Patrik Laine finally made his debut in the Montreal Canadiens’ bleu, blanc, rouge on December, 3 and had an immediate impact on the power play. At even strength however, it’s been much more difficult. The Laine and Kirby Dach duo has been joined with Juraj Slafkovsky and eventually by Alex Newhook, but consistent results have been hard to come by.
In the Canadiens’ impressive winning streak in January, it looked like the second line was finally clicking, but the spark that was briefly found has been lost again and their production has plummeted, just like the Habs’ results of late.
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On the Anaheim Ducks’ second goal on Sunday night, Laine was seen watching Frank Vatrano charging the net on his own and he made no effort to come and fix his teammates’ mistakes. Instead, he was just gliding on the ice, like a player in EA’s NHL game franchise when their controller is disconnected, this was most probably the final drop in the bucket, what made Martin St-Louis think: enough.
It’s hard to be shocked by Laine’s defensive lapses, this is an aspect of his play that has been criticized in the past and part of the reason why the Columbus Blue Jackets almost gave him to the Canadiens (with all due respect to Jordan Harris who has only been dressed for 26 games with his new team this season).
St-Louis demoting Laine to the third line for practice yesterday was a message to the big Finn; play a complete game or you will have to deal with the consequences. Laine is playing much more than just matches these days, he is playing for his future. He has said that he loves playing in Montreal and he’s having more fun than he’s had in years, but if he wants that to continue to be true, he’ll have to shape up.
While he still has a year left on his contract, there’s no doubt Kent Hughes is watching his performance closely and in the process of deciding if Laine should be part of his core, if he should sign him to an extension. While fans were quick to say Laine should be kept long term when he started scoring like a machine on the power play in December, some are now calling for his head in light of recent performance. The GM cannot have recency bias, he’s got to take everything into account and project how he thinks the player could impact his team in the future.
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Post practice on Monday, Laine didn’t seem particularly worried about his benching on Sunday, mentioning in was just one game in a long season. For him, the team needs to go back to basics and just do what it did during the winning streak. He summed up what he had to do with a short sentence:
Got to get to work and be better.
It starts tonight. Since he joined the team, Laine has been given ample time and leeway to find his game shape, but his “immunity” is now done, and it’s time to walk the walk after talking the talk.
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