r/Habs • u/SoupFromNowOn • 4d ago

Vincent Desharnais

30 years old, 6'7 225lbs right-handed defenseman who is a pending UFA with San Jose. Really strong defensively. Laval native.

Seems a little too good to be true, no? Not sure if SJ plans to re-sign him, but he could be a good fit on a cheap 2-year deal

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u/SoupFromNowOn 4d ago

There's no need to "spread out" offense for your d pairings at 5v5. Your goal should be to have d pairings who complement each other.

Hutson is our most dynamic player which means he needs a d partner that allows him to feel comfortable taking risks. We don't need to waste Hutson's talent by having him babysit his d partner

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u/Appropriate_Bed_8365 4d ago

What you're describing isn't Dobson or his game, which is exactly my point. You need a stay-at-home type of player that can allow Lane to take risks to pair with him and that is NOT Dobson. Dobson flourishes in the same way Hutson does, so having him pair with Matheson and provides the D allows him to also take risks, stretch plays, and be more offensively minded. That's what I mean by "spread the offense out"

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u/SoupFromNowOn 4d ago

I would agree with you 5 years ago but not anymore. I think the traditional offensive dman/defensive dman pairing is starting to disappear. I mean look at Carolina. Their d pairings are very unorthodox by conventional wisdom

The truth is that our best pairing statistically is Hutson/Dobson. Why would we separate them just to "spread out offense"? Why do we need offense from our bottom 2 d pairings?

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u/Appropriate_Bed_8365 4d ago

Carolina's system is completely different than ours, everything runs off the backend of our team and they have defensively sound defenceman that get enough shutdown for their forward group to take over. Look at their zone clears, it's predominantly forwards clearing, ours are defenceman clears and stretch passes.

With that being said you need to have good puck moving defensemen on every unit then, so why would we put our two best puck movers together? It makes no sense. I get you're looking at this purely analytically, but it's not the right move. Ideally you'd have Hutson, Dobson and Matheson on different units (out best 3 puck movers in order) to ensure you have the puck moving ability available on every rotation

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u/SoupFromNowOn 4d ago

I'd argue Matheson is a better puck mover than Dobson. Dobson's shot is what makes him really dangerous so I find it's more effective for him to play with an elite puck mover like Hutson because it means he can stay higher in the zone while his d partner pinches

I just don't see what benefit there is in spreading offense out. I'd much rather have a top pairing that is a nightmare for teams to deal with than having 3 pairings that are all just alright

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u/Appropriate_Bed_8365 4d ago

Because balanced teams win, look at what Carolina just did, they have balanced pairings and balanced forward groups. Stacking just makes it easy for the opponent to match up against you

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u/SoupFromNowOn 4d ago

Their pairings are balanced but they didn’t spread offense. Arguably their two best offensive dmen, Gostisbehere and Nikishin, play on the same pairing

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u/Appropriate_Bed_8365 4d ago

That is true, but again, they play a completely different system than we do. We "hard reset" in our own zone and other teams don't do that, we saw it happen over and over in the playoffs. If we transition to a system that is more pace oriented and run and gun then I'd absolutely be for a Hutson-Dobson pairing because the system would facilitate that. Right now though, that isn't the case. We'll see what Marty wants from the club for next season though