Canadiens weekly notebook: Alex Newhook’s future, Kirby Dach’s untimely penalties

The Montreal Canadiens have three first-round picks from the 2019 draft in their lineup. One, Cole Caufield, is thriving. Another, Kirby Dach, is struggling. And then there’s Alex Newhook, taken one spot behind Caufield at No. 16, and he’s somewhere in between the two.

He’s been … fine.

He definitely has qualities as a player that are important on a line. His speed is a major factor, he can win pucks in the offensive zone, and he’s small but strong. But that main attribute was a big reason Newhook was moved off the top line with Caufield and Nick Suzuki and joined the line with Dach and Patrik Laine, because Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis felt that line needed to play faster. That’s what Newhook provides.

“He’s a guy that brings pace,” St. Louis said last week before making the switch. “I feel that for Newy, he’s a great skater, but I don’t think he understands how much that speed is important not just offensively, but defensively. The way he tracks back, he cuts a lot of plays in the neutral zone because of his speed. I think his whole career probably, before he got to the NHL, he used his speed probably mostly offensively. I think Newy can be a great 200-foot player because of his speed. It seems like he never gets tired; he has a big tank. He can play with a lot of speed for a long duration of his shift.

“It’s to keep valuing his speed the other way, and usually when you do that, it takes care of everything else. He’s done that for us. He’s a guy that can play up and down the lineup, I think, and the more he realizes how valuable his biggest asset, his speed, is on the other side of the puck defensively, I think he’s going to keep building his value.”

That last bit is interesting in Newhook’s case, playing up and down the lineup. There are often players who are first-round draft picks, offensive guys their entire lives, who have trouble accepting they may not necessarily be offensive guys in the NHL. But once they accept that, they can be valuable, versatile players, which Newhook already is because he can play both centre and wing. But as a player who can play up and down the lineup, in both a scoring and defensive role, he would be that much more versatile and therefore that much more valuable.

Just look at Josh Anderson this season. He’s embraced a less offensive role and greatly increased his value to the team.

“He measures the impact he has on our team better than he did before,” St. Louis said. “I think in past years, he measured his impact largely on production. This year, he measures his impact more with his actions, the way he plays on the ice, and not necessarily his production.”

Newhook’s production is the part that’s been … fine. But there are actions he does that help the team, help his linemates, whoever they may be. A big part of Newhook’s identity, he says, is tenacity. It is something he leans on when he feels his game is slipping. And that tenacity is what St. Louis is talking about, except he’s saying Newhook needs to use it in both directions on the ice.

“I think it’s a big part of my game, and with my build and speed, I’m a guy that can win a lot of battles and get to pucks first and be hard on guys,” Newhook said. “So sometimes, when you have a game where you lose a few battles, or you’re not being first on pucks, go back to that. Push myself to be that guy.”

Newhook has two years left on his contract after this one. It’s entirely possible that as some of the younger prospects integrate the lineup, Newhook will get pushed down the lineup. If he embraces that, he can still be a valuable member of the team doing what he does. Maybe, like Anderson has this year, he can become a penalty killer. That speed would be a major asset there.

Newhook will turn 24 on Jan. 28. He’s still young. So that transformation is not top of mind for him right now.

“I still think I have the skill and the ability to be a top-six offensive producer in this league,” he said. “I think last year I found that. I think I was close to a point per game when I came back from injury at the end of the season. So I know I can do it. That’s there for me. I can be that guy. Sometimes you go through spurts where it’s just not as easy, but I still think that’s a player I can be.”

Newhook did have nine points over his final nine games last season, but in 32 games after his return from a high-ankle sprain, he had 21 points. That’s still good — a 53-point pace over 82 games — but he largely played those games centring Brendan Gallagher and Joel Armia. It wasn’t the Canadiens’ third line at the time, but it definitely had a third-line feel.

When Newhook was in Colorado, he had trouble maintaining a spot in the top six. He often played a third-line role. He didn’t always play on the power play. As a young player, it was frustrating to him.

“Because you want to be that guy,” he said. “I think I have that skill set.”

But Newhook got a Stanley Cup ring playing that role.

“Sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do to be on a winning team,” he said. “Just find a role.”

It’s possible he might have to do the same thing when his current team becomes a winning team. Perhaps by that point, it will be easier for him to accept, to measure his impact in different ways. And if he does, he can be a valuable part of this team for a long time.

The Kirby Dach penalty problem

St. Louis said after his team’s 4-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday night that he didn’t mind all the penalties his team took, because they were compete penalties.

That’s fair, but you also can’t give six opportunities to the league’s second-ranked power play — and first on home ice, entering the game at a ridiculous 34.8 percent clip — and expect to survive.

The Canadiens allowed two power-play goals for a second straight game and have allowed at least one in four straight. Their penalty-kill percentage has dropped from 83.5 on Dec. 6 — tied for third in the league at the time — to 80.2, 14th in the league.

The penalty kill was bound to crack at some point because no team spends more time killing penalties than the Canadiens at 5:57 per game. That number will of course go down if they continue giving up power-play goals.

Of all the penalties the Canadiens took Saturday night in Winnipeg, the one taken by Dach seemed to be the most impactful. It was a high-sticking call at 13:46 of the first period, with the Canadiens up 1-0 on Lane Hutson’s first NHL goal and generally controlling play. Gabriel Vilardi scored less than a minute into the power play, the Jets scored again less than two minutes later, and the momentum the Canadiens had gathered early in the game was gone. They got it back eventually, but only after going down 3-1 on the Jets’ second power-play goal of the game in the second period.

