Canadiens Have Tried Tapping into Evans’ Offensive Potential Before

Time for a cold, hard truth: Montreal Canadiens forward Jake Evans is not a top-six forward. However, with No. 1 centre Nick Suzuki injured, desperate times may call for desperate measures. And, after Evans netted two goals in the team’s first game in their current reality of not having Suzuki available for up to one month, it begs the question: Is there something there?

Evans Has Career Night

For context, Evans scored three total points against the Chicago Blackhawks in the Canadiens’ critical 4-1 win on Friday, including an assist on defenseman Kaiden Guhle’s insurance marker. Also on the ice at that point in time were Josh Anderson and Chris Kreider, two thirds of the team’s makeshift second line to start the game. So, the wheels are already turning in the mind of head coach Martin St. Louis. They should stop right away, though.

Long story short, if the Canadiens opt to not make a trade to shore up their depth at centre and weather the storm, Evans is a valuable veteran presence, to whom they’ve turned before to play a top-six role… recently in fact. Last spring, when the Habs determined Oliver Kapanen was no longer a viable option to play in between Ivan Demidov and Alex Newhook, Evans got the assignment and performed relatively admirably too, scoring 10 points in 19 playoff games.

So, in a pinch, or perhaps more accurately in between a rock and a hard place whilst screaming into the void for relief from the team’s current frustrating injury situation, Evans could be a temporary solution. However, Canadiens fans shouldn’t expect much in the way of output, in spite of how Evans impressively came through for the Habs against the Blackhawks.

Now, Demidov, whom many would consider the driver of that second line’s success, is out currently. So, right off the bat, expectations must be tempered. Secondly, Evans’ two goals against the Hawks came in arguably defense-first situations, one while pivoting the team’s fourth line with Kirby Dach and Owen Beck, the other on the penalty kill. While the skill he showed scoring the game-tying and eventual game-winning goals was no fluke, the circumstances that arose to enable him to were at least somewhat fluke-ish.

And, it should be no shock that:

• Those were Evans’ first three points of the season.
• It was only the second time he’s scored two goals in a game in his career.
• He’s now scored three points in a game exactly three times.

Evans and Anderson Should Be a No-Go

What’s also something of a fluke is how Guhle’s goal materialized, both as the result of a screened shot and with regard to Evans, Anderson, and Kreider being together on the ice. While Newhook complemented the latter two to start the game to form the team’s No. 2 line for all intents and purposes, Evans, Anderson and Kreider are more so two bottom-six guys and one top-six guy in decline.

That is not a recipe for offensive success, with Anderson having gone pointless in his last three games since his own two-goal effort against the Washington Capitals on Oct. 14. As has been argued in the past, Anderson is not a finisher. He similarly may find success in a top-six role, but only in short spurts and isolated incidents, especially at this stage of his career at Age 32. And he’s not even the aforementioned guy in decline. That’s 35-year-old Kreider. Now 30, Evans finds himself in a similar boat as Anderson, not necessarily type-cast but demonstrably proven to have a ceiling.

After the team’s Cinderella run to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final and the departures of Phillip Danault and Jesperi Kotkaniemi down the middle ahead of 2021-22, Evans was theoretically poised to take on a greater role and enjoy a break-out season. He then got a then-career-high 15:36 per game, scoring a career-high 13 goals (29 points). Those are decent totals, but primarily for Evans, not a forward with ambitions of developing into someone on whom the Canadiens can rely consistently in the offensive zone.

Evans’ proponents may argue that was a last-place team and he had little hope of generating much in the way of offense. The counter argument is that was a last-place team in large part because they had to rely on players like Evans to help shoulder the load offensively.

To be completely transparent, Evans’ most common linemates were Artturi Lehkonen and Joel Armia, the latter of whom was hardly an offensive sparkplug. However, as we would come to learn following a mid-season trade with the Colorado Avalanche, Lehkonen had significant offensive talent that largely went untapped while with the Canadiens. Of Evans’ seven registered line combinations, Lehkonen played on four of them as his most common linemate. While no one is expecting Evans to be Nathan MacKinnon or anything, it’s arguably fair that, if Evans had more offensive ability, the two could have developed more offensive chemistry.

Of note, Evans’ second-most-common line that season was a unit on which he played between Rem Pitlick and Anderson, someone the Canadiens clearly find themselves at risk of playing with him again in the hopes of at least treading water offensively until Demidov and Suzuki return. They should fight the temptation. In a vacuum, Evans is a valuable player who can contribute anywhere in the lineup, within reason. However, if you put him on a line with another bottom-six forward, you’re asking for bottom-six results. You shouldn’t expect similar output compared to last spring. Without Demidov available, there’s a drastically different dynamic at play now.

Rationalizing a Canadiens Trade

Some may say in response the Canadiens have no alternative options. That’s not totally true. Theoretically the trade route exists, whereby they can decide to move futures for immediate reinforcements, specifically a top-six centre to alleviate the pressure resulting from an undeniable issue that pre-existed Suzuki’s injury, which has only exacerbated the situation. If the Habs prefer to instead stand pat, that’s a perfectly understandable decision too, with top-prospect Michael Hage projected to potentially address that same need come the end of the season.

However, something to consider is how Danault, who had been re-acquired last season, is a pending unrestricted free agent. Even if Hage is everything the Canadiens anticipate and more at centre as an upgrade over Kapanen, they’re still going to need someone else, especially if they want to be able to roll three lines and smother the opposition, because, based on empirical evidence, Evans is more so an above-average fourth-liner. It might make sense for general manager Kent Hughes to hasten his thought process come to the same conclusion in the coming days, not weeks, because, in the face of heightened expectations, the Habs are already in tough after a mediocre start to the season that is at risk of getting significantly worse without their best player available.

Time will tell how desperate they really are. In the grand scheme of things, Evans at centre is not the craziest thing they could do. It’s just not a move with a high chance of lasting success.