Before last season, Shea Weber was one of the most consistent players in the
league, playing in 95.8% of his games. Now at 33 years old, he is coming off
his most significant injury as a professional and still in the process of
rehabbing. Last year, he suffered a torn tendon in his foot in the opening game
 of the season, and managed to play through it until he shut things down on
December 16th. Weber played in just 26 games due to the ongoing foot issue,
which has now led to a nagging problem with his knee.

Shea Weber has knee surgery on June 19 after having foot surgery on Mar 13.
He's out 5-6 months. pic.twitter.com/fgbjGOJ9C2

- Eric Engels (@EricEngels) July 5, 2018

The surgery is putting Weber';s return around mid-December. This is a team in
the Montreal Canadiens that leans heavy on their 6-foot-4 defensive star, and
heading into this season, certain players are going to have step up in his
absence and contribute more.The Young Guns

With the NHL rapidly becoming a high-paced game, one of the things the
Canadiens can use to their advantage is their quick defensive speed to catch
teams flat-footed. Both Noah Juulsen and Victor Mete were drafted as
puck-moving defenseman that can escalate the pace of play with their speed and
first pass out of the zone. The 5-foot-9, Mete was a pleasant surprise in a
otherwise horrible season.Victor Mete plans on being a key part of the
Canadiens this season.(Amy Irvin / The Hockey Writers)

The 184 pound defenseman averaged 15:35 of ice time in 49 games, picking up
seven assists and posting a plus-5. In his sit-down with the Montreal
Gazette';s Stu Cowan he describes the rollercoaster of the year he had.

"It's been crazy. It's been a roller-coaster, obviously. I didn't know where I
was going to be this year, if I was going to be in London (with the OHL's
Knights) or here. And then making the team and I wasn't sure if I was going to
stay past the (first) nine games. Stayed past the nine games, then got sent to
world juniors and I wasn't sure if I was going to come back from world juniors.
 And then got called back up here and then finished the year here. It was
pretty crazy.

Should his play this season remain consistent, things for Mete should go much
more smoothly. As for Juulsen, last season he broke his foot during an
exhibition game and never got the training camp that he desperately
needed. After two months on injury reserve, he was sent down to the American
Hockey League to the Lavals Rocket in late November. He got called up again on
Feb. 22, 2017, where he was slotted next to Karl Alzner for the 23 games he
played in.Canadiens defenseman Noah Juulsen hopes to make the team to start the
 season. (Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports)

The hope is that Juulsen will benefit from a full training camp this time
around, and break with the team heading into the season. There is also the
possibility that the Canadiens will send him back to the AHL, to play big
minutes with the Rockets. Both young defenseman were drafted as offensive focal
 points on the back-end and are going to be relied on heavily to play big
minutes, including on special teams.A Combined Effort

Things really fell apart last season when Shea Weber went down, and this time
the team will be without their key veteran from the start of the season. A year
 ago, the Canadiens had the 30th ranked penalty kill in the league, at just a
measly 74.1 per cent kill rate. This is a Canadiens team that struggles to
score a lot of goals, so the focus on a combined defensive effort has to be a
big focus this season. They will need more production out of  veterans Jeff
Petry, Jordie Been and especially Karl Alzner. The improvement needs to come
from each individual, but all eyes will be on the young defenseman and how they
 preform.

"I want to be clear: we are not where we are today because of injuries. That's
not the reason. We missed Shea Weber for over 50 games and it didn't help, but
I didn't feel like anyone stepped up." -Marc Bergevin

- Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) April 9, 2018

The other main struggle for this team last season was that that head coach
Claude Julien was trying to implement a zone-defense style of hockey that the
players never bought into. The Vegas Golden Knights showed us last year that
you do not need star names on the blue-line, just players who buy in to the
defensive scheme and do their roles. If the Canadiens want to be successful
this season they can learn from the Golden Knights and use a combined effort
from each player, to step-up and play within their respective role.

The post Habs Need Mete & Juulsen to Step Up appeared first on The Hockey
Writers.

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