Habs News: Montreal Canadiens, NHL, Carey Price, Mike Hoffman, Nick Suzuki, Ryan Poehling, Tyler Toffoli, Dominique Ducharme
ROCKET SPORTS MEDIA | MONTREAL, QC. — This is your one-stop destination every week day for your Canadiens news capsule. Here are your Habs Headlines!
Injury Concerns
On the first day of on-ice practice, Habs fans were keenly paying attention to forward lines and defensive pairs for clues to what opening night might look like. Former Montreal head coach Claude Julien liked to plan the perfect lineup on paper in the off-season and then mostly stick to those groupings during training camp to build chemistry.
With Dominique Ducharme taking the reins for his first NHL training camp, there’s no track record to go on but it appears that he is willing to be a little more experimental with his duos and trios.
Complicating matters, the Canadiens announced that Mike Hoffman (lower-body), Josh Brook (knee) and Joel Teasdale (knee) failed their medical exams, in addition to two players recovering from surgery, Carey Price (knee) and Paul Byron (hip). These players are likely out for the remainder of training camp.
Joel Edmundson is listed as day-to-day and Brendan Gallagher is absent for family reasons.
Forward Lines and Defence Pairings
The line that received the most interest was Nick Suzuki reuniting with Tyler Toffoli and Cole Caufield, following their success in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Newly-acquired forward Christian Dvorak centred Josh Anderson and Jonathan Drouin. Looking to making the permanent jump to the NHL, Ryan Poehling was flanked by Artturi Lehkonen and Laurent Dauphin. And Jake Evans lined up between Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Joel Armia.
On defence, with his regular partner not on the ice, Jeff Petry was paired with Alexander Romanov. Each of the Canadiens promising prospects was paired with a veteran as Kaiden Guhle and David Savard were a duo while Mattias Norlinder was alongside Ben Chiarot.
Canadiens prospect Ryan Poehling looked confident when he took the ice for practice on Thursday. The 22-year-old centre is fully recovered from wrist surgery that ended early last season in Laval. Nick Suzuki remarked that Poehling looks bigger after he “spent a lot of time in the gym” this summer.
Poehling said that this camp is an opportunity for him to show the coaching staff that he is a player who can be relied on and trusted. Poehling was pleased with the results of Wednesday’s physical testing say that he feels stronger.
Poehling described his development path which has had its share of twists and turns.
“Everyone is on their own path. You can’t get frustrated with someone else’s path being different from yours and yours being different from someone else’s,” said Poehling. “It’s the best path for you. I’ve kind of realized that and just said, ‘Hey! I’ll continue on the path and trust it.’ I think it’s all going to work out in the end and wherever you should be, you should be. Last year was a great start for me and I can just trust that and continue doing that, and hopefully this year it works out for me.”
Suzuki Becoming A Leader
Canadiens head coach Dominique Ducharme seemed thrilled to have his top line from the playoffs back together centred by Nick Suzuki.
“We formed that line because those three guys had some chemistry together. Suzuki and Caufield already have good chemistry,” said Ducharme. “Toffoli and Suzuki also showed some chemistry in the past. They did good things together in the playoffs. We’ll start out with that combination, but things can definitely change two weeks from now. It all depends on the way they perform on the ice. If they play the right way, they could play 82 games together.”
Suzuki said that the line has lots of fun staying together and they look forward to staying together when the season gets underway. With the departures of Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Phillip Danault, Suzuki is aware that he will have to take on a larger role.
“I’m just trying to grow as a player, expand my role, and try to be more relied upon. We made some moves over the summer and brought in some young guys, so I’m just looking to step up in my role,” said Suzuki. “I just want to kind of pick up where Phil [Danault] left off. I want to try to penalty kill more. I feel like I can be a good piece there, just playing against other teams’ top lines. I know I had some experience, so I want to be relied upon. And then the next step in faceoffs is a big key for me. I’ve been working on that aspect.”
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