Skip to content
Your daily dose of hockey
Canadiens News

Canadiens: a bigger but still fragile top-6

 Michael Johnson
Share : facebook icon twitter icon
Canadiens: a bigger but still fragile top-6
Credit: Getty Images
One of the keys to success in the playoffs is physical play. Having a big body facilitates that same physical play and gives players an edge against smaller squads.

In acquiring Patrik Laine on Monday, Kent Hughes added to his top-6 in a big way.

By joining the Habs, the Finnish forward became the tallest player in the line-up at 6’5″.

That’s a lot of happy people, but it’s probably Serge Savard who’s the happiest of the bunch! He had discussed his desire to see the Canadiens acquire bigger players less than a week ago. Well, it’s done!

For the time being, the Canadiens’ top-6 players would be :

  • Nick Suzuki (5 feet 11 inches)
  • Cole Caufield (5 feet 8 inches)
  • Juraj Slafkovsky (6 feet 3 inches)
  • Kirby Dach (6 feet 4 inches)
  • Alex Newhook (5′ 11″)
  • Patrik Laine (6′ 5″)
Newhook seems the logical choice here, but his position is less assured than for the other five. Josh Anderson could take his place on the wing, which would further increase the size of the players in this top-6.

The biggest problem with this top-6 isn’t its size, but the fact that it’s made up of fragile players, and the acquisition of Patrik Laine doesn’t help matters.

Laine had an impressive start to his career, but missed many games in his final seasons with the Blue Jackets. The latter missed 127 games in his four seasons in Columbus!

His shoulder injury sidelined him last season, and his admission to the NHL’s Player Assistance Program didn’t help his case at all in terms of his number of games played.

At a press conference on Monday evening, Laine reassured Habs fans that he was feeling better, both physically and mentally.

Cole Caufield is also part of this list of fragile players. He managed to play the whole of last season, but missed almost half of the 2022-23 season.

The same goes for Juraj Slafkovsky, who has just completed an 82-game season after a rookie season of just 39 games.

And how can we forget Kirby Dach? His season was over after just two games in 2023-24! He was also injured in 2022-23, missing a total of 24 games.

The only anomaly in this group is captain Nick Suzuki, who has never missed a game in his 373-game career. He should give his teammates more advice!


Overtime

– Hi Patrik!

– An endearing player.

– Chris Nilan is still not convinced.

facebook icon Share twitter icon Tweet linkedin icon Share
Copied!
More Content