'I’d try a line with Patrik Laine, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovský'

Patrik Laine has been the talk of Montreal for all the right reasons over the past few days. The Finnish forward, who’s had a special first season in a Habs uniform, has been putting his shoulder to the wheel at on-ice practice for the past few days.You can tell he’s motivated… and that’s good news, because we know he’ll be playing big this season, as his contract is coming to an end.

We know the drill with Laine: we’re talking about a guy who’s loaded with talent and who’s an offensive weapon (and who’s likely to be better this year, when he won’t have to chase rust), but we’re also talking about a guy who’s deficient defensively. It’s something he was repeatedly criticized for last season, and it’s not likely to change overnight. So the Habs need to find ways to try and protect him… and Brian Wilde, in his appearance on Tony Marinaro’s Sick Podcast, proposed the following idea:

I’d try a line with Patrik Laine, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovský.

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Brian Wilde

https://youtube.com/shorts/adh_JlJRzKA?si=BsMaXZLVR-TaevqO [content-ads]Basically, Wilde explains that if the Habs want to find a way to keep Laine in the top-6, playing him with Kirby Dach (who also has defensive deficiencies) isn’t ideal. So he sees a world in which placing Laine with Suzuki allows the latter, who is very solid defensively, to help Laine hold his own in his zone. In doing so, Cole Caufield would be relegated to the second line, where he’d play with two guys known to be good playmakers in Dach and Ivan Demidov. And we know that Caufield’s defensive game has really improved in recent years.The big risk, however, would be to split up a line that has shown it can dominate. After all, the first line last year was one of the big reasons for the Habs’ success, and splitting up the three players would be risky.But at the same time, maybe it would allow us to find new effective combinations, you know.