Do the Montreal Canadiens have the best defensive pairing in the North Division?
I’m starting to think the answer to that question is yes. When general manager Marc Bergevin signed Joel Edmundson to a four-year, $14 million-dollar contract this past off-season, it seemed likely he would be slotted into the team’s second pairing alongside Jeff Petry. Behind the Shea Weber and Ben Chiarot pairing, it gave Montreal a very stable top four on the blueline.
But the second pairing has been much better than stable. In fact, stable feels like a bit of an insult, as does calling them the second pairing.
Here is a fun exercise fitting for both the Christmas break and the return of the National Hockey League: What is the best lineup you can make solely constituting representatives from the all-Canadian division that has been assembled through temporary realignment for the 2020-21 season?
Let’s first establish some ground rules. With seven Canadian teams and only six available roster slots, we will have to take one head coach from the list of seven clubs. As a second rule, no team can send more than one representative, which means all seven organizations can only contribute once to our all-Canadian division roster.