Canadiens.com: O’Byrne by numbers
Habster:
There are defining moments in every person’s life when things either fall into place, get delayed or never happen at all. Heading into next season, Ryan O’Byrne will be “defining” his hockey career for years to come and if he can continue to show steady improvement as he did when he replaced the injured Mike Komisarek, then he should be in a Habs uniform for many years to come.
The smooth skating, hulking defenseman will be vying for a spot on the Canadiens defense corp heading into this year’s training camp (I can hardly wait for it to start!!!).
Even though O’Byrne played 33 NHL games last season (G-1 A-6 +7) and showed the coaching staff he belonged there, he still has to continue his steady progression without assuming he has a spot on the team.
Most hockey scouts will tell you that developing/grooming a defenseman to play in the NHL is a slow, steady process which takes time and tremendous dedication on the part of the player. It’s the hardest position to play and just as hard to develop within an organization.
Bob Gainey and Trevor Timmins have done a great job of realizing the Habs system needed to draft and develop more defensemen if the team were to have any future success. Before the 2006 and 2007 drafts, the Canadiens were relatively solid in the goaltending and forward positions but needed to re-stock the bare defensemen cupboards.
There were only three decent defensemen (O’Byrne (2003), Komisarek (2001) and Emelin (2004) ) who were drafted by the Habs and could be considered good blue chip prospects/players. Timmins got busy in a hurry in the 2006 and 2007 drafts when he selected eight defensemen (2006: Fischer, Carle and Valentenko. 2007: McDonagh, Subban, Weber, Strejskal and Torp) who are at various stages of their development and are a solid core with varying strengths/skill sets.
The future looks very bright for the Habs blueline situation which will allow the Trevor Timmins/Frank Jay tandem to help strengthen the other areas of concern like adding more scoring, size and grit at the forward position while re-stocking the goaltending pipelines beyond Carey Pric and Jaroslav Halak.
It’s too bad that this year’s draft is very top heavy with solid defense prospects but knowing Trevor Timmins, he’ll jump at the chance to draft a solid defenseman if there is still one available when the Canadiens make the 25th overall selection……..he’ll take the best available player on his evaluation/ranking list that he and his scouting staff compile before the draft. I can hardly wait for June 20th and 21st!!!!!