The Montreal Canadiens want competitiveness from their players, and last night, Kirby Dach showed a clear lack of it, not for the first time. For the Habs to be successful, they need a competitive first line, and right now, it shouldn't include him.
For a team that values combativity, seeing Montreal Canadiens’ Kirby Dach’s nonchalant play in his own zone against the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night should have set off a couple of alarms. In a recent interview on the Basu and Godin Notebook, Habs GM Kent Hughes explained that Montreal is after competitiveness from its players. He cited Brendan Gallagher, Cole Caufield, and Lane Hutson as examples of players who have what he’s looking for.
Seeing Dach be so easily dispossessed by Kiefer Sherwood last night was yet another example of a play where the 6-foot-4 and 221-pound winger didn’t look like he wanted the puck and was willing to do whatever it took to get it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a one-off. The Albertan might have been a third-overall pick for the Chicago Blackhawks at the 2019 draft, but he doesn’t always play like it.
There are nights when he looks really committed and plays well. In the 11 games he has played since his return from yet another injury, he has racked up six points, but he lacks consistency, and it’s hard to tell which version of Dach will turn up on any given night.
Given the key role Nick Suzuki’s line plays for the Canadiens, it needs to be firing on all cylinders for the Canadiens to be successful. Granted, Montreal has more secondary scoring than it once did, but the fact remains that life is much easier for the Habs when their top line is performing. On Tuesday night, Montreal scored five goals, but with Suzuki and Caufield finishing the night on a minus-three and Dach with a minus-two, the Canadiens still lost the game.
At 25 years old, and after 295 NHL games, Dach should know what it takes to play in the NHL, and he should be aware of the standard Martin St-Louis wants his men to meet. If it were up to me, Dach wouldn’t start the next game on Suzuki’s wing. I think it’s time to give Alex Newhook a look there. Granted, he doesn’t have the big frame that Dach or Juraj Slafkovsky have, he’s 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, but most of the time, he plays bigger than Dach and with a higher compete level.
Before returning from his fractured ankle, Newhook said he had trained to be able to hit the ground running on his return, and he wasn’t kidding. In three games, he has recorded four points, and his speed is right where it was before he was sidelined. When you watch him, you never ask yourself if he really wants that puck; it’s evident that he does.
If Martin St-Louis absolutely wants a big body on his first line, he could also put Slafkovsky back up there and have Newhook skate alongside Oliver Kapanen and Ivan Demidov; that combination worked very well before the St. John’s native was injured. Newhook had 12 points in 16 games when he fractured his ankle. Furthermore, Slafkovsky has struggled since returning from the Olympics, and that move might help him as well.
Whichever way you look at it, Dach’s level of implication isn’t high enough to warrant playing on the first line with Suzuki and Caufield. The door might not be shut on that possibility forever, but as things stand, Newhook has put his foot right in there, and he deserves a look, much more than Dach.
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