BROSSARD, Que. – Justin Barron went out for dinner Wednesday evening with a few of his Montreal Canadiens teammates in Old Montreal — a nice, long meal that lasted about three hours.
Kaiden Guhle was there, as were Arber Xhekaj, Jayden Struble and Michael Pezzetta.
As the meal went on, things were happening in the NHL. Kaapo Kakko was traded from the New York Rangers to the Seattle Kraken. Pierre-Olivier Joseph was traded from the St. Louis Blues to the Pittsburgh Penguins. It became a conversation around the table.
“Every time someone checked their phone,” Xhekaj said, “someone got traded.”
As dinner wrapped up, Barron drove his teammates home. And as they were driving, a call popped up on his Bluetooth in the car.
It was Jeff Gorton.
When he saw it was the Canadiens’ executive vice president of hockey operations, Barron stopped the car. He had to take the call, and because they were close to their destination, his teammates got out and walked the rest of the way.
As it turned out, there was another trade to discuss.
“We weren’t too sure what this could be,” Xhekaj said, “but something was about to happen.”
Those were the circumstances under which Barron learned that he had been traded to the Nashville Predators for defenceman Alexandre Carrier.
He had just completed his last supper as a member of the Canadiens.
The one teammate who wasn’t in the car was Struble; he took an Uber home. And he was also the one teammate who might have been most impacted by this trade.
“He got traded like five minutes after we left,” Struble said Thursday after practice, just before leaving for Detroit. “I didn’t see it honestly until this morning. I went home, got to bed, and that was it. I woke up and my mom texted me, that’s actually how I found out, from my mom.
“But it sucks, honestly. It’s the s—ty part of hockey. You get closer with a guy, and you never know when he could be gone. But he’s walking into a good situation in Nashville, so I’m happy for him.”
Coach Martin St. Louis confirmed Thursday that his intention for Carrier – who had missed the past four Predators games with an upper-body injury – is to have him in the lineup against the Detroit Red Wings on Friday. That will, in all likelihood, mean Struble will be out of the lineup, and barring an injury, that might be his reality for a while. Struble and Barron were rotating in and out of the lineup of late, but neither had fully gained – or more accurately in the case of Struble, maintained – St. Louis’ confidence. With Carrier likely sliding into the top four with Mike Matheson, Guhle and Lane Hutson, and with Xhekaj and David Savard becoming a reliable third pairing, there’s not much room for Struble.
When asked about this new reality with a veteran defenceman joining the group, Struble let out a big sigh.
“Yeah, not much I can do,” he said. “They’re obviously going to do what’s best for the team, and I’m just going to do what I can to try to get in there and help. But, it’s up to them.”
St. Louis has mentioned how Struble needs to raise his floor, that when he has a bad game, it can be really bad, and he needs to make those bad games less bad. But Struble seemed somewhat confused by the assessment of his play.
When asked if he felt some hesitancy creeping into his game, he reluctantly agreed, but he didn’t actually agree.
“I honestly thought I was playing pretty well, but I guess so, because I’ve obviously been taken out,” he said. “But before I got taken out I thought I was playing some pretty good hockey. Yeah, I don’t really know.”
Carrier, a reliable, mobile, defensive defenceman with a high compete level and a willingness to block shots, makes management of the defence an easier task on the road, where you can’t necessarily control matchups. That’s where playing Barron was most problematic because St. Louis wanted to shelter him from having to face top players. The same thing appears to be happening with Struble, even if he’s demonstrated over stretches this season that he can be defensively effective against top competition.
Now, having the ability to have at least one of Matheson, Guhle, Carrier and, to a far lesser extent, Savard on the ice at all times makes matchups less important than they were before.
“It facilitates how we’re going to do things having a guy where you’re not worried who he’s on the ice against,” St. Louis said.
But there is another element to this trade, and it is reflected in how the Canadiens plan on using their goalies this weekend. St. Louis said Sam Montembeault is getting the start Friday night in Detroit, the first in a back-to-back, home-and-home series, with the two teams playing again Saturday at the Bell Centre. Normally in this situation, backup goalie Cayden Primeau would play one of the two games. Last season, under this exact scenario for the final two games of the regular season, Montembeault played the first game in Detroit and Primeau played the back half in Montreal.
But St. Louis didn’t want to confirm Primeau would play Saturday, a departure from previous back-to-backs this season, when he did confirm which game Primeau would play. That would suggest the Canadiens are at least considering using Montembeault in both games, which shows the urgency of starting to pile together victories and making a push up the Eastern Conference standings.
The Canadiens are lucky the rest of the conference has mitigated their poor start to the season; there were eight teams – half the conference – playing at .500 or worse before Thursday night’s games. The Ottawa Senators have won six of their past seven games to go from second-to-last in the conference on Dec. 4 to holding the second wild-card spot entering their game against the Calgary Flames on Thursday.
It would take an extraordinary change in their overall level of play for the Canadiens to put together a similar hot streak and make a similar climb up the standings, especially with a brutal schedule on the horizon after the Christmas break.
But it’s possible.
And by trading a potential future piece in Barron to acquire a piece for the present in Carrier, Canadiens management showed its players it believes it’s possible as well.
“We obviously added an older guy for the younger core we have here on ‘D,’ more of an established player who’s been in the league a little bit longer, a bit more of a veteran presence,” Guhle said. “It’s a decision they made to help us, and I think it will.”
(Photo of Justin Barron: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
