The Montreal Canadiens have placed forward Samuel Blais on waivers, with the goal of sending him to the Laval Rocket should he clear.
This is the second time the Habs have decided to risk losing Blais, as he was claimed by the Toronto Maple Leafs earlier in the season, before returning to the Canadiens via a re-claim on November 27.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s far from a franchise-altering move, but there’s also a sense of untapped potential when discussing Blais’ limited ice time.
As it stands, no other player in the lineup has produced more hits per 60 minutes of ice time, and there’s a significant gap between first and second place. Blais has landed almost 28 hits/60, followed by Arber Xhekaj with 14 hits/60. In other words, Blais hits twice as often as his closest competition.
He’s also managed to produce a relative impressive amount of offence, to the tune of two goals and three assists in 13 games, which may not seem to be a lot, but we must remember he played on the fourth line, giving him limited opportunities to generate scoring chances. If we filter Montreal’s points per 60 results, Blais is tied for first with Ivan Demidov, scoring 2.78 points per 60.
When it comes to creating high-danger chances, Blais once again finds himself in first place among all Canadiens players, with five per 60 minutes of ice time.
Montreal Canadiens Brass Tacks
Statistically speaking, sending Blais to the AHL is a mistake, however, that’s looking at the situation in a vacuum, rather than evaluating the big picture.
Patrik Laine is almost set to return, which means the Canadiens must make space on the roster, and since a player like Joe Veleno is left-handed, not to mention quite good at winning faceoffs, he’s become one of Martin St-Louis’ favourite toys, which means there was little to no chance Veleno would have placed been placed on waivers instead of Blais.
The other option would have seen Zachary Bolduc assigned to Laval, and seeing as he does not require waivers, there would have been no risk of losing a player, but it seems that the Montreal Canadiens value his high-energy style of play. They also spent a key asset to acquire Bolduc, and sending him to the AHL would be fairly bad optics.
In that vein, Blais likely wasn’t assigned to the AHL out of any fault of his own. There were simply no chairs left in Montreal.
All Montreal Canadiens statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted, via Natural Stat Trick.
