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Will the Kids Be Alright? |
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Everyone knows it by now, the Canadiens aren’t making the playoffs. There won’t be any Spring hockey in Montreal this season and the best the fans can hope for is to see their team at least compete every night and see their young players develop and get better. In his presser yesterday coach Ducharme when asked about playing Jake Evans on the left wing said the following: “Do you want to expose a young guy going toe-to-toe every shift with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews tomorrow? Or against MacKinnon & Rantanen? Or last night against Stamkos and Palat every shift?”
Well, actually, yes, yes I do. For one thing, Jake Evans is now 25 years-old, and furthermore, he did it all the way through last season. He tussled with the likes of McDavid and Matthews last season so why shouldn’t he do it outside of the now defunct Canadian division? Also, practice makes perfect as they say and if he is exposed and loses some battles, well, those are called growing pains and I’d much rather experience those than see over-the-hill and on expiring deals vets such as Paquette and Perreault play center. Next year and in the years ahead, they won’t be around, but Evans? He very might well be and in an ideal world, he’d become a fully fledged 3rd line center, a reliable shut-down guy that can face top level opponents. Give him the chance to practice that now. This team has nothing to lose.
Tonight, the Chicago Blackhawks are in town and their goaltender, Marc-André Fleury will attempt to become the 3rd goalie in history to win 500 games, the other two of course being Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur. If we go by what we saw at yesterday’s practice lines and pairing wise, this is the line-up he’ll have to battle:
Hoffman-Suzuki-Drouin
Lehkonen-Poehling-Evans
Perreault-Dauphin-Caufield
Pezzetta-Paquette-Ylonen
Chiarot-Savard
Romanov-Wideman
Kulak-Clague
With so many injuries, Cole Caufield is still playing on the 3rd line with a center who hadn’t seen NHL action in years in Laurent Dauphin and Mathieu Perreault. I know, he hasn’t exactly been lighting up the lamp this season, but he should still get more ice-time than Paquette and Perreault and it isn’t the case. Paquette plays on the penalty kill which accounted for nearly 4 minutes of his ice-time last game, but Perreault didn’t, and he had a minute and a half more than Caufield did.
Meanwhile, Mattias Norlinder has been sent down to Laval for 3 games after which a decision will be made about where he’ll play the rest of the season. Swedish Journalist Fredrik Janlind of the Gothenburg’s Post quoted him saying: “In all honesty, I have been wanting to go home for a while.” We’ll see what happens, but in Montreal, he didn’t get much playing time at all and saw next to no power play action. Last night with the Rocket, he scored his first goal and he did it on the man advantage. Perhaps it would be wise to let him play as much as possible and ensure that he doesn’t end up souring on the Habs.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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