The Canadiens should only send Mattias Norlinder back to Sweden
The Montreal Canadiens season is already sure to end without a playoff game being played.
They started the year with five straight losses, scored four goals in the process, and now sit at 6-17-3 and are close to the bottom of the league. The playoff battle is out the window, and it was actually out the window before Halloween.
The rest of this season, and there are 56 games left, should be about finding out which veterans belong in the team in the long term and which can be exchanged for draft picks and future prospects. Younger players should be given more opportunities to see how they can handle bigger minutes at the NHL level.
Which brings us to Mattias Norlinder. He is a 21-year-old left-back who was drafted in the third round of the 2019 NHL draft. He has played professional hockey in Sweden for the past two years and has an out-clause in his contract that he would return to Sweden if the Canadiens chose to send him down to Laval Rocket.
It may be time for Habs to just let him go back to Sweden.
It’s not like Norlinder is fighting at the NHL level. In fact, his speed and speed often stand out among an otherwise large and brutal blue line. It has been many times already during the six matches he has played that Norlinder makes a quick turn in the defense zone and moves up the puck. It’s something you simply do not see from Ben Chiarot, David Savard or Brett Kulak because they simply do not have the same speed as Norlinder has.
However, Norlinder is not given much opportunity to demonstrate that competence.
He has only played six games this season and has become a healthy scratch when the Canadiens have six other healthy defenders. Even when he enters the team line-up, he is not given much of an opportunity. In two of his last three games, he has played less than ten minutes of ice time.
He is also regularly missed for powerplay tasks in favor of Chiarot, who is nothing more than a big, physical suspension defender.
Putting Norlinder in one place to succeed would be on fire with a defensive player like David Savard and get him well over 15 minutes per game. A little power play time for the agile skating and offensive-minded defender would also make a lot of sense, but it just does not happen.
There is really no point in having a 21-year-old sitting on the end of the bench or in the press box. He can play regularly in Sweden and develop his defensive game in one of the best hockey leagues in the world.
This season is already over for the Canadiens. The priority for a player like Norlinder should be to get him as ready for the start of the 2022-23 season as possible. That would either mean playing a lot at the NHL level, or playing every game in Sweden.
It’s time for the Canadiens to decide which way to take Norlinder for the rest of this season.
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