of the mailbag, addressing questions on David Reinbacher, Oliver Kapanen and more as we count down the days to training camp.

(Some questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Given the Habs’ purported interest in another veteran right-shot defenceman, do you feel that the internal expectations for David Reinbacher have diminished over the last few months? – Jaideep K.

There are two parts to Jaideep’s question, so let’s tackle them one at a time.

The Canadiens had a very real interest in adding a right-shot defenceman at the trade deadline last spring. But that interest was short-term in nature, and the Canadiens’ willingness to pay for adding a right-shot defenceman reflected the short-term nature of their interest.

A rental to slot onto the right side of the Canadiens’ defence for the stretch run and the playoffs was something they were strongly considering, but it didn’t come to fruition, perhaps in part because they were not necessarily pursuing it all that aggressively. Connor Murphy is a name I’ve heard would have interested them, especially considering it cost the Edmonton Oilers only a 2028 second-round pick to get him from the Chicago Blackhawks. But I would have been stunned to see the Canadiens sign him to the five-year contract worth more than $20 million with full no-move protection the Oilers gave Murphy in the aftermath.

A big reason why the Canadiens were looking for a short-term solution and not a long-term one on right defence at the deadline is David Reinbacher, and that is also a big reason why the Canadiens’ search for a right-shot defenceman in the offseason was relatively low on their priority list. I haven’t gotten the sense this is something the Canadiens were actively looking for over the summer.

The hope remains that Reinbacher wins a job in training camp, and the fact that he has already been skating in Brossard for a while now is a reflection of the opportunity he has in front of him.

But the second part of Jaideep’s question is valid, regarding whether the internal expectations on Reinbacher have diminished. Because while the hope exists that Reinbacher wins a job out of camp, the lack of certainty in that regard three years after he was selected with the No. 5 pick is, in and of itself, a reason to have diminished expectations.

In the 10 NHL drafts before Reinbacher’s 2023 draft, 11 defencemen were taken with a top-five pick: Seth Jones (No. 4 in 2013), Aaron Ekblad (No.1, 2014), Noah Hanifin (No. 5, 2015), Olli Juolevi (No. 5, 2016), Miro Heiskanen (No. 3, 2017), Cale Makar (No. 4, 2017), Bowen Byram (No. 4, 2019), Jake Sanderson (No. 5, 2020), Owen Power (No. 1, 2021), Luke Hughes (No. 4, 2021) and Šimon Nemec (No. 2, 2022).

Of those 11, only two — Juolevi and Makar — had not played a full NHL season by his 21st birthday. Juolevi was a bust for the Vancouver Canucks, but Makar was obviously the opposite of a bust and a sign that it might not be too late for Reinbacher. If you expand the scope to defencemen picked in the top 10 over those same 10 drafts, you get a list of 25 defencemen, and still, the only three on that list not to have played a full NHL season by their 21st birthday in addition to Juolevi and Makar are Haydn Fleury, Simon Edvinsson and Brandt Clarke, which means 80 percent of those defencemen taken in the top-10 had established themselves in the NHL by the time they were Reinbacher’s age.

On Oct. 25, Reinbacher will turn 22, an age by which Makar had 57 regular season games and 25 playoff games under his belt. Reinbacher enters the season with two regular-season games in the NHL and will reach no higher than 12 by his 22nd birthday if he breaks camp with the Canadiens and plays all of their games through Oct. 25, which, frankly, seems unlikely.

So, while injuries have played a big part in Reinbacher’s delayed ascension, there is reason to have diminished expectations, at least to some degree, because when you take a defenceman at No. 5 with a lot of forward talent still on the board, the hope is he would be at the very least an established NHL defencemen three years later, and that is quite simply not the case for Reinbacher right now.

Expectations were always tempered for Reinbacher from the moment he was drafted, with Montreal general manager Kent Hughes stating on draft night that the hope was he would become a top-four defenceman. That hope remains a strong possibility. The best version of Reinbacher remains exactly what the Canadiens blue line could use: a stabilizing, two-way presence on the right side that would allow Lane Hutson to permanently go back to his natural left side. If Reinbacher can slot in behind Noah Dobson on the right side of Montreal’s top four, he will become exactly what the Canadiens were hoping they drafted in 2023.

