BROSSARD, Que. — Here’s a list of Montreal Canadiens who figure to be most vital to the team’s success in its upcoming play-in series versus the Pittsburgh Penguins.
1. Carey Price
2. Shea Weber
3. Phillip Danault
4. Jeff Petry
This was just an exercise to show how easy it is to overlook a six-foot-three, 225-pound defenceman who skates as fluidly as a man half his size would, who contributes at both ends of the ice, who plays in all situations and who brings a physical dimension few other players on the Canadiens have.
We see you, Ben Chiarot. We know your team will be in a world of hurt if you don’t pick up right where you left off when the NHL paused its season.
We watched you become the best version of yourself from mid-October to mid-March, and we know you’re doing everything you can to move forward as that player when the games start in August.
And we think your fans will be reassured by the fact you said you’re treating this differently than you would the start of a new season, because you’ve mentioned several times over the course of this year that you’re traditionally a slow starter, and we saw the evidence of that in the first two weeks of October.
"Mentally, you’ve got to get up to speed right away," you said on Tuesday. "There’s not really that kind of working your way up to the intensity of a playoff game. It’s going to just (be) kind of a shotgun start. So, mentally, you have to get up to speed and up to that intensity and try to get into that mode right away."
[relatedlinks]
We’re not necessarily best positioned to say, so please take our opinion with a grain of salt. But, so far, you look like you’re well-entrenched in that process.
We’re sure this isn’t news to you, but here’s what your coach admired about your game this past season, in addition to his explanation for upping your ice-time per game by five minutes above your career average and pairing you with Weber:
"I think when you looked at our left side, we needed him to step up for us at that point," Claude Julien said on Wednesday. "We needed some size and a guy that could handle the kind of minutes he did last year. And he did that.
"I think the biggest thing with Ben was: when he’s assertive, he’s at his best. He’s big, he’s strong, kind of like Webby. And those two make a pair that is not a lot of fun to play against. So that’s why we paired them, and they seemed to have good chemistry between the two of them. So it was the best scenario that we thought would help our hockey club."
It seemed you were keenly aware of what the coach was looking for, because you delivered in a way you never have before — beating your previous career high in goals (five in your last season with the Winnipeg Jets) by nearly double (nine), registering a career-high 21 points and owning your best corsi rating as an NHLer (54.4 per cent).
It wasn’t all roses.
There were blocks of games where you and Weber found yourselves on the ice for the bulk of the goals against. There were bumps and bruises, too, and fatigue was inevitable.
[snippet id=4931344]
But you seem to have put all of that in perspective.
"Throughout the course of the season, you’re going to have ups and downs," you said. "It’s not just me and Shea playing defence; there’s five us out there playing together. I know it’s easy to say this pair or this line gets scored on more, but me and Shea generally match up against the other team’s top offensive line and you know we take pride in that. Sometimes there’s going to be good nights and bad nights, and something we’ve always said is that the other team gets paid too. They’re going to do their job well at times, too.
"The biggest thing I would say is, there’s going to be ups and downs during the season and you can’t ride that rollercoaster. You just have to stay even-keeled."
Boy, what a challenge that’s going to be against Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, amongst others like Jake Guentzel, and Jason Zucker, and Bryan Rust, and Patric Hornqvist, and Patrick Marleau… and the list goes on and on.
How prepared do you feel?
"I feel good conditioning wise and skating wise on the ice," you said. "But being in shape for drills and practices and scrimmages is totally different than being in game shape. You can’t mimic a game no matter what you’re doing, and any player will tell you that. So that will be the biggest thing, and it will be the same for everyone as everyone’s kind of getting into game shape on the fly."
Is there anything specific to the task of shutting down Crosby and Malkin that you’re focusing on?
"There’s nothing that we do differently than the rest of the team to prepare," you explained. "We all prepare together as a team, we work on our systems and trust in our systems. Me and Shea take pride in being strong defensively. It’s something that I think we’re pretty good at, and we don’t prepare any different for any line. We might talk about what tendencies they have or what they might try and do, but that goes as far as how different our preparation would be for a line."
[snippet id=4167285]
Well, the most important thing is that you are preparing.
As you mentioned, you didn’t get on the ice too much during your months away from the Canadiens.
It must have been fun getting half-dressed in your equipment and driving from Waterloo, Ont., to Hamilton, Ont., for the last few of what you said was seven to 10 on-ice workouts from the time quarantine began to the time you joined your teammates in Brossard for Phase 2 informal practices.
But the real work got started a little over a week ago and it’s ramping up now.
It’s probably a good thing you’re looking forward instead of backward as you prepare for the challenge ahead, because, as you noted, the games you’re about to play will bear little or no resemblance to the 24 Stanley Cup playoff games you played with the Jets before signing your three-year contract with the Canadiens last summer.
"You know what, I don’t think you can compare it to a normal season playoff," you said. "You’ve got sort of the grind of the season on your body when you’re going into a normal year in the playoffs and you’re riding sort of the momentum and the excitement of just qualifying for the playoffs. This is totally different, where it’s almost like you’re starting a new season but it means so much more because they’re playoff games.
"So I can’t see it being anything like previous playoff experiences. It’s going to be new for everyone no matter how much playoff experience you have. Especially with no one in the building."
That’s going to present a challenge to you, and to everyone else participating.
Your team is hoping you’ll overcome it swiftly, because they know how important you are to their success.
