Canadiens Kreider Is Starting To Find His Marks

It wasn’t an immediate fit for Chris Kreider with the Montreal Canadiens; he needed to learn to play the Martin St-Louis way, and for a while, he struggled to get on the scoresheet. After getting four points in his first three games, he was blanked for nine consecutive games. Since October 29, however, he has five points in just six games. Starting the season with Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki certainly helped, but Ivan Demidov’s injury forced Martin St-Louis to reshuffle the deck, which saw Kreider move down the lineup.

Now that he’s playing with Jake Evans and Josh Anderson, he seems to have found his stride, not only because he’s putting up points, but also because he’s making big defensive plays. He takes care of the details on both sides of the puck, something the coach particularly likes.

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In the last game against the Minnesota Wild, he made a heads-up play on the defensive blue line, stopping the attack and launching an attack of his own. Granted, it was the end of a shift, so he didn’t have the speed for a clear breakaway, but when he’s fresh off the bench, he still has the speed to create damage. He did get a breakaway goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night. His reads on the ice are better than they were at the start of the season, and his teammates have started becoming more predictable for him. In the defensive zone, he prevented the Wild from scoring on Tuesday when he tied up the stick of an attacker who was all alone in front of Jacob Fowler,

While the original plan was for him to complete the Canadiens' top-six and make a big impact on the power play, things haven’t gone according to plan. When Demidov returns on the ice, it’s far from guaranteed that Kreider will land with him right away; St. Louis may be tempted to go back to the second line he used last season with Oliver Kapanen and Alex Newhook. The Newfoundlander has got nine points in 18 games, and his speed works well with Demidov’s offensive instinct. Kreider won’t pout, though; so far, he’s happy to do whatever the team needs him to do to win games.

Even if he remains in a bottom-six role, his $2.15 M cap hit will be more than an acceptable return on the Canadiens’ investment, and there’s something to be said about having four efficient lines. If the Habs didn’t have so much depth, they wouldn’t have done as well while Suzuki was injured, even though solid goaltending also helped.

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