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If Arber Xhekaj doesn’t play on Wednesday, what’s the point?

 David Miller
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If Arber Xhekaj doesn’t play on Wednesday, what’s the point?
Credit: Getty Images
If we assume that the Habs will start next season with seven defensemen on their 23-man roster, we can expect Logan Mailloux and Adam Engstrom to be cut for camp.

If Kaiden Guhle is healthy, of course.

This would mean that David Savard, Mike Matheson, Kaiden Guhle, Lane Hutson, Jayden Struble, Arber Xhekaj and Justin Barron would be the seven defensemen to make the club at the start of the year.

However, making the club is one thing: playing is another.

Matheson, Guhle, Hutson and Savard are likely to form the defensive top-4, leaving the other three to rotate on the third pair. That’s my theory, at least.

Because Barron is right-handed (only Savard and Barron are right-handed) and has a good camp, you’d think he’d be in uniform for the first game. And that’s where the question arises: who will play, Struble or Xhekaj?

The subject came up a few times yesterday. Mathias Brunet and Martin Lemay feel that Xhekaj doesn’t belong in the line-up, and Arpon Basu writes that Struble is currently leading the battle between the two.

The more you think about it, the more you think Struble doesn’t deserve to come out of the lineup. The problem? The first game of the season is against Toronto, and it’s going to be shaky because of what happened in the pre-season games.

Can Martin St-Louis seriously keep Xhekaj off the ice? Does the coach need to learn from the past mistakes of his boss, Jeff Gorton?

If the coach ever really decides to blow the trick on Xhekaj against Toronto, it will no doubt be to do what the player safety department failed to do following Tuesday’s game: punish the guy.

And if that happens, I think Xhekaj will start wondering what’s wrong with his game and lose confidence. He’ll wonder why he’s being punished for protecting Patrik Laine last Saturday. He may also wonder if the club wants to “break” him in terms of media popularity. #Burger

If he skips his turn, it certainly won’t be because of what happened on Tuesday, since the coach didn’t throw him under the bus after the game. Not publicly, anyway.

I’m well aware that Martin St-Louis won’t want to play with 11 forwards next Wednesday, and he certainly doesn’t want to bencher Struble, who likes a physical game. But if he doesn’t dress Xhekaj, he’ll break the youngster and everyone (including himself) will wonder what he’s good for if he doesn’t play such a game.


Overtime

– Fourth line for Ivan Demidov today?

– Cutting preparatory matches between natural rivals: an ideal solution for the players, but not for the show.

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