Tom Gilbert was coming off of one of his better seasons in the NHL playing for the Florida Panthers where he signed only an affordable one-year pact worth $900,000 due in part to having a few under-rated seasons in Minnesota and eventually being bought out. Now it appears Bergevin has welcomed Gilbert to the Montreal Canadiens in hopes he will continue his great run from the season before.
What can be said about Gilbert is his size serves us, along with his ability to cycle the puck. Gilbert who has logged big minutes per game, comes at a small risk to our defensive line, so you would think.
So far Tom Gilbert has played 11 games with the Habs and the fans are already not too happy with the 6' 3'', 206-lb defensemen. Having only two points while logging an average of 22:33 minutes a game thus far, Gilbert is not turning out to be the player Habs fans have hoped for, especially when Gilbert was called for a minor penalty in the last minutes of overtime against the Vancouver Canucks and costed the Habs a loss. Gilbert's recent play shows how much of a flaw defensively he can be on the ice: Gilbert is a non-physical big body defenseman who pinches at the wrong time trying to create offense when he should not; this is not something you look to add to a team. Hab fans were expecting a physical defensive player that can shut down offensive plays in the defensive zone after the loss of Josh Gorges and Douglas Murray, but Tom Gilbert is a puck moving rearguard who is not known for physical style of play. Tom Gilbert has been notoriously known around the league since his NHL debut as a soft oversized defenseman. Habs fans have to be reminded that Bergevin did not sign Tom Gilbert for such a role. So why did Bergevin sign him in the first place?
In my opinion Tom Gilbert was signed by the Habs for his capability of playing long minutes to help lighten the workload of Andrei Markov and PK Subban and for his offensive playing skills so that he can play on the second power play unit. His talent of cycling the puck and setting up plays in the offensive zone will be greatly needed for a power play that is lacking the mobility in moving the defensive players out of position in order to create scoring chances. Tom has played on his previous teams' power play units before averaging nine points on the man advantage per season and averaging 1:21 on the PP per game during his best years in Edmonton. It is not many points but it shows Gilbert has the experience to run an effective power play. We all saw how placing Gilbert on the power play even when only seconds expired after the roughing minor to Giordano ended Gilbert scored his first goal as a Hab which was the tying goal against Calgary and eventually led to a shoot out win for the Habs.
The Montreal Canadiens power play thus far is terrible, the Habs are ranked 24th in the NHL having scored only 3 goals out of 32 power play opportunities which translates to a 9.4% efficiency on the power play. You don't need more statistical facts to show that the Habs are in dire need of improvement. Tom Gilbert may or may not be the solution to the Habs' lack of scoring on the power play but Therrien should consider him at times to try and shake things up, it is not as if Michel has anything to loose on the power play at this point in time.
The Montreal Canadiens can only hope that Tom Gilbert improves over the next couple of games and hopefully he can be a positive addition to the non-existent power play. The fans have to be a bit more patient with Gilbert as there are many more games to come and many more opportunities for Therrien to utilize Gilbert's experience on the power play unit. Being a new player on a team which is highly scrutinized after each play is something that will take time getting used to, it's normal for a new player to play out of sync at first, but hopefully Gilbert can get back to playing his best hockey soon and cut on the turnovers.
We will all have to adopt a wait-and-see approach.
Written by Jon Saxe
Written by Jon Saxe
