Habs : Canadiens have to get bigger

Source : montrealgazette.com

There’s an adage in sport that says you can learn more from losing than you can from winning.

And if there’s one thing the Canadiens should have learned from their first-round playoff loss to the Ottawa Senators it’s that they have to get bigger if they hope to succeed in the future.

For the better part of the past decade, the Canadiens have operated on the philosophy that speed and skill are the keys to success in the National Hockey League. They bought the suggestion that the post-lockout NHL signalled a new era in which good would triumph over evil, skill would trump goonery.

But all the Canadiens’ skill went for naught in the playoffs when the Senators wore the Canadiens down with a game that combined speed with a physical style. Injuries played a part in the outcome, but the bottom line was that the Senators were bigger and stronger.

Whenever the size issue comes up, Canadiens management counters with the speed and skill argument and then confuses toughness and strength.

In his post-mortem this week, general manager Marc Bergvin defended his team’s toughness and pointed to rookie Brendan Gallagher, the 5-foot-8 sparkplug who can usually be found creating havoc in front of the opposition net.

There is no denying that Gallagher is one tough customer. There’s also no denying that he gets knocked down a lot by bigger players. Bergevin noted that Gallagher continues to bounce back up, but that’s not enough. At some point, the Canadiens have to find players who can stand in front of the net and not get knocked down.

When the Canadiens went on a slide at the end of the regular season, Rene Bourque noted that Montreal was being outhit in every game. The Canadiens finished the season 20th in hits with nearly 600 fewer than the league-leading Toronto Maple Leafs.

Bergevin said he was looking for balance and that it wasn’t always easy to find players who combine speed, skill and size. He noted that every team is looking for those players.

The Canadiens had their best chance to remake the team in 2009 when Bob Gainey cleaned house. Instead of getting bigger, the Canadiens got smaller with the addition of 5-foot-7 Brian Gionta, 5-foot-9 Michael Cammalleri and 5-foot-11 Scott Gomez.

This time around, Bergevin doesn’t have the cap space for a major renovation and said he doesn’t believe free agency is the answer. The key, he said, is to build through the draft.

This is one area where the Canadiens have had some success in recent years. Eighteen of the players on the Canadiens’ roster at the end of the season were either drafted by the team or signed as undrafted free agents.

Trevor Timmins and his scouting staff have been able to identify speed, skill and character, but size is another matter. Defenceman Jarred Tinordi is 6-foot-6, the 6-foot-1 Alex Galchenyuk is going to be fine when he fills out, and we can only hope that 6-foot Louis Leblanc, the Canadiens’ first-round draft pick in 2009, does fill out.

But when you look down the list of Canadiens prospects there are too many guys like Danny Kristo, Sebastian Collberg, Charles Hudon and Gabriel Dumont who fall short of 6 feet.

With six picks in the first three rounds of next month’s draft, it might be a good idea for the Canadiens to shelve the philosophy of picking the best player available in favour of picking the best big player available.