The Montreal Canadiens can't seem to decide who's their sixth defenseman, but whoever plays in the role right now doesn't seem to have Martin St-Louis' confidence.
It’s been three years now. Three long seasons during which Jayden Struble and Arber Xhekaj have battled for the role of sixth defenseman with the Montreal Canadiens. During that span, the former has played 152 games, and the latter 165. During the 2023-24 season, Xhekaj had season-ending shoulder surgery, but since it occurred in April, it cost him only four games.
Needless to say, the Habs have a big enough sample size to know what both are made of, their strength and their weaknesses, but whichever one of the two is dressed seems to make little difference to Martin St-Louis. This past week, Xhekaj played against the New York Islanders while Struble took on the Washington Capitals. The former saw 11:58 of ice time, all at even strength; the latter saw 11:08 of action and sat through special teams, even when Mike Matheson was in the box killing a penalty, St-Louis preferring to send out Lane Hutson to kill the penalty.
Xhekaj landed three hits against the Islanders, while Struble landed one against the Caps. The free agent signing was held off the scoresheet and only has two points in 51 games. The Northeastern alumnus registered an assist on Cole Caufield’s second goal of the game and has nine points, all assists, in 40 games.
The 6-foot-4 and 240-pound blueliner has 104 penalty minutes and leads the team in hits with 138. The 6-foot and 207-pound rearguard has 36 penalty minutes and is sixth on the team in hits with 74.
In other words, Xhekaj brings more physicality, and Struble brings more offence to the table. While Xhekaj averages 11:21 in ice time this season, and Struble averages 13:59, he has lost a lot of ice time of late, which is slowly but surely driving his average down, and can only lead to one conclusion: the bench boss doesn’t really trust either.
While spreading the workload between five defensemen in the regular season can be done, it gets trickier in the playoffs, where you can end up playing much longer games with continuous overtime. If you overwork your top guys, you risk wearing them out, and tired players become less effective; it’s human nature.
If the Canadiens are calling around the NHL and enquiring about the asking price for various defensemen, such as Rasmus Ristolainen, that’s probably why, but there are no perfect defensemen. Especially when it comes to depth, bottom-pairing blueliners, you eventually must learn to live with the consequences of their shortcomings, and given how playoff hockey is played, St-Louis would do well to learn to cope with Xhekaj’s defensive shortcomings. Of course, they might be easier to cope with if goaltending improved. Even if the Habs’ brass goes out and gets a depth defenseman on the trade market, they won’t play like top-pairing defensemen.
Follow Karine on X @KarineHains Bluesky @karinehains.bsky.social and Threads @karinehains.
Bookmark The Hockey News Canadiens' page for all the news and happenings around the Canadiens.
Join the discussion by signing up to the Canadiens' roundtable on The Hockey News.
Subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free. Get the latest news and trending stories by subscribing to our newsletter here.