More Defense for Montreal?

The Montreal Canadiens are a team I rarely cover, which is a definite shame. The Habs are quite possibly one of the most mystical teams when it comes to team judgement, because I can never get a good read about what's going on there. It was appearing on TSN.ca this morning that the Habs had offered veteran defenseman, Patrice Brisebois, a 1-year deal worth about $700,000. This is rather puzzling, as the the Canadiens are stocked up on d-men for the coming year, but what's a little bit more veteran presence gonna hurt? Okay, that isn't the real question... the real one is, who's gonna get bumped?

Alexei Kovalev	Saku Koivu	Michael Ryder *
Christopher Higgins	Bryan Smolinski	Guilliaume Latendresse
Tomas Plekanec	Garth Murray	Andrei Kostitsyn
Max Lapierre	Steve Begin	Tom Kostopoulos

Roman Hamrlik	Andrei Markov
Mark Streit	Mike Komisarek
Francis Bouillion	Mathieu Dandenault

Cristobel Huet

Jaroslav Halak

This line-up, with Michael Ryder's arbitration hearing coming next week is worth roughly $39 million, so there is plenty of room to move when it comes to Ryder's fair-market value. The Habs were in the running for quite a few of the high profile free agents, like Daniel Briere and Chris Drury, but fell short in what I could only guess was their presentation. Bob Gainey was thrilled to have picked up Hamrlik and Smolinski though when the market had finally opened.

Bakc to the defense situation... listed are six defensemen that all made good last season and this would be Brisebois' competition going into camp. The lowest pool-ranked player on the six is Dandenault at 8 points in 68 games... Brisebois only managed 11 points in an injury-riddled 33 games. The Habs also have young defenseman Josh Gorges in the mix (acquired in the deal for Rivet) and veteran Jamie Rivers, who's also trying to make a push for the bigs once again. Let's not forget the prospects... Andrew Archer and Mathieu Biron. They'll also be sitting in the wings waiting for a chance. It's a bit of a train wreck, really... but once they have decided on the best six going forward, it should be a very competitive blueline.

Up front, it will also prove to be a big race for spots. Only Michael Ryder is the only big signing left, unless they want to lure Alexander Perezhogin back out of Russia for the coming year, but that looks doubtful. The Canadiens were looking to upgrade themselves down the middle in the offseason and the pickup of Bryan Smolinski has done that to a certain degree, but he wasn't exactly the second line centre they were looking for. The Habs are quite high on youngin's like Mathieu Carle, Kyle Chipchura, Corey Locke and Sergei Kostitsyn; and any of those four have a good shot of knocking someone off the top roster. This team update page will probably see some major changes to it by the time draft day rolls around.

Finally, in goal... the Habs don't lose any sleep here. Cristobel Huet will go into camp as the clear favourite to man the crease come October 3rd (in Carolina), but with the way Jaroslav Halak played in Huet's absence and how Carey Price won the AHL's Calder Cup for Hamilton, this job isn't safe for anyone... except the Canadiens. I would understand that most, if not all, Habs fans are quite excited about the prospect of winning a lot of games beacause of their goaltending this season.

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