Since taking office less than two years ago, Martin St-Louis regularly speaks about value.
Not in the Judeo-Christian sense of the term, far from it. But that, in the singular, of its players.
Visualize the curve of a share on the stock market, which rises and falls depending on different factors. With this in mind, the Canadiens head coach challenges his flock to raise their value as much as possible, and at all times.
Saturday night, in the Canadian’s 3-2 victory against the Washington Capitals, two elements caught our attention in the distribution of playing time at short of a man.
First, David Savard did not finish first among defensemen. Not even on the second one. Instead, it was Jordan Harris and Johnathan Kovacevic who took the lead. Then, among the attackers, behind the undisputed Jake Evans, Jesse Ylönen ranked second. A notable increase for a newbie in this area.
The case of the Finn well illustrates the philosophy of St-Louis. The winger has already admitted that before this season, he had almost never played on the penalty kill, if not for years. However, while he managed to rack up points at an interesting rate in the American League, this production has not yet translated to the NHL. He had to find something else.
So here he is paired with Evans on the main duo responsible for administering punishments. We have to admit that he is doing very well so far.
“I like my guys on my team to have a role,” St-Louis said late Saturday evening. Ylo’s role currently is to kill punishments. Maybe he doesn’t realize it right away, but it’s very valuable. A player increases his value when he is able to do that. »
Moreover, “he will not lose his offensive side,” recalled the coach. His defensive side serves him well, in any case, since Ylönen got two appearances at the very end of the match, while the Canadian first wanted to protect his 2-1 lead, then save the tie before overtime. “I have confidence in him,” summarized St-Louis.
We sense in the current use of Canadian players a real intention to create specialists in each phase of the game.
Currently, only Mike Matheson and Sean Monahan are used extensively on both the power play and penalty kill. By playing on the third line at five-on-five, Monahan sees his overall workload balance out. It is therefore only Matheson for whom the floodgates are open in all situations.
However, we seem to be witnessing a rebalancing of forces, particularly in numerical inferiority.
The NHL now compiles the proportion of minutes a player plays on special teams compared to his team’s total when he is in uniform. For example, when David Savard was healthy last season, he played 63.6% of the minutes that the Habs spent on the penalty kill. The gap between Savard and Joel Edmundson, at the top, and the rest of the defensive squad is abysmal.
Now, here Edmundson is gone, without management having replaced him. Despite this, although Savard remains the most requested back, his use represents a less significant part of the total task on the penalty kill.
A priori, it is mainly Kovacevic and Harris who have gained ground. Kovacevic was already a regular last year, but his mandate has expanded. Right-handed like Savard, it is resolutely him who eats minutes from his elder. As for Harris, he was mostly called in relief after Kaiden Guhle was injured.
In attack, we are witnessing the same type of phenomenon, but with renewed personnel. We talked about Ylönen, but Rafaël Harvey-Pinard now has his full-time place on the numerical penalty, he who is mainly paired with Sean Monahan.
Tanner Pearson also pitches in, leaving Nick Suzuki in a supporting role. We can even wonder if the captain will not be completely relieved of this task when Christian Dvorak returns to the game. And Josh Anderson has been almost completely erased from the equation.
Martin St-Louis had also stated, from training camp, that he wanted to free Suzuki from working in a numerical inferiority. He is certainly capable of fulfilling this role, but if other options are available to his coach, he might as well use them.
Everyone will be better able to find their value in the right place. We would like to add “in the right chair,” but we won’t go there.
