Game 24: Canadiens 3, Sabres 0

Okay, so we can't beat the Coyotes, but we have the Sabres' number.

--We won the game, but the Sabres won the Dahlin Derby, or this round of it anyway.

--Alex Galchenyuk can't buy a break.  He committed the mortal sin of scoring a goal when we were leading 1-0.  Thus giving us the worst lead in hockey, the dreaded two-goal lead.

--I barely saw Nathan Beaulieu.  Not that I was searching for him, maybe he had a steady, no-crisis game.  But he's not taken the step we dreaded he might in Buffalo, where he becomes an effective puck-moving Top 4 defenceman.

I'd still take him on our team though, over Jordie Benn, Brandon Davidson, Joe Morrow, or (nearly) 6 Million Dollar Man Karl Alzner.

--Carey is going to (mess with our stuff) if he keeps this up.  He'll get us a dozen or two meaningless points that will only (mess) with our draft ranking.  Blast his cool, smooth, effortless goaltending style.  Not a Charlie Lindgren bobble rebound.  Not one instance when he swam in his crease with his back to the shooter à la Mike Condon.

--It bears repeating that Nicolas Deslauriers made a name for himself in the LHJMQ as a defenceman.  He said last night on l'Antichambre that he was an offensive defenceman who never fought, it just never came up since it wasn't his role.  He figured out that he'd need to fight, more often than he expected, if he was to stick in the NHL.

I first found this out on a Québec blog, from the same guy who follows the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies and who had a major man-crush on Sven Andrighetto, well before he was drafted by the Canadiens.  That blogger has described Nicolas Deslauriers as a "dominant" defenceman while he played for the Huskies, which I have to believe is a stretch, a misuse of the word 'dominant', but still.

--Jakub Jerabek has looked decent so far, certainly more noteworthy than Joe Morrow or Brandon Davidson. 

--Anti Niemmi should get a couple more starts, to ease Carey in, and give Al Montoya all the time he needs, and then a month beyond that.  Hopefully Mr. Niemmi can show some good performances, and we can flip him down the road to another team in need of a backup for another conditional fifth or thereabouts. 

--I know low-round picks have a very low chance of amounting to anything, and at the same time, we have unrealistic expectations of what a fifth-rounder can be because of Brendan Gallagher, but the secret in my mind is to have plenty of these picks.  Once you get to that level, you can take a chance on players who you might have had as a Do Not Draft, since you wouldn't take that player with a second-round pick where he was slated to go.  Now in the fifth-round, maybe you overlook those giant warts and take a flier on a player who has some great skill and/or upside, but is slow-footed (Mark Stone) or a coaching headache (Anthony Duclair).

I've been jealous of what Tampa has been able to do with their sackful of draft choices lately, being able to pick up Anthony Cirelli in the third round in 2015, Mathieu Joseph in the fourth round, and Bokondji Imama in the sixth, and Brayden Point in the late third in 2014.

Let's give Trevor Timmins a chance to work his magic, give him and his crew a shot at wowing us again, with a bunch of shots at the dart board where they can explore riskier options.  Let's allow them to, when presented with Lukas Vejdemo or Nicolas Roy, think "Why not both?"

Torrey Mitchell traded to Kings for conditional fifth-round draft pick.

The Canadiens have traded Torrey Mitchell to the L.A. Kings for a conditional fifth-round pick.  If the Kings make the playoffs, the Canadiens will instead receive the 2018 fourth-round pick they gave up last season in exchange for Dwight King.

This trade makes me disproportionately happy.  For five years now, I've wished that we divest ourselves of non-core players or stalled prospects for low-round draft picks, to go back to the well again and try our luck. 

Torrey Mitchell served us well, was a welcome addition in that he was a true centre who shot right, so he helped us out when our only centres were all lefties (David Desharnais, Tomas Plekanec, Manny Malhotra, Lars Eller, etc.)  He was a local boy who was happy to be in Montréal, a veteran who'd won before, who complemented our arsenal of swift, fleet-footed forecheckers who might not think the game at a high-level offensively, might not score a lot, but did mesh well with the high-tempo puck pursuit and fast-break offence of Michel Therrien. 

Last season, he had a kaboom of a start to the season, when he and Phillip Danault and Paul Byron/Brian Flynn overwhelmed opposition fourth lines with their speed, and he and Phillip would split the faceoff duties, Torrey taking those on the right, Phillip those on the left.  It was a very good fourth line, and should have provided Tomas Plekanec more leash to focus on offence, if he hadn't chosen to hibernate for another winter.

This season though, with Jacob de la Rose and Charles Hudon needing to be rostered or lost on waivers, with Mike McCarron looming as a potential right-shot fourth-line centre, and with his effectiveness waning at least in the points column, Torrey wasn't even a regular, he'd been healthy-scratched a few times.  Either his footspeed is declining, or he's not a fit for Claude Julien's puck support five-man breakouts, but he was a diminishing asset. 

We'd acquired Torrey from the Sabres for a seventh-round pick and Jack Nevins, a middleweight scrappy enforcer in the OHL who we'd taken a flier on as an undrafted UFA, and who looks like he'll be a minor leaguer at best.  We made good use of Torrey's services, and now swap him for a fifth-round pick.  That's a win.  Would that every acquisition work out like that, like Dale Weise, rather than those of Mike Condon or Sven Andrighetto.

I understood Marc Bergevin's reasons for acquiring Torrey Mitchell and Brian Flynn, they were useful vets who'd bring a right shot to balance out our roster, who could play wing or centre.  But it always stuck in my craw that we didn't instead use Gabriel Dumont in that role, he was an agile rightie who can play centre, and who brings grit and toughness to boot.  Now, I'm not going to argue that Gabriel is just as good as Torrey, he's clearly not.  Torrey has had a long, productive NHL career, while Gabriel is still trying to establish himself, he just got waived by the Lightning and picked up by the Sens. 

But we had Gabriel in our system, we'd already spent a draft pick to acquire him and years developing him in the AHL.  Maybe he's not as good as Torrey Mitchell or Brian Flynn, but the difference is marginal.  He won't be the reason you win or lose games. 

You give Gabriel an opportunity.  You 'live with his mistakes'.  You energize your farmhands ("That could be me next!")  You develop him, groom him, and maybe get to swap him later on for a draft pick if he tops out.  It's the Circle of Life. 

In the short term, maybe you're better off spending draft picks acquiring fringe players, maybe your team is slightly better on the ice, but it's organizationally counterproductive to do so.  That's how you show up at the draft every June without a second-round pick, with only five picks, while Tampa has nine and Toronto has ten.  This is how we lose the race, as we have for decades now.  We constantly bitch about being broke, but go out to a restaurant dinner and blow fourty bucks we could have spent on a bag of rice and veggies and chicken that would have fed us for the week.

So, good trade.  Finally.  Sorry to see a homeboy like Torrey go.  Maybe he can return and work for the organization after his playing career is done.  We need guys like him.  But this trade is a step in the right direction, in a lost season.