Cowan: Canadiens acquiring Phillip Danault makes sense for many reasons

The Canadiens’ decision to acquire veteran centre Phillip Danault from the Los Angeles Kings late Friday night makes sense for a lot of reasons.

General manager Kent Hughes met with the media Saturday morning at the Bell Centre to discuss some of them.

“I think that’s a fair deal, a second-round pick for Phil Danault, but we had two (second-round picks at next year’s NHL Draft),” Hughes told reporters. “I think as we continue whatever process we’re in here — call it a rebuild or whatever, a phase of trying to build a championship team — the one thing that we’ve tried to do is when we make trades is to deal through a position of depth or surplus — I don’t want to say surplus. But I guess depth is an appropriate description.”

The 32-year-old Danault has struggled offensively this season in Los Angeles with no goals and five assists in 30 games. But he continues to play a strong defensive game with a plus-3 rating and is very good on faceoffs, winning 52.9 per cent this season and 53.1 per cent during his 12-year NHL career, including six previous seasons with the Canadiens.

The Canadiens are the youngest team in the NHL and are missing three forwards with long-term injuries — Kirby Dach (fractured foot), Alex Newhook (fractured ankle) and Patrik Laine (core muscle injury). Danault brings some much-needed experience and should help limit the number of defensive breakdowns we’ve seen this season while also helping on the penalty-kill. Hughes said every player on the team can learn and gain experience from being around a highly respected veteran like Danault.

Hughes noted the 82-game NHL season is difficult when everyone is healthy, adding injuries have increased the demand on some players this season. Hughes said bringing in Danault will help share some of the responsibilities and that will be important come March and April. Danault has a long history of playing against the other team’s top players, so he will lessen the defensive workload on Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki.

“He’s been here before,” Hughes said about Danault. “I think people in this market know what he is as a hockey player. We don’t think the season he’s having right now is indicative necessarily of the quality of player that he is and we’re hopeful that back here in Montreal he’s re-energized and regains the form he had here in Montreal and in L.A. before that.”

In his first season with the Kings, Danault posted 27-24-51, setting a career high for goals. The next season, he had 18-36-54 totals, setting a career high in points. Last season, he had 8-35-43 totals in the regular season and 2-6-8 totals in six playoff games against the Edmonton Oilers.

Hughes also pointed out Danault is a left-shot centre. Suzuki, Oliver Kapanen and Jake Evans all shoot right. Hughes asked all his left-shot forwards to work on faceoffs over the summer.

“Slaf (Juraj Slafkovsky) told me he’s better than everyone except Jake Evans,” Hughes said with a chuckle. “But that’s just in practice, not in games.”

Slafkovsky has only won 29 per cent of the faceoffs he has taken this season.

Danault has one more season left on his contract with a US$5.5-million salary cap hit. In order to stay under the team salary cap, the Canadiens sent forward Jared Davidson back to the AHL’s Laval Rocket on Saturday and placed Dach and defenceman Kaiden Guhle (partially torn adductor muscle) on the long-term injured list.

Hughes said he reached out to Kings general manager Ken Holland when he first heard rumours recently he might be looking to trade Danault and told Holland to give him a call if he was, indeed, thinking about doing that. The NHL holiday roster freeze started at midnight Saturday, so talks heated up Friday night and the deal was reached.

The Canadiens play back-to-back weekend games against the Penguins on Saturday at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SNE, City, TVA Sports) and Sunday in Pittsburgh (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS). Hughes wants to give Danault time to settle things with his family in Los Angeles and said he will join the Canadiens in Boston, where they will play the Bruins on Tuesday (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS).

Danault left Montreal on bad terms following a contract dispute with former GM Marc Bergevin after helping the Canadiens advance to the Stanley Cup final in 2021. Danault was upset news about his contract negotiations with Bergevin were leaked to the media and ended up signing a six-year, US$33-million contract with the Kings after turning down a six-year, US$30-million offer from Bergevin.

“I spent almost 30 years on the other side where you’re more worried about individual players and you watch the ups and downs of their careers, not in the context of a team, but in the context of their careers,” said Hughes, who was a longtime player agent before becoming GM of the Canadiens. “Very rare that somebody forgets how to play hockey. It’s just what are the circumstances that the player’s going through that are limiting his ability or causing him not to perform to his potential?

“Phil can talk a little bit more about that, I guess,” Hughes added. “You guys will have questions for him when he gets here. But from our vantage point, Phil’s a good hockey player. He had eight points in six games in the playoffs last year in a role where his primary responsibility was to shut down Connor McDavid. So guys go through these periods in their career where they’re not having the success that they typically have and we’re pretty confident that he’ll come here and he’ll be energized and I think he’s pretty excited to be coming back to Montreal.”

scowan@postmedia.com

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