Last season, the Montreal Canadiens were in a situation where they had nine waiver-eligible defencemen in training camp without room for all of them. The solution ahead of the 2015-16 campaign was to place off-season acquisition Mark Barberio on waivers. The move panned out, as Barberio went unclaimed and the Habs began the season with eight NHL blue-liners.
This year, the same strategy was successful, leaving the NHL club with seven defencemen with NHL experience, and one rookie — Mikhail Sergachev — with no regular-season games played. Barberio is a more-than-capable replacement ready in the wings in the AHL should the team need to replenish its defence corps at any point of the season.
Mark Barberio n’a pas été réclamé au ballottage. #canadiens #tvasports
— Renaud Lavoie (@renlavoietva