BROSSARD, Que. – Back when Alex Newhook was a rookie with the Colorado Avalanche, he missed nine of the team’s first 10 games of the regular season before playing in 70 of the final 72, no small feat for a 21-year-old trying to cut his teeth in the NHL on a Stanley Cup-contending team.
But Colorado was active at the trade deadline that year, bringing in veterans Artturi Lehkonen, Andrew Cogliano and Nico Sturm. When it came time for the Avalanche to begin the playoffs, all three of those new acquisitions were in the lineup, and Newhook wasn’t.
Newhook, it was at least believed at the time, was a big part of the Avalanche’s future. But the Avalanche were not worried about the future. There was a Stanley Cup to win, and so development took a back seat to winning and youth made way for playoff experience.
And it was a perfectly normal thing for the Avalanche to do.
Fast-forward to the present-day Montreal Canadiens, and Newhook will be back in the lineup Thursday against the New York Islanders for the first time since he fractured his ankle Nov. 13. His return to the lineup is a big boost to the Canadiens because Newhook’s speed, puck-hounding tenacity and scoring touch will make the Canadiens a much more difficult opponent as they try to lock down a playoff spot for a second consecutive season.
But Newhook’s return, coupled with that of Alexandre Texier, who had missed the final three games before the Olympic break, makes the Canadiens almost completely healthy, with only Patrik Laine remaining on injured reserve, and his situation is … well, unique. And the result of all that health means it looks as though Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis will scratch Zack Bolduc, one of the team’s prized offseason acquisitions and a big part of the team’s future.
“It’s a tough spot to be in, especially as a young guy. I’ve been through it when I played in Colorado, I sat for a whole round of the playoffs after playing (72) games,” Newhook said Wednesday. “It’s a tough spot to be in, but I think we’ll talk to (Bolduc). I think he’s a confident kid, I don’t think it’ll put him down too much. And he knows we’re going to need him at some point, whether it be next game or whether it be whenever.”
It is a fascinating decision for St. Louis, because the Canadiens are very much not the 2022 Avalanche. They have taken great pains to stress that this remains a team in a rebuild, or at least a team trying to come out of a rebuild, and the development of Bolduc is a big part of that process. But Bolduc has not scored since Dec. 23 and has only six assists in 20 games since scoring that goal.
Before this season, making Bolduc a healthy scratch after he played in each of the Canadiens’ first 57 games would be counterintuitive, no matter how poorly Bolduc was producing or playing, because his development would trump any other consideration. This represents a new stage for the rebuild, where competition for lineup spots means putting together a lineup that gives the team the best chance to win, and not necessarily the lineup that gives the Canadiens the best development opportunities.
“For me, as a coach, it’s the first time I have had this kind of depth. It’s an adjustment for me too,” St. Louis said. “As a leader, you make decisions that affect players negatively, and they’re players you like. But it comes with the job. It’s competitive. They’re not easy decisions, but I think the group will push each other internally because of it.”
Last season, coming out of the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off, Bolduc played by far his best hockey. The St. Louis Blues sent him to the AHL to play four games during the break, and when the NHL resumed and Bolduc was back in St. Louis, he came armed with a new perspective of not wanting to ever play in the AHL again.
Bolduc scored 13 goals in his 26 games after the break last season, a run that helped convince the Canadiens to trade for him in the offseason. He just turned 23 on Tuesday, so he’s a bit older than Newhook was when scratched by the Avalanche, but not much.
Might he go on a similar hot streak coming out of this year’s break? We’ll need to wait at least one game to find out.
Newhook is not the only person who knows what Bolduc might be thinking as he prepares to watch his first game from the press box since joining the Canadiens. The coach who is scratching him has a good idea as well.
“As a player, I’ve lived it, and you do everything you can to be part of the 12 forwards, the 6 Ds, the two goalies,” St. Louis said. “You’ve got to control what you can, you’ve got to stay hungry and when you get your chance, you’ve got to take advantage of it. That’s just the reality.
“For me, I feel like I’ve had to make decisions before, but in the past they were probably a little easier decisions in terms of the talent level that we’ve had on this team compared to now. But I feel that’s just the evolution of our team right now, and it makes my job probably a little harder, so to speak, or different in that sense.”
Scratching Bolduc for one game, or for however many he winds up being scratched, is not scandalous or controversial. It simply marks a difference, as St. Louis pointed out.
The Canadiens exit the Olympic break with the league’s sixth-best record, and this is the kind of decision a team that finds itself that high in the standings can justifiably make. But it is not one a rebuilding team can justifiably make, and while the Canadiens like their lofty perch in the standings, it is clear there are no delusions they have exited the rebuilding process and entered a contention phase.
Alex Newhook makes the Canadiens’ lineup better while they try to consolidate their playoff spot. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
The 2022 Avalanche were trying to win the Stanley Cup, and while the Canadiens would certainly love to do that, it is not a realistic goal at this point.
But having Newhook in the lineup makes the Canadiens appreciably better. Having him on a line with Texier and Jake Evans, which was the combination at practice Wednesday, makes them appreciably deeper. The veteran line of Josh Anderson, Phillip Danault and Brendan Gallagher entered the break as a line that shifted momentum in the Canadiens’ favour and played a smart, calculated, veteran style of game. And the top six, with Kirby Dach completing the top line with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský driving a kid line with rookies Oliver Kapanen and Ivan Demidov, appears set in stone for now.
So really, the only way Bolduc would stay in the lineup for now would be solely to ensure he continues his development, and to the detriment of icing the most competitive lineup. The players want the coach to ice the lineup that gives them the best chance to win, and those wishes need to be respected as well.
“I think it’s a testament to the job management’s done, bringing in the quality of players that we have,” Dach said. “For us, as players that are playing, you’ve got to go out there and do your job, or you might not be playing the next night.”
This shift for the Canadiens, this new experience for St. Louis in managing this much depth, is a positive development. It is, as St. Louis said Wednesday, a good problem to have. But it is also interesting when it comes to trying to predict what Canadiens management might do ahead of the March 6 trade deadline, with only two games remaining before that date after Thursday’s return game against the Islanders.
The Canadiens have an excess of NHL-capable players, with the most glaring example being Laine and what remains of his expiring $8.7 million contract. But aside from the strong possibility the Canadiens will try to find a new home for Laine before the deadline, will there be a similar shift in how management views this team? Will there be an increased willingness to use some trade capital to help this team in the short term and not be quite as “prudent” as general manager Kent Hughes said he would be a month ago?
The Canadiens have gone 4-1-1 since Hughes said that, and while this management group has insisted it will not deviate from its long-term plan to build a contender in Montreal, there is an abstract calculation Hughes and Jeff Gorton will need to make in the coming days: how much would this group benefit from winning a round in the playoffs or making a run of some sort, and how much would that experience contribute to the overall process of building a perennial Stanley Cup contender? And once they answer that complicated question, they would need to answer the even more abstract question of what exactly that is worth, how much that costs and what resources they would be willing to allocate to it.
This is all a bit of a leap based on one lineup decision St. Louis is making for one game, but the Canadiens have stated since the beginning of the season they have entered a new phase of the rebuild, and Bolduc being a healthy scratch is just the latest intriguing element of that new phase. So it’s hard not to wonder if there are more intriguing elements of that new phase awaiting between now and March 6.
