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
6 comments:
The power play struggle is a lack of change by the coaching staff and less to do with the personnel. Everyone and their grandmother knows that the Habs want to feed Subban at the point. Teams are keying on him and the shot is not going through. I've been saying since early last year that the Canadiens need to cycle players around as much as the puck in order to create space for Subban to shoot a-la Weber in Nashville.
HF Boards (Habs) great article about Trevor Timmins and how me admits to messing up on several future stars like Getzlaf, Perry, Parise, Giroux, Kreider etc for players that mostly became busts,,Finally, he admits it!!
Good article, also how come after 12 years of his drafts, Habs are still an offensively challenged team, and their fowards are never in any All Star games.
Nick Mis a retard and a sissy boy, I am HabinBurlington over at Hockey Inside Out if you want to tangle. Habs players are why the powerless play sucks. Timmins pick Beaulieu was supposed to help Subban on defense but sucks. After a few fowards, we are still a Perimiter team, no net crshers. No big center and power foward to go to the net and score those tough goals. Thats why Montreal will never be anything else but average Timmins likes his pretty boy players, when we need more grit and a power foward.
12 years and no forward at all star game is easy to answer. First the Habs usually pick late. The then GM traded picks for patch work and the three last years, the players are still too young. They picked the best player availlable, which ended to be a goalie and D-men. But the future looks great. Lately, McCaron is producing at 3 points/game. I don't even have to mentionne Galchenyuk or do I?
Ah, its been a while since Guy Smith come on here to have a conversation with his anonymous alter-ego about TImmins. I guess he's off his bi-polar meds again.
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