But until he does it, there will be some doubt because the vast majority of his recent peer group had already done it by this point.

Do you think Oliver Kapanen can continue his growth and anchor the second line? — Jonathan O.

It is difficult to argue with 22 goals as a rookie, albeit a 22-year-old rookie with lots of pro experience in Europe, but I still have a lot of questions about Kapanen’s potential in a top-six role.

And I’m not talking about the common knock on Kapanen that his production is solely a byproduct of playing on a line with Ivan Demidov, who earned an assist on 13 of Kapanen’s 22 goals, but only six of those were primary assists. Still, Demidov’s ability to control the puck and create space is definitely a factor in that goal total, but you need finishing talent to convert all those chances Demidov creates and the smarts to be in the right place at the right time.

The question lies in the miserable underlying numbers Kapanen put up as a rookie and how much truth can be found in those numbers. To my eye, Kapanen was doing reasonably well playing a role he probably should not have been playing. It’s a lot to ask a rookie to centre a second line in the NHL, and though he was not exactly deployed as a typical second line centre, the eye test always looked pretty good.

The Canadiens earned 42.3 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five with Kapanen on the ice last season; only 11 NHL forwards who played at least 800 five-on-five minutes had a worse number, and none of those 11 forwards played for a playoff team. In the 752 five-on-five minutes Kapanen played with Demidov last season, the Canadiens earned 45.1 percent of the expected goals. In the 181 five-on-five minutes Demidov played away from Kapanen, the Canadiens earned 54.4 percent of the expected goals.

There is some truth in those numbers, but that truth is not as absolutely atrocious as the numbers would suggest. It lies somewhere in between.

Kapanen is just one of several forwards who haven’t clearly revealed his truth to the Canadiens yet, and many of them will likely get a shot to fill a top-six role at some point this season. The group also includes Alex Newhook, Kirby Dach, Zachary Bolduc and probably Alexandre Texier. The more pertinent reality is that the Canadiens see prospects Michael Hage and Alexander Zharovsky as future top-six forwards, and one or both of them could be on the team by the end of the regular season.

So, what the Canadiens need is either for one of those forwards to reveal a truth that is top-six worthy, an external upgrade via trade, or an internal placeholder until Hage, Zharovsky or both are ready to fill that role — something that could take years. Kapanen seems like a pretty good candidate to at least do that, and at most demonstrate he is ideally suited for the role long-term.

In many ways, Kapanen is indicative of where the Canadiens find themselves as a team: a young, talented player who has many desirable traits but also has some imperfections that require experience to fix. The Canadiens, too, had underlying numbers that would suggest they were a team that punched a bit above its weight last season.

Do you expect Martin St. Louis to change any coaching strategies this season after this playoff experience, or, alternatively, with the hiring of Derek Lalonde? — Sheldon P.

How will the arrival of Derek Lalonde, who is known to be more conservative than Martin St. Louis in his preferred style of play, impact the defensive structure of the Habs this season? — Philippe P.

I don’t know what to expect out of Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis this season, simply because we are in uncharted waters with him.

This is the first time in his coaching career he enters a season with real expectations, both internal and external. It is also the first time he enters a season with player development being relatively far down his list of priorities. And it’s the first time he enters a season with a seasoned NHL coach behind the bench next to him.

So, for both questions, the honest answer is I don’t know.

However, I think St. Louis and the entire coaching staff learned a lot in the playoffs, and in that sense, this is also the first time he enters a season with the benefit of that coaching baggage. Until now, the regular season was the priority. Making the playoffs was the priority. Performing in the playoffs was a secondary concern.

Well, now it’s a primary concern. That’s not to say the Canadiens making the playoffs should be taken for granted, but it will be interesting to watch how St. Louis uses the regular season to prepare for the playoffs, as opposed to just using the regular season to make the playoffs.

That has far less to do with personnel decisions than it does maintenance of standards and details, and this is where Lalonde’s arrival is most interesting. St. Louis has not had a coach like Lalonde to work with yet. Lalonde has more time behind an NHL bench than him. Lalonde won the Stanley Cup twice in Tampa. He was an NHL head coach in Detroit. He knows what it takes to win in the playoffs and how that can be cultivated over the course of a long regular season.

But how much sway Lalonde will have on the head coach definitely remains to be seen.

How much does looming expansion figure into how management conducts its business THIS season? – Paul S.

Since Paul asked this question, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly has put it in very plain terms that the Texas expansion team is looking like it will begin play in 2029-30, meaning the expansion draft would be in the summer of 2029.

A lot can and will happen between now and then, and there is no reason to believe anything expansion-related would impact too many decisions the Canadiens could make this season. In fact, the timing of the expansion lining up with Mike Matheson’s no-movement clause switching to a 14-team no-trade clause opens the possibility of Montreal opting for a seven-forward, three-defencemen protection formula, which would mean that if the Canadiens added the top-six forward they seek on the trade market, it wouldn’t necessarily complicate their expansion strategy down the road.

So, if anything, the timing of expansion probably opens up some possibilities for the Canadiens this season, in that Matheson’s contract status lining up with that process should allow them to protect more players, including a hypothetical impact forward they could bring in via trade.

Montreal went 3-0 against Carolina during the regular season, outscoring them 15-8, and then beat them 6-2 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final. After that, Carolina completely flipped the matchup, outshooting Montreal 139-67 over the final four games and winning all four.

What did Carolina change after Game 1 that Montreal never found an answer for? And, from what you’ve heard around the team, does management view Montreal’s inability to counter it primarily as a personnel problem, an execution problem or a tactical adaptability problem?

It seems to me the answer to that question might tell us more about what this team actually needs to become a Cup winner than simply identifying a 2C or adding size. — Harold S.

What, really, is the big lesson learned from the Carolina loss?

I see people saying that it’s the Habs’ need to get bigger, and I can’t for the life of me understand that. Carolina is as small as Montreal, and their game is built on speed, not physicality. Yes, they targeted Lane Hutson, but what team wouldn’t? One of the biggest organisational mistakes we see time and again is a team overreacting to a beating by filling their roster with tough, slow guys. I really hope we don’t make that same mistake. — Isaac G.

I think a global answer to both questions is that the Canadiens have learned they are on the right track but not where they ultimately want to be — and getting there will take some maturity.

Sebastian Aho and Nick Suzuki are very comparable, two-way, complete players. But Aho has a ton of playoff baggage to draw on, both positive and negative. He has learned the difference between regular-season and playoff hockey; he has lived through the disappointment Suzuki felt last spring and applied it to his game.

The Hurricanes needed a lot of time to go from being viewed as a contender to actually becoming a champion, but they did it their own way, building a team in their own image and not trying to copy anyone else.

I think that is the greatest lesson the Canadiens will draw from that playoff loss — that they, too, can forge their own path to a championship team and have no need to copy anyone else’s blueprint. It is something that management strongly believes: It is better to be the team that other teams copy rather than trying to copy a formula another team has used to reach the ultimate goal.

The Hurricanes’ level of detail in their game is what ultimately did in the Canadiens. Carolina’s disciplined adherence to a system required a ton of energy that the Hurricanes were able to bank through the extended rest they earned heading into that series. That level of detail takes time to develop. That understanding of its importance takes time to develop.

It takes playoff scar tissue, which the Hurricanes had a ton of entering that series. The Canadiens have only now started building that up.

I think that’s the only real lesson to be learned from how that series played out: Reaching the Stanley Cup Final requires a certain level of maturity the Hurricanes had and the Canadiens did not.

As to Isaac’s concern about feeling a need to add size, the makeup of the Hurricanes’ blue line actually adds fuel to the fire that you can win with a defence corps that leans more heavily on mobility than physicality and size, which has been a guiding principle in how the Canadiens have gone about building theirs.