Hockey

“He’s probably the best defenseman I’ve seen in the QMJHL (in 16 years)”
Pablo Herrera-Vergara
“He’s probably the best defenseman I’ve seen in the QMJHL (in 16 years)”
Credit: Screenshot/Twitter

The Habs season finally kicks off tomorrow. It's one of the best days of the year, because we can turn the page on the summer and the preseason games. It's also a fresh start for the new members of the team, including Noah Dobson. To be honest, he didn't show the full extent of his talent in the preparatory games, as my colleague Maxime Truman described. Despite this, Denis Gauthier has a very good opinion of the defenseman, a very good one indeed.

“He's probably the best defenseman I've seen in my first 16 years of coaching, of the defensemen who have come through the QMJHL” -Denis Gauthier

Gauthier mentions that Dobson isn't an offensive dynamo like Hutson, nor a player who scores 2 points a game either, but that he's capable of taking control of a game. The former Flames defenseman boasted of his aura in a game, but let's not kid ourselves: the Habs went out and got an excellent player, a first-pair defenseman for sure. He has all the qualities of a complete defenseman, despite the poor sample we saw in the preparatory game. Gauthier is absolutely right, and I wonder how long the Matheson experiment will last. Without taking anything away from Matheson, I believe that Kaiden Guhle and Dobson will eventually form the team's first duo, and for a long time to come. We'll have to be patient with Dobson, but I have no doubt that he'll be quite a defenseman for the Habs.

'Overtime'

– Predictions from a statistical model.

– Here we go.

– Very normal.

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