This team is so bad for so many years to come, Nick will be 25 when he will reach 65 pts and he will end the season with a big minus 25, something like that.
I'm going to reply to this first because you keep talking about +/- and it's extremely misleading, you keep bringing up his +/- to paint him as a weak two way forward and his +/- is an extremely poor reason to make that claim.
Plus/minus includes empty net situations and shorthanded goals. Suzuki is a -15, and
EIGHT of those minuses are from allowing empty net goals, with another three minuses coming from SHG allowed. In actual 5 on 5 play Nick Suzuki is a -5 with the additional -10 coming from aggregate empty net situations and shorthanded goals. At 5v5 on this team playing with a grab bag of random wingers with Montembeault/Allen as the goalie tandem and Chiarot/Savard as the #2 and #3 D with Petry having a horrid season -5 is a pretty impressive accomplishment actually, especially given his line has been the only line the opposition tries to shut down most games.
It is not a flaw in Nick Suzuki's game that he is one of the players on the ice with an empty net all the time for a bad team. It is not a flaw in Suzuki's game that he has played half the year on PP1 and been on the ice for three of the ~8 to 10 shorthanded goals that every team gives up over the course of the season. Citing his +/- as reflective of his defensive play is completely inaccurate, if you look at the "green jacket" winner most of the time it's the best offensive defenceman on a bad team for exactly this reason. The best offensive players on bad teams will rack up a ton of bogus minuses simply because they're on the ice when the team allows an ENG.
Get rid of him or not signing him is technicallity, what matters is the result at the end. Phil felt he wasn't wanted, so he preferd to leave where he would be appreciated.
It isn't a technicality at all. The Canadiens did not "get rid" of Phil Danault. They offered him a contract that made sense for the Canadiens, and he accepted a contract that paid him more to go to another team. It happens.
It is what it is. Danault wanted to leave because he wasn't happy not getting to play on the power play. He was atrocious on the PP in Montreal so they took him off the PP. He went to LA and he has one PP assist in 70 minutes of PP TOI, he's just flatly not a good PP option. If the cost of doing business with Danault is making him a permanent fixture on your PP and presumably having to overpay to get him to stay instead of going to LA then you don't make that deal as the Canadiens with Shea Weber retired. If we still had Weber and Price and had a chance to keep trying to make it work with that old core it would be a different story, but we don't, so the value just isn't there for the Canadiens at the AAV and term it would have cost to keep him.
Today, LA have a strong center line with Kopi, Dan and Byfield. They went from mediocre to possible PO team. Phil is doing well, better than Suzuki even in the goals scored. He is + in his stats, like always, like the last season where he was called a bad player by a majority of members here. And he ended the season with a +9.
That's great for LA, and I'm glad Danault is doing well. I don't think we disagree at all about how good 27 to 30 year old Philip Danault is, I think he's a very good player. I just don't particularly care about how good 28-30 year old Danault is because the Habs are not in a position to be a playoff team during those years and the cost of signing him for those good years at that price is being locked in to age 31-33 Danault where I am far less confident in his abilities. LA doesn't care because they're in a position to take a run at a playoff spot this year and he elevates their team a lot, Montreal we're talking about being bottom 3 vs. bottom 5-6. The value just isn't there for the Canadiens to have signed him long term.
You say Suzuki is becoming something like Danault but you don't know it. He's overpaid by your standards. If he take care of the toughest match-ups and he's in the minus stats, how is he better than Danault?
He's not overpaid by anyone's standards given he's still on his ELC, which is a point I think gets forgotten a lot as if he's already making 7.8. But at 7.8, he's an all situations top 6 C that can be a fixture on your PP1 and PK1 and he is signed through his entire prime with a big cap windfall coming in the next two to three years after the player HRR debt is repaid and the full impact of the new ESPN/TNT deals come into effect.
Regarding +/-, like I said earlier he's a -5 at even strength through half a season playing with ice cold Caufield, injured Toffoli, and a grab bag of AHLers, and is focused on as the only line worth shutting down by the opposition. I am perfectly happy with him being a -5 at even strength and pacing for -10 on the year at 5v5 playing in front of a top 4 that includes Chiarot, Savard, and Petry having a career worst year, with Montembeault and Allen as the goalies.
And how about the salary he is paid? If he have the hard defensive minutes, that means Dvorak or a new center will have the offensive minutes? I don't see the chart of the centers with a clear logic.
Yeah, because we're a bad team that's rebuilding. Signing Danault until he's 33 and being in the bottom five is also not great team building logic. In the medium term the point will be to have Suzuki go power on power and use Dvorak in secondary defensive matchups with the goal of adding another top 6C and having those players insulate the new C and give us the luxury of swinging for the fences on offensive talent. Suzuki is probably not a Danault/Bergeron/ROR type of defender, but there's no reason he can't be a Backstrom and allow us to get a Kuznetsov who doesn't need to worry about defending at all.
We also don't actually need anybody to play the same role as Danault. It made sense to put Danault in ultra difficult defensive minutes because that was his core skillset, but that doesn't mean you need to find someone else to do the same thing. We can just run a conventional line 1-4 with a matchup line in the top 6 (Suzuki) and a checking line in the bottom six (Dvorak or Evans), it's not a requirement to have one line that you place in ultra tough minutes, we did it because it made sense with the players we had, but tons of teams have been successful without having a "Danault" role.
I don't see a real offensive center neither. Suzuki is far from being a Joe Sakic or a Aho or a Matthews. Nothing is this center char is logical and making me wish it's gonna change into a winning team. It's the legacy of Marc Bergevin written all over.
I don't think Suzuki has an elite ceiling but he's also not paid like he does. He was on pace for 60 points last year with Drouin and Anderson who aren't particularly strong even strength producers, I think calling him not a real offensive C is just overly pessimistic. Sam Bennett's career high in points was 36 and he now has 40 points in 42 games between two seasons since joining the Panthers. Linemates and team situation impacts raw point totals a lot and I think it's extremely premature to look at his production thus far and declare he's going to max out at 65.
He let Danault walk, he knew Weber was injured, he probably knew Price was not returning to play this season and he let the team like a big waste dump for many years to come. All this when the first pick in 2022 will far from being an elite player.
If you think Bergevin knew that Weber was injured and Price was unlikely to play for half the season why does that make you wish we kept Danault? It's completely separate from the discussion about the player's quality, what is the point of signing him long term to squeeze out an additional few points on a bad team?
I think very highly of Danault but adding him to this roster doesn't get us out of the bottom 5. Yes, I would have preferred to just keep Danault even at 6M over signing Armia and Hoffman or making the Dvorak move, but making a worse decision later on doesn't mean it was the right move to lock up Danault long term with the position this team is in.
