BROSSARD, Que. – Following Patrik Laine’s first preseason game in a Montreal Canadiens uniform last week, Oliver Kapanen was sitting in the dressing room at the Bell Centre as Laine was finishing up a long round of interviews, talking about the buzz he created in the crowd that night simply by grabbing the puck and starting to skate up ice with it.
Kapanen had also impressed the crowd that night, though not in quite the same way. After two full seasons playing at the top level of Finland’s pro league, Liiga, the 21-year-old demonstrated his NHL readiness and how complete his game is for such a young player.
But he too was impressed by Laine’s presence. Kapanen was just 12 when Laine was making his own pro debut in Liiga, scoring 17 goals in 46 games with Tappara as a 17-year-old who was one of the hottest NHL draft prospects in the world.
Kapanen had never met Laine before arriving in Montreal for training camp. Suddenly they were sharing a dressing room. It was a thrill.
“When I was a little kid, he played in Liiga and he was a superstar there. I watched him growing up, always scoring goals, and his shot,” Kapanen said that night. “It’s been special to be in the same locker room and practice and play with him. It’s a super honour to be with him.”
Now, less than a week later, Kapanen is not only with Laine. He is a candidate to replace him.
The Canadiens did not have an update on Laine’s status after he suffered what looked to be a severe knee injury against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night. He was at Canadiens practice Monday watching from the bench with a heavy brace on his left knee and crutches to move around, so even without a precise update from the team — knee injuries often require swelling to subside before getting an accurate image of the damage — it is clear Laine will not be on the ice anytime soon.
And coach Martin St. Louis made no effort to hide that reality.
“I think what makes it a little bit harder with what happened during the game is we felt like the number one job we had to do with Patty is make him excited to come to the rink. And he was,” St. Louis said. “And it’s not just my job, it’s the group. What I’m really proud about the group is … when you’re rebuilding, it’s like you’re building a house. The house can look really nice, but is it a home? It takes more to make it a home. And I feel like seeing Patty coming in like that makes me feel that we’re building a home, not just a house.
“So it stings a little more, because I feel he was excited to come to the rink.”
And then St. Louis took questions on Laine’s potential replacements, several of them, and his answers made it clear he doesn’t know what the answer is right now. The Canadiens have two preseason games remaining on their schedule, both against the Ottawa Senators, and have four or five practices before they have to submit an opening night roster. We are likely to see several experiments in that time in search of that answer.
“You don’t find your answers,” St. Louis said, “if you don’t try anything.”
Here is a quick overview of some of the Canadiens’ options.
Going young
As St. Louis said, the Canadiens are in a rebuild, and though they are trying to exit one phase and enter a new one, they still have a lot of interest in learning more about what they have in the pipeline.
In Kapanen and Emil Heineman, they have two interesting candidates to take Laine’s spot on the roster, if not his specific spot in the lineup. Heineman is a big shooter who can play with some physicality and skate. He is entering his fifth season of pro hockey — his second in North America — and at age 22 it would be a good time for the Canadiens to see what they have in a product of the first major trade the Jeff Gorton/Kent Hughes administration made when they sent Tyler Toffoli to the Calgary Flames in 2022.
“I think he looks more comfortable out there,” St. Louis said. “And I think it comes with a little more experience: he’s got a season under his belt of North American hockey. He does the same thing — he skates fast, he can finish his checks, he’s got a good shot. It just looks a little bit better this year. I can’t pinpoint one thing, but I feel he just looks a little bit better, and I feel it comes from just being comfortable in the environment, experience, reps, it’s very noticeable to me.”
Then there’s Kapanen, which is a bit more complicated. If Heineman doesn’t work out, he can easily be sent back to the AHL. With Kapanen having a European assignment clause in his entry-level contract, he can’t be sent to the AHL. He would have to play in Montreal or be sent to Timrå of the SHL in Sweden.
Kapanen has opened a lot of eyes in training camp, but the challenge is to determine whether what we are seeing in preseason hockey will translate to the grind of the NHL season.
“It’s a big part of it,” St. Louis said. “You look at guys and you’re like, OK, what will this guy look like in December or January? You talk about the reps and the environment, that stuff crosses our mind, no doubt. As we get towards our answers, these are conversations that we’re going to have … We’re going to try to have as much information to make the best decision.”
And that information is not a small data set. A lot goes into it, because making that projection is so hard right now. There is nothing the Canadiens could do in training camp that would replicate playing three games in four days in late December.
“The subtleties, the decision-making on the ice, it’s not just one thing,” St. Louis said. “Is he physically ready? Is he mentally ready? Do we need what he brings? There’s so many things that come into play, I wouldn’t say it’s one thing. But so far, I’ve liked what I’ve seen. I haven’t looked at any data, I just trust my eyes.”
Kapanen is a right shot, like Laine, and he was third on KalPa last season with four power play goals, though he hasn’t really played on the wing since his junior days. Heineman is more of a shooter than Kapanen, but is a left shot. He was third on the Laval Rocket last season with five power play goals.
Spreading the wealth
St. Louis decided to keep his top line of Juraj Slafkovský, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield intact at training camp. But he has some information that could help him compensate for Laine’s absence with combinations that have worked in the past.
For instance, Slafkovský spent all of training camp last year playing with Kirby Dach — who, it should be noted, is like a new addition to the team — before he was lost for the season in the second game. Their chemistry was excellent, they are two big bodies and they loved playing together. So much so that when Slafkovský was asked about Dach last February, he said he was eager to rekindle that relationship.
“I can’t wait for him to be back and (to) just get to play with him again,” he said then.
Dach saw a lot of similarities between himself and Slafkovský last season and went out of his way to try to help Slafkovský when he was struggling early on.
“I feel like the way we play the game complements one another,” Dach said last season in February. “I think he’s finally found his confidence and his stride and he’s enjoying the game. I mean, you see the passion the kid has, it’s pretty special.”
Moving Slafkovský back onto Dach’s wing makes even more sense when you have the possibility of replacing him on the Suzuki line with Alex Newhook, who spent time on that line last season and was really starting to cook when he went down with a high-ankle sprain. At the time of the injury, Newhook had put up four goals and two assists in his previous seven games.
“I think we played really fast,” Caufield said of that line combination. “Obviously (Newhook) thinks the game at a high level and gets pucks back. I think Newy could play anywhere and he’s fun to play with.”
Doing this would leave one slot open on a hypothetical Dach-Slafkovský line, with several candidates to fill it. But the best fit might be Joshua Roy, who is at his best when he’s a complement to similarly talented players. He realizes the opportunity in front of him with the loss of Laine and will use the next week to try and take full advantage of it.
“That’s my intention,” Roy said. “I want to show what I can do and the offensive side of my game helps a lot.”
When St. Louis was asked about the possibility of breaking up his top line, he smiled.
“It’s a good question,” he said. “Anything’s possible.”
It is easy to look at the loss of Laine as a devastating blow to the Canadiens’ hopes of making at least a modest move up the standings, especially when Caufield used that exact word to describe how he felt when he saw Laine go down Saturday night.
“Pretty devastated,” Caufield said. “Real excited to have a guy like that on our team, so to see him go down and be in pain like that for sure wasn’t fun.”
But the Canadiens’ reality should not solely be measured by their corporate messaging of wanting to be in the mix for a playoff spot. It should be measured by how the team and individuals improve, how they show a path to being a factor down the road when the Canadiens enter a more realistic competitive window.
Lane Hutson still has an opportunity to do that this season and provide a lot of the excitement fans were expecting from Laine. Same goes for Dach and Roy, and maybe Heineman and/or Kapanen and/or another young player we didn’t expect to see a whole lot of in Montreal this season. There will also be other injuries, providing further opportunities for players who will be working hard in Laval to ensure they will be the next ones called up when that inevitably happens.
Wanting to be in the mix is well and good. The players are competitive, and that should be nurtured. But the Canadiens are very much in an information-gathering and team-building phase of their rebuilding process, and Laine’s injury — no matter how long it lasts — will allow them to gather a lot of information on a lot of different guys.
If you’re looking for a silver lining, and it is admittedly difficult to find right now, that’s it. The Canadiens need information on a lot of their young players, and they are sure to get it.
(Photo of Martin St. Louis, Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook: Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
