Since being a healthy scratch a couple of weeks ago, young winger Samuel Bolduc has bounced back nicely for the Montreal Canadiens.
During the Montreal Canadiens’ west coast trip, Martin St. Louis tweaked his lines, and it benefited some of his players. Juraj Slafkovsky took to the first line like a fish to water; it’s like he never left it. As for Kirby Dach, he has looked better on the third line alongside Jake Evans and Zach Bolduc, which is largely due to the Trois-Rivieres native.
After being scratched for one game when Alex Newhook returned to the lineup, Bolduc has bounced back nicely. Playing with more drive and intensity. On Friday night against the Anaheim Ducks, he spent nearly 16 minutes on the ice and had an assist on Alex Carrier’s goal on top of taking two shots, blocking one, and landing five hits. The physicality he brings makes up for the fact that on most days, Dach isn’t very physical; it’s not in his DNA to fight those board battles for the puck.
Then, on Saturday night, against the Los Angeles Kings, Bolduc used his speed to keep up with Lane Hutson on the zone entry, skated along the boards, and swung the puck around to Dach, who then fed it to Evans, who was at the blueline covering for Hutson and took a shot that beat Kuemper. That’s two goals in two games coming from the third line, and in 13:39 of ice time, Bolduc added another two hits to his season total. He’s second in that department on the team with 129, 15 behind team leader Arber Xhekaj.
This is the kind of game Bolduc needs to play. As Martin St-Louis often says, some things aren’t fun to do on the ice, like forechecking, but doing those things will lead to opportunities to do the fun things like producing offensively.
Of course, when the Canadiens traded for Bolduc, they wanted more than strong forechecking and hits, but he’s still only 23 years old, and you can’t learn to play the St-Louis brand of hockey overnight. The Habs’ bench boss asks a lot of his players when it comes to reading the play and making the right decisions, rather than putting them in a predetermined, strict system.
With 26 points in 62 games, Bolduc is on pace for 35 points. Last season, he put up 36 points with the St. Louis Blues, but he did it in 72 games. That’s far from alarming totals for a player who had to adapt to a new way to play and who’s seen his power play production cut in half (12 power play points with the Blues last season and six with the Habs so far), playing on the Canadiens’ second unit.
If Bolduc keeps playing that way, he shouldn’t be a healthy scratch again anytime soon. On Saturday night, someone like Brendan Gallagher looked like a much more likely candidate for the chop, despite what he can bring in leadership and his chase for 1,000 games with the Canadiens.
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