Canadiens’ Jayden Struble playing ‘great,’ hoping to continue boosting value
Jayden Struble has played to a high standard over the past few games, but if he wants a future with the Canadiens past this season, he knows the importance of staying consistent. Eric Engels has the story.
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BROSSARD, Que. — We’re a period into Tuesday’s 4-2 Montreal Canadiens win over the Vancouver Canucks when I remark to an NHL scout in attendance that Jayden Struble is playing particularly well.
“Agreed, he’s playing great,” he says.
Then he asks: “Do you think they’ll sign him?”
My immediate response was “yes,” but it was a question I hadn’t put much thought into prior to him asking.
It was a thought-provoking question, and not because it’s particularly doubtful right now that Struble will be signed by the Canadiens when the time comes.
The player is in the process of finishing up his two-year, $1.74-million entry-level contract. He’s 23 years old, a restricted free agent, and his qualifying offer is just $813,750. Even if he’s arbitration eligible and playing great now, he’s not looking at a bank-breaking deal, and that’s not the kind of situation the Canadiens would likely just walk away from.
But this scout wouldn’t have asked if he hadn’t thought at one point or another this season that it was possible. He wouldn’t have asked if he wasn’t slightly enticed by Struble’s potential availability this summer as a young, low-cost defenceman who may be playing well but isn’t assured a future on a Canadiens depth chart loaded with young, low-cost defencemen. And he didn’t ask if I thought Struble might eventually be traded.
What he really wanted to know was if there was a possibility Struble could just be scooped up as a free agent come July.
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It’s a possibility this executive had to have been initially contemplating through the first half of the season, with Struble’s inconsistency — and Alex Carrier’s December acquisition and Kaiden Guhle’s health — frequently pushing him to the sidelines and potentially pushing him out of Montreal. But his question probably only came to air with me on Tuesday with the realization that it’s a possibility that could be evaporating with the way the player is performing right now.
Had Struble performed as well between Guhle’s loss to a torn quadricep muscle on Jan. 28 and this most recent stretch of games, the question probably wouldn’t have been asked. And if he doesn’t continue to perform as well with the Canadiens, it might be asked again.
What the Canadiens need from Struble is to keep this up and eliminate this question.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis is certainly hoping the player will.
“I think he’s found some consistency, and he’s had a runway to kind of find it,” said St. Louis on Friday. “I think he’s very efficient on the ice right now. He’s defending well. I think he’s got great confidence because of that. His touches are better. But with any young players, you’ve just got to do it all over again every game.
“Sometimes I feel confidence is easy-come, easy-go; you really have to work on it, and you have to be hungry, and you have to assess every game. There’s not one player that’s going to play a perfect game. There’s going to be plays they want back. What are those plays? What are the ones you want back? Do you go look at them? Do you learn from them? Or are you just happy overall you played well? If I would challenge Strubes, it’s to stay hungry, because he’s playing really good hockey for us right now. Don’t get complacent. I think, for young players, sometimes it’s easy to get complacent, and we can’t have that right now.”
Struble knows.
He said on Friday that he took the recent break for the 4 Nations Face-Off as an opportunity to mentally reset, and he came out of it prepared to do what he needed to be the most useful version of himself.
“I’m just playing hard and intense,” he said. “When my intensity’s up, that’s when I’m at my best, and I know I have to keep it up.”
When it’s not quite at its peak, Struble’s focus slightly slips from shift to shift and that leads to the inconsistencies that put him on the margins of Montreal’s lineup.
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But Struble has had barely any lapses over his last four games and has become an essential part of that lineup. He played with greater urgency and intensity and heightened focus to be plus-2 over 23 shifts in Vancouver before going plus-3 in 23 shifts in Seattle a night later, and if he keeps doing that, he’ll continue to increase his value to the Canadiens.
It’s what the six-foot, 207-pound left-hander wants to do more than anything.
Struble knows the future competition is fierce — with Guhle starting a new six-year contract next season, with Lane Hutson emerging, with Arber Xhekaj bringing a similar edge to the one he brings, with Mike Matheson still under contract for one more season after this one, and with some promising young defencemen (like Adam Engstrom) developing in Laval — and he wants nothing more than to continue being a part of it.
“The only thing I think about is I want to be here as long as I can,” Struble said. “I love the city, love the guys, I have no thoughts or feelings of wanting to leave. Would rather battle it out here than go somewhere else.”
To see Struble battling as hard as he is right now — and doing so in games of increasing importance, as the Canadiens have remained in the chase for a playoff spot — has boosted his chances of being able to.
Continuing may not secure his long-term future in Montreal, but it would eliminate any thought outside the city that he could become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
