The Player Montreal Might Be Missing More Than We Realize

I came across a little update on Kaiden Guhle this week, and it got me thinking about something that happens pretty easily in hockey. We forget about players when they're not playing.

Guhle is getting close to returning for the Canadiens after undergoing minor adductor surgery during the offseason. Head coach Martin St. Louis said he isn't sure whether Guhle needs another week or two, but the 24-year-old defenceman appears to be moving in the right direction. That's good news for Montreal.

And maybe more important news than it might look. Guhle played just 39 games last season, so he wasn't exactly around long enough to become part of our nightly hockey conversation. He had two goals and nine assists, along with 86 hits and 63 blocked shots, while averaging 19:28 a night. Those aren't numbers that jump off the page. But that's part of the point.

Sometimes the important players aren't the ones filling the scoresheet.

When I look at those numbers, I don't see a player whose job is necessarily to make everybody notice him. I see a defenceman who is willing to get in the way. Eighty-six hits. Sixty-three blocked shots. Almost 20 minutes a night.

Some hockey players become more noticeable when they're gone because somebody else suddenly has to do what they were doing. That's Guhle. And I think this is one of those situations where Montreal's depth might look a little different when he gets back into the lineup.

I'm not suggesting Guhle will return and suddenly transform the Canadiens. He'll need time. He'll have to get his timing back. And coming back from surgery isn't always a straight line. But getting a player like this back isn't simply about adding another defenceman. It's about getting back some of the things that don't always show up in the box score.

The bigger question is what Montreal does with him when he's ready.

This is where it gets interesting.

A player coming back from injury doesn't necessarily need to be thrown back into his old workload immediately. Sometimes the smart move is to let him find his game again. That's particularly true with a defenceman. The Canadiens don't need Guhle to prove anything in his first game back. They need him healthy enough to become Kaiden Guhle again.

And maybe that's the bigger lesson here. We tend to measure players by what they produce. But sometimes a team's identity is held together by players who make the less glamorous parts of hockey look ordinary.

You notice those players most when they're missing. Montreal may be about to find out just how much it missed Guhle.