Anderson also took a minor penalty in the second, his 16th of the season, first among all NHL forwards. It was his fourth minor in four games, whereas Dach has taken four minors in five games.

But for some reason, it feels like Dach is the one who is always in the box, even if that was his 10th minor of the season.

That’s because Dach’s penalties have almost all come at bad times, or in bad areas of the ice, and have been costly. Three of Dach’s minors have come in the third period; the game was tied on two of them. He took another minor in overtime on Long Island, but his teammates blocked four shots to kill that off before losing in a shootout. He’s taken two offensive zone penalties — one first-period penalty that negated a power play after 14 seconds with the Canadiens down a goal, a double-minor with 2:40 left in regulation in New York that led to Kaapo Kakko’s game winner in the final minute (the infamous “I’m not going to talk about the refs” game) — and all but one of his minors have been stick fouls.

Anderson has also taken some bad penalties at bad times, but a few of them have come with the game already out of reach. They generally haven’t been as costly as Dach’s.

But this is about more than just Dach. The Canadiens as a team need to stop taking so many penalties, whether they are compete penalties or not.


Lane Hutson defends Maple Leafs forward William Nylander. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

Hutson’s defensive game remains misunderstood

Hutson got a major monkey off his back when he scored the game’s opening goal Saturday. He had been getting questions about it for days. He had been hitting the ice early before practice to work on his shot. And the beaming smile on his face told you everything you needed to know about how much the goal drought was wearing on him.

But really, everyone knew this goal would come eventually. Hutson does too many interesting things in the offensive zone for it not to happen. At some point, he was going to wind up with an empty net staring him in the face, but beating the best goalie in the world on a clean, unscreened shot was definitely better.

There is, however, another monkey Hutson needs to shed from his back, and that is the notion he is not good defensively. It preceded him before coming to the NHL, and it is sticking with him in just about every NHL market outside Montreal.

And it is wrong.

“I didn’t know that he had that defensive compete in him,” St. Louis said last week. “I think everybody, when they talked about Lane up to now, before he got to the NHL, they talked about his offensive side, and he’s not a big guy, and can he defend in this league and this and that. For me, I didn’t know.

“But once I saw his compete level defensively, it’s something that impressed me at the time. It’s something I learned because I didn’t know he had that. Not that I knew he didn’t have that, but I didn’t know he had that.”

More so than his goal, Hutson’s most impressive offensive thing last week was his shift midway through the first period against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday. And that shift began with strong defence. Watch Hutson as Mike Matheson loses an edge. He adjusts to the fact Matheson is temporarily not there, takes away passing angles and doesn’t panic.

And once the puck pops loose, Hutson is gone.

Then, once the puck is firmly established in the offensive zone, Hutson does the things that grab so much attention because they are so unique and seem to annoy every other NHL fan base.

This should have resulted in a goal.

And this should have as well.

But what is worth remembering is all of this began with good defence. Hutson has a good stick in his own zone, he defends with his feet, he actively avoids situations that put him at a physical disadvantage, and he is generally efficient defensively. The Canadiens allow fewer expected goals with Hutson on the ice than when he is on the bench. He starts more shifts in his defensive zone than in the offensive zone. He faces top opposition every night and does more than fine — he does well.

The occasional defensive miscue has little to do with his inability to play defence or his size. It has everything to do with him being a rookie defenceman playing under extremely difficult circumstances and learning as he goes. And frankly, those defensive miscues are not the norm.

The Michael Hage triangle attack strikes again

Michael Hage did it again Saturday night. He attacked the triangle.

It’s become his signature move and he pulled it out again in overtime to help his Michigan Wolverines beat the Wisconsin Badgers and head into their Christmas break a bit more ready to celebrate, snapping a three-game losing streak over which they scored zero goals.

The triangle is the space between a defender’s stick blade and skates, an area that is awkward to defend, and Hage exploits it with great regularity.

“He does that move all the time in practice. He scored his first goal at Michigan doing that move,” Michigan head coach Brandon Naurato said after the game. “If he does it a couple more times, it might be named after him.”

Here is that first goal at Michigan. Same move.

And here he is scoring during the only scrimmage at Canadiens development camp in July. Same move.

So, what’s the origin story of this move?

Hage has no idea.

“I don’t know,” Hage said Sunday morning in Ann Arbor. “I had a lot of them last year. It’s so funny, a lot of my buddies will start texting me like, ‘Are you kidding me? How does this keep happening?’ I’m just like, I don’t know. My linemates from last year who I’m really close with are just like, ‘I’ve been trying it, it’s not working.’ And I’m just like, I don’t know.

“I wish I remember how I learned it, but I look back at clips from when I was 12 or 13 and I started doing it. It’s just a timing thing really, and feel for when they’re going to poke at the puck.”

That’s the beauty of this move. There’s a dangerous plan for each move the defender makes.

“You kind of have to choose,” Hage said. “If you don’t poke at it, I’ll probably just try to take it to the back post. If you do, I try to slip it under your stick.”

There will be a lot more from my visit with Hage in Ann Arbor over the weekend, but this is just a little taste. The fact he can not only continuously execute this one move, but can also put himself in situations where it becomes useful, is a great window into the mental speed of Hage’s offensive game. Because it’s one thing to say you’re going to do something based on what the defender does, but to do it with the decision-making speed, the hand speed, the shot speed and the shot accuracy that Hage continuously displays in making this one move is a good reflection of his overall offensive game.

(Top photo of Alex Newhook: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)



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