The Montreal Canadiens recalled Joshua Roy this morning and coach Martin St-Louis shuffled his line for practice.
Saturday night's performance wasn't good enough. Even for a team that's rebuilding, that many mistakes is not acceptable and it therefore wasn't all that surprising to see coach Martin St-Louis make some changes to his lines this morning.
Freshly recalled from the AHL, Joshua Roy was skating on a line with Emil Heineman and Jake Evans playing at center. Meanwhile, Cole Caufield was back with Nick Suzuki and Alex Newhook was completing the top line. The third line formed of Josh Anderson, Christian Dvorak and Brendan Gallagher was the only one who wasn't modified. Kirby Dach was back at center between Juraj Slafkovsky and Joel Armia.
While this show St-Louis has concluded that Suzuki wasn't the one who would jumpstart Dach, it's puzzling to see that Slafkovsky still isnt back with his two usual linemates. Granted, the big Slovak didn't have a good game on Saturday, but since being split up, the first line players' production has gone down.
Keeping Slafkovsky with Dach right now makes little sense to me. They are both making a lot of mistakes and neither of them appears likely to be the answer to the other one's woes. Putting Armia with them is also puzzling, the Finn might be responsible defensively, but he's not producing. Furthermore, when he was put on the second line alongside Dach and Newhook to start the season, the results were underwhelming to say the least.
Considering how Gallagher was used in the past as a sparkplug by his other coaches and in light of his performance this season, the bench boss was asked if he had considered using the alternate captain in that manner and he confirmed that it has been tempting. St-Louis refrained from doing that because he knows what he's getting from his third line right now, it's consistent game in and game out, he doesn't want to lose that guaranteed performance for a gamble to get something else.
Personally, I would have liked to see Jake Evans get a chance to light a fire under Dach. The veteran has been one of the team's most consistent forward since the start of the season and it would have been interesting to see if he could have worked his magic on him.
Aside from the line shuffling, the biggest news from the Canadiens' practice was the fact Patrik Laine was skating in a regular jersey for the first time since his injury at the end of September. Do not get over excited though, this was his first practice in a regular jersey and he wasn't in a regular spot. Furthermore, when asked if there was a chance we'd see him in a game this week, St-Louis replied he didn't think so.
Mike Matheson wasn't at practice as he was benefiting from a treatment day, meaning the pairings were shuffled as well. Kaiden Guhle skated with Jayden Struble, Lane Hutson was with David Savard and Arber Xhekaj with Justin Barron.
It will be interesting to see if these new lines stick for tomorrow night's game and how Roy will fare in his first game of the season.
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