Why do the Habs seem intent on destroying Jesperi Kotkaniemi?
By making the soon-to-be 21-year-old a healthy scratch, the organization risks destroying his confidence, a pattern of behavior that has been long established with first-round picks in Montreal
MONTREAL - After writing on Saturday that Jake Allen should replace Carey Price in the Montreal Canadiens’ net for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final, it was explained to me by more than one person that, even though Price has not been good, you simply cannot thrust that kind of ignominy on such a proud veteran and important player. Apparently it’s not enough that Price is paid $10.5 million per year and that the organization seems to bend to his every wish. It also has to be mindful of his feelings, even if it means not giving the team its best chance to win Game 4.
All right. Fair enough. Don’t agree, but appreciate the sentiment. So, why then is it now perfectly acceptable to destroy the confidence of a kid the day before his 21st birthday, a player you took third overall in the draft three years ago, passing on Brady Tkachuk, in the hopes that he would be the answer to your gaping hole at center?
Going into Game 4 of the final, Canadiens coach Dominique Ducharme announced that Jesperi Kotkaniemi would be a healthy scratch, replaced by the hard-working and defense-first Jake Evans. Only Nick Suzuki has scored more goals in this playoff run than Kotkaniemi, who sits tied in goals with Tyler Toffoli and Joel Armia with five. Evans is a character player who works really hard and may give the Canadiens a better opportunity to shut down the Lightning, but they also enter Game 4 with almost no chance of getting goals out of three of their four centers.
Almost everything the Canadiens have done with Kotkaniemi to this point in his career has been wrong. And anything good with him seems to have happened by luck. First, they drafted him to fill an immediate need, something you never do in the NHL unless you’re talking about players such as Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid. An 18-year-old draft pick is almost always at least two years away from making an impactful contribution. Kotkaniemi surprised with a very solid first season after being rushed into the NHL, but faltered in Season No. 2, as many young players often do. The Canadiens responded to this dip by scratching him from the lineup and sending him to the minors.
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And now, when it seemed as though Kotkaniemi had been turning the corner with his performance in these playoffs, the organization is once again sending him mixed signals. Let’s get one thing straight, though. Nobody hates anybody here, nor are the Canadiens willfully setting out to mess around with a young player’s mind. Ducharme and his staff honestly believe this move will give them the best chance of extending the series. Because the next time someone can produce an NHL coach whose objective is to lose games, it will be the first time. “It’s nothing against KK or anything else,” Ducharme said. “It’s just we have depth and we have options and that’s the way it is. That’s it.”
Speaking of mixed messages to young players, after watching Erik Gustafsson and Jon Merrill struggle, which put a strain on the Canadiens top four defensemen that is beginning to show in the final, Ducharme also announced he is inserting Alexander Romanov and Brett Kulak into the lineup to take Gustafsson’s and Merrill’s spots. This comes after Romanov has sat out all but two of the Canadiens’ 20 playoff games.
This actually should come as no surprise to people who have followed this team closely. Over the past decade or so, the Habs have done a remarkable job of mishandling players they’ve picked in the first round of the draft. Let’s start with Louis Leblanc in 2009, then move on to Jarred Tinordi (2010), Nathan Beaulieu (2011), Alex Galchenyuk (2012), Michael McCarron (2013), Nikita Scherbak (2014), Noah Juulsen (2015) and round it out with Ryan Poehling (2017). You’ll notice there’s no entry for 2016. That’s the year the Canadiens took defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, a player they traded to the Lightning to get Jonathan Drouin. Now there’s a chance that all of those players – with the exception of Galchenyuk – were never going to be full-time NHL players regardless of which team drafted them. There’s a chance they were all draft blunders, which says an awful lot about the organization’s ability to evaluate talent. We’ll never know which was the case, but there’s a real pattern here of top players not being able to fit into this organization.
Perhaps Cole Caufield should be getting a little nervous right about now…
There’s no doubt the Canadiens needed to shake something up in their lineup going into Game 4. Status quo almost certainly would have guaranteed the same results. But if you’re going to sit someone, why not fourth-line center Eric Staal, who has two goals in this post-season and does little more than win faceoffs?
Oh yeah, you don’t do that to a proud veteran. Forgot about that…