BROSSARD, Que. — It’s the $9.1-million question, and it revolves around No. 92: can Patrik Laine be the player the Montreal Canadiens need him to be?
Martin St. Louis opened training camp Wednesday by declaring that yes, indeed, the enigmatic Finnish forward can.
The coach even expressed optimism that Laine would.
“With the amount of work he’s put in this summer, we might see the best version of Patty Laine,” St. Louis said.
We’ll reserve judgment on that until Laine shows it in games that matter.
We don’t doubt that Laine worked extremely hard this past summer, but we need to be assured he worked smart because what we saw from the 27-year-old last season was more of what we’ve seen from him through most of his career: a player who can positively impact the outcome of a game with a single shot and just as easily negatively impact one with a single bad decision.
With his cannon of a one-timer, Laine scored 15 power-play goals and tilted enough results in Montreal’s favour last season to help it make the playoffs. But he made many more than 15 dubious decisions at five-on-five — and those nearly cost the Canadiens enough points in the standings to miss the post-season entirely. That can’t be ignored in the evaluation.
It wasn’t ignored when the games mattered most — in the playoffs, St. Louis sat Laine in three of five games the Canadiens played against the Washington Capitals.
He said he was playing with a fractured finger.
Was Laine too hurt to play? No.
He sat for those games because it was hurting the team too much for St. Louis to play him.
If that remains — or becomes — the case at one point or another this season, it’ll be Laine’s loss.
On the financial end, it will be a considerable one, with Laine entering his last season making $9.1 million and staring at significantly reduced chances of making even close to that on a new deal.
It’s not a stretch to suggest things remaining status quo from last season to this one would also significantly reduce Laine’s chances of continuing his NHL career.
Laine’s being given the greatest opportunity he could ask for in a contract year, and barring another serious injury, no one will blame anyone but him if he doesn’t take advantage of it.
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With St. Louis saying we might see the best version of Laine, it’s safe to assume the coach is going to put him in the best chair to succeed. That means he’ll be giving Laine an opportunity to start in the team’s top six, likely next to Kirby Dach and Ivan Demidov.
It’s an opportunity Laine earned with hard work this summer. The Tampere, Finland, native stayed in Montreal and was on the ice multiple times per week. Sources informed us he was just as present in the team’s gym.
But Laine’s ability to hold onto the opportunity that’s being given to him depends entirely on how smartly he worked in the off-season and how smartly he’ll work with each passing day of training camp and the regular season.
Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said he challenged Laine to figure it out.
“Patrik’s an incredibly skilled and talented hockey player. We’ve all seen that from him,” Hughes told Sportsnet two weeks ago. “In conversations I had with him in exit meetings, and then again — I don’t remember if it was late May or early June — I said to him, ‘Hey, let’s think about the areas of your game that you need to improve for you to play to more regularly.’
“I think in Patrik’s case, the answers are so obvious,” Hughes continued. “I firmly believe if he’s able to make those changes to his game, he’s going to have a much better season.”
If Laine isn’t able to make those changes, he won’t be the player the Canadiens need him to be.
They need Laine’s goals, no doubt. He’s a player who’s scored as many as 44 of them in one season, and the Canadiens aren’t exactly overflowing with other players who can do the same.
But Laine won’t come close to rekindling the magic he showed through his first two NHL seasons in Winnipeg if he continues to insist on carrying the puck through the neutral zone instead of giving it to the better play drivers he’ll be paired with. He won’t fill the net with that potent shot of his if he continues trying to beat players one-on-one coming over the offensive blue line instead of distributing the puck quickly so he can get it back in a scoring area. And he won’t be able to contribute much of anything the Canadiens need from him if he can’t be trusted to play in the chair he’d ideally fill in the lineup.
Laine won’t fit in another chair. He’s not made to occupy a checking line, and the playoffs showed he’d be of little use on a fourth line.
Last season, St. Louis had to use Laine on the team’s second line by default at times. He just didn’t have any other players he could rely on to finish the chances one gets from that place in the lineup. And he had no choice but to afford the player a grace period to find his game because, as he mentioned on Wednesday, circumstances dictated so.
“I think last summer, he was coming off surgery, and more than just surgery, right? He hadn’t played in a long time and he was battling some stuff. Real stuff,” St. Louis said.
Laine had undergone should surgery and spent months in the NHL/NHLPA Players’ Assistance Program. He came to Montreal having only skated three times before informal practices that began ahead of training camp were held in late August. And then he sprained his left knee in his first pre-season contest and missed the first 24 games of the season.
St. Louis had to give Laine the runway to find his game upon his return.
Before that, the player said on a podcast he felt like quitting hockey. And even if he made it clear, following his trade to Montreal, that those feelings had subsided, Laine’s first statements as a member of the Canadiens could hardly be seen as a love letter to the sport.
It left St. Louis and his staff a task that superseded just coaching the player.
“We wanted to make sure he loved playing the game again, which I felt we got to do that,” said St. Louis. “But I don’t think we saw the real version of Patty just because of everything that led up to it.”
Will we now? It’s a big question coming into this season.
If we do see the Patrik Laine the Canadiens need him to be, it will be great for both parties.
If we don’t, it’ll probably be the last of Laine in Montreal.
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