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This Montreal Canadiens season was always going to be, first and foremost, an evaluation project, an opportunity to see where the team needs help and where it is more or less set up for future success. The first two years of the Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes administration were spent somewhat indiscriminately gathering assets to be used for this next phase of the Canadiens’ rebuild, the one where holes are identified and addressed using those assets. Advertisement And the most important evaluation that needed to be made was always going to be Kirby Dach.
Coming off a lost season after surgery to his right knee, the Canadiens took great care not to pile too much pressure on Dach, to make sure everyone knew it was going to be difficult at the start, that it would take time. It did take time. In fact, it could be argued it took all season, because Dach’s season is now over after the Canadiens announced he underwent season-ending surgery Friday, again on his right knee.
Dach’s season concludes with 57 games played and 22 points, or 16 fewer points in one fewer game than he played in 2022-23, when he looked like the Canadiens’ No. 2 centre of the future at age 22. Now, two right knee surgeries later at age 24, Dach no longer looks like the No.
2 centre of the future, and the Canadiens will clearly need to address the position this offseason. The Canadiens likely knew this even before Dach’s surgery. An objective look at his season would have sufficed to come to this conclusion.
Coach Martin St. Louis often speaks about Juraj Slafkovský “playing to his strength” this season, and when he says that, he means using his physical strength. It is something Slafkovský is slowly coming to realize .
So when St. Louis was asked prior to the Canadiens game against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday about Owen Beck taking Dach’s spot between Patrik Laine and Alex Newhook, and more specifically about Dach’s and Beck’s ability to win pucks back and extend possession, his answer was probably inadvertently telling about Dach’s ability to use his strength. “Different players, but I think they’re two players that can win pucks back.
They probably do it a little differently,” St. Louis said. “Dacher has a longer reach, a longer stick, he covers a little more (ice).
But I think with Beck he’s got a little more physicality, so to speak, and can win more battles, so to speak, in the corners, where I feel like Kirby can strip pucks more. But they’re both players that can help possessing the puck. Owen is good on faceoffs too.
They’re different players.” Advertisement Dach is listed at 6-foot-4, 221 pounds. Beck is listed at 6-foot, 199 pounds.
The double “so to speak” in there is probably St. Louis realizing in real time that he was saying something somewhat critical of Dach. But that’s been the reality with Dach this season.
A big part of his turnaround two years ago, when he finished the season with 15 points in his 19 final games and arrived at training camp last season looking like Montreal’s best forward, is that he developed a bit of a mean streak. He started throwing his weight around, hitting guys and using his physical strength. One moment from the 2022-23 season that stands out was when Dach dropped the gloves with Andrew Copp right off the opening faceoff for the second period.
Not that Dach needs to fight to be effective, but this was the kind of attitude that made him effective. And the reason Copp wanted to go with him to begin with was because of how Dach was running around in the first period, being disruptive, even a bit of a bully. We haven’t seen anything close to that this season.
Perhaps that was to be expected coming off a major knee injury, but coming off a second surgery on that same knee, it would be difficult to expect this to change next season as well. Something else we saw from Dach two years ago was his ability to be a real play driver, transitioning pucks through the neutral zone with speed and making it so the Canadiens played in the offensive zone more often than not. Over the last two months of his season, Dach had the best expected goal percentage on the team at five-on-five.
This season, however, Dach has largely been a drag on his teammates and is not driving play. These are the seven forwards who have played at least 80 minutes at five-on-five with Dach this season and their expected goal percentage with and without him. It is worth noting that the only linemate that benefited from having Dach on his line was Nick Suzuki, which is when Dach was playing on the wing.
This is a tell. The Canadiens were patient with Dach this season largely because they have seen what he looked like as a play-driving, physical centre. It was not an abstract concept, it was a lived experience.
Thus, they wanted to give him every opportunity to find that version of himself again. The one that looked like this guy, confident with the puck, hanging on to it, dominating shifts. 2 buts à son 200e match, c'est pas beau ça? Kirbae ❤️ #GoHabsGo pic.
twitter.com/fh0jF7eTjV — Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) January 25, 2023 It should now be clear Dach is probably never going to be that exact player. But that doesn’t mean Dach still can’t be a useful player for the Canadiens.
There are a lot of teams who would love to have his combination of size and skill in a top-six winger. The Canadiens will likely need to find a top-six centre this offseason, whether that’s on the free agent or trade market. They have the assets to get it done.
But just because Dach probably doesn’t check that box for them doesn’t make him a useless player, far from it. He is still under contract next season at a reasonable cap number and is a restricted free agent with arbitration rights at the end of next season, meaning he is still largely under team control. Advertisement “We’ve all been intrigued, you know, can he play centre in this league?” St.
Louis said on Jan. 15, 2023 after a 2-1 win over the Rangers in New York. “He’s 21 years old, so I don’t think any of us were ready to say he wasn’t going to be a centre.
Sometimes circumstances make you really take a look at that now. Not that we haven’t throughout the season, but you’re really forced into it now. He gave us a really good game.
” The Kirby Dach experiment with the Canadiens did not come to an end when his right knee was operated on Thursday. But the Kirby Dach as a future top-six centre experiment for the Canadiens probably did. There is no more intrigue.
(Photo of Kirby Dach: Michael Reaves / Getty Images).
