the 2016 NHL Draft.<\/a><\/p>\nLaine scored eight goals in his first nine games last season \u2014 all on the power play. He finished the season with 20 goals in 52 games, including 15 on the power play. The Canadiens wouldn\u2019t have made the playoffs without Laine, as GM Kent Hughes noted at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
But Laine also had a minus-14 differential and was limited to less than 12 minutes of ice time in four of the last six regular-season games \u2014 scoring one goal at even strength \u2014 as the Canadiens battled to earn the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Laine worked hard this summer, skating almost every day in Brossard, to get ready for training camp. He worked hard throughout camp, but also looked slow compared with his teammates. St. Louis wants his team to play a fast-paced game while defending hard in the offensive and neutral zones so they don\u2019t have to defend so much in their own zone. That doesn\u2019t play to Laine\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n
But St. Louis said he liked what he saw from Laine in the last two pre-season games.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis five-on-five play is the best I\u2019ve seen,\u201d St. Louis said in a scrum with reporters outside the Canadiens\u2019 locker room after Monday\u2019s practice. \u201cWe talk about this a lot, guys. How many minutes of special teams are you going to have in a game? Let\u2019s just pretend there\u2019s three (penalties) on each side \u2014 that\u2019s 12 minutes. There\u2019s 48 minutes of even-strength hockey that we got to play and that\u2019s got to be the main focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre the special teams important? Absolutely,\u201d St. Louis added. \u201cBut that 48 out of 60 \u2014 85 per cent of the game \u2014 is going to be played even strength. What do you do on the ice to raise the percentages for our team to be successful? And it\u2019s not necessarily actions on the puck, they\u2019re actions off the puck on both sides of the game. For me, what I saw from Patty the last two games, I\u2019m very encouraged because I want to be able to come in waves and if Patty plays like that, it makes us deeper. And then, obviously, he can take his shots on the PP, which we need. So I\u2019m very encouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suzuki is the second-highest paid forward on the Canadiens with a salary-cap hit of US$7.875 million. The highest-paid player is new defenceman Noah Dobson, with a salary-cap hit of US$9.5 million.<\/p>\n
Suzuki likes what he saw from Laine at training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a really good summer,\u201d the captain said. \u201cI was skating with him and I think he knows what the coaches expect from him. He\u2019s been good on the power play. I think getting better five-on-five. He\u2019s played with a few different guys. I think Jake and Andy are kind of helping him out defensively, which is nice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he wants to be here, he wants it bad,\u201d Suzuki added. \u201cI think he\u2019s just trying to do the little details over and over again to be successful and I think we\u2019ve seen that.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see if Laine can continue to do that during the regular season.<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadiens are going to start the season with their highest-paid forward playing on the fourth line. Patrik…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[633,974,19271,265,971,230,5,638,639,4528,19428,783,976,4687,20,412,264,21,5147,4,975,778,1618,640,506,534,66,4835,18,1484],"class_list":{"0":"post-228631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-alex-newhook","9":"tag-brendan-gallagher","10":"tag-brossard","11":"tag-canadiens","12":"tag-cole-caufield","13":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","14":"tag-hockey","15":"tag-ivan-demidov","16":"tag-jake-evans","17":"tag-joe-veleno","18":"tag-jordan-harris","19":"tag-josh-anderson","20":"tag-juraj-slafkovsky","21":"tag-kirby-dach","22":"tag-maple-leafs","23":"tag-martin-st-louis","24":"tag-montreal","25":"tag-montreal-canadiens","26":"tag-montrealcanadiens","27":"tag-nhl","28":"tag-nick-suzuki","29":"tag-noah-dobson","30":"tag-oliver-kapanen","31":"tag-patrik-laine","32":"tag-power-play","33":"tag-st-louis","34":"tag-toronto","35":"tag-training-camp","36":"tag-winnipeg-jets","37":"tag-zachary-bolduc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115331538997048178","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}