In Hainsight: A Puzzling Move For Tanner Pearson

After trading Casey DeSmith to the Canucks for Tanner Pearson and a third-round pick last night, Kent Hughes met the media this morning to discuss the move. When I heard about the move on Tuesday night, I thought that Hughes would probably be moving Pearson to another team so that there would be room for young players to integrate into the line-up, but listening to him speak yesterday morning, it won’t be so.

Speaking about his new acquisition, Hughes explains he believes his young team needs a bit of grey hair, and good veteran leadership to help bring youngsters along. Furthermore, he confirmed what had been mentioned by Arpon Basu this Summer; Christian Dvorak will not be available until sometime in November, which does create some space in the line-up. The Canadiens and Dvorak’s surgeon want to take a prudent approach and make sure that the player is ready to return permanently, they do not want to go through the same cycle they experienced last year with players coming back too early and reinjuring themselves.

We can also understand from his comments that he has no intention to rush his young forwards, he prefers having veterans on hand to provide alternatives in case of injury than bringing up someone from Laval who’s not ready for the NHL. That’s the puzzling part of yesterday morning’s comments for me, especially considering that when the free agency market opened, Hughes was very clear that the Canadiens didn’t want to sign veterans that would get in the way of young players developing. However, it’s important to remember Pearson’s contract will end at the end of this season. So he could potentially be moved for a pick at the trade deadline.

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From the outside, it looks like Hughes is walking a very narrow line and trying to find the right balance between developing his young assets but also providing them with an appropriate amount of veteran guidance and leadership. Personally, I thought there was enough leadership with the likes of Gallagher, Monahan, Matheson, Savard, Anderson and even Suzuki since he’s now a young veteran, but I’m not in the room, perhaps Hughes sees something that we don’t.

Last month, when Hughes managed to move both Mike Hoffman and Rem Pitlick, he said he was making a bit of room for youth by moving the two veterans, but a month and a half or so later, he fills one spot with yet another veteran. Perhaps it was more about getting rid of the wrong kind of veteran and replacing it with the right kind. Bluntly put, Hoffman was hardly praised for his work ethic, but Tanner Pearson is well-known as a team guy.

As for his new acquisition’s health, Hughes confirmed that Tanner Pearson was cleared to play and had already taken a physical exam in Vancouver. Pearson hasn’t played for almost a year following a broken hand which needed multiple surgeries to heal, and the GM said that if he struggles a bit to get back into the action, it was something the team was ready to live with.

As for Martin St-Louis, throughout a 20-or-so-minute chat with the media, he remained tight-lipped about possible line combinations for his team this season and his message was essentially that training camp was apparently about players grabbing a chair in the line-up and hanging on to it or moving to a better chair. For the head coach, it’s what hockey is about, there’s always internal competition and it’s perfectly normal to see young guys battling to steal other guys’ chairs.

The head coach was also asked if he felt his team needed more experience after last season and while he didn’t say it was a need for his team, he did say that you can never have too much experience. He also added he saw last year’s team like a little baby to whom you can’t ask too much, but this season, the baby has grown, and you can expect more from what is now a child.

As for the tough decisions awaiting the team at training camp, he believes they’ve got to find a way to make the decisions that will help the team now, but not hurt it for the future. This essentially comes back to my point about Hughes trying to strike the right balance between developing his young assets and providing them with the appropriate amount of leadership.

The Canadiens’ players underwent physical testing today and the on-ice sessions will be starting Thursday in Brossard. With 72 players in attendance at camp, they will be split into four teams and there will be intra-squad games twice a day every day until Saturday. Then, on Sunday, the Bell Centre will be packed for the Red vs. White scrimmage and again on Monday night for the Habs’ first preseason game against the Ottawa Senators.