Thursday 17 December 2015

If the Rangers play Dylan McIlrath, and the Stars play Jamie Oleksiak, the Canadiens should play Jarred Tinordi.

A game against the big physical roster the Kings present would seem to me to be the ideal time to give Jarred Tinordi a start.  I don't claim to be a genius, to know the internal workings of the team, but as a fan I want Jarred to play, and succeed as a Canadien.  If the future of the team is to be fast and speedy and hudoned and andrighettoed, then I want a few Tinordis, McCarrons and Kassians on the roster, to act as a counterbalance, as insurance against the Mark Stuarts of the world.

For context, I checked on some other defencemen who have been kept on the NHL roster of their teams, mostly because they couldn't be exposed to waivers.

In Dallas, after a very slow start, Jamie Oleksiak has now played in 10 games.

For the Rangers, Dylan McIlrath scored his first NHL goal last night, and has 13 games played.

The Leafs' Mike Babcock sat out Frank Corrado, a player they scooped up on waivers from the Canucks, for something like 30 games before he played his first one this week.

I don't know what the injury situation was for these teams, whether an injury to a regular defenceman facilitated some starts from their young development d-man, but early on they'd managed to squeeze in a game or two for each of Jamie Oleksiak and Dylan McIlrath in the first dozen games of the season.

It bears mentioning that the latter two defencemen are similar to Jarred in that they're big tall defencemen who both teams claim will play a big part of their future, but need time to develop.  They both play a physical style, also like Jarred.

So without trying to figure out who's to 'blame', who to hold accountable (Marc Bergevin, Michel Therrien, Jean-Jacques Daigneault, Bob Gainey, Pierre Gauthier, Mark Tinordi, Andrey Pedan), the Canadiens should find a way to squeeze him in there for a game or two.  Sit out Tom Gilbert, or Nathan, or Alexei Emelin, rest up Andrei on back-to-backs, figure it out, but play the kid.

Pas d'excuses.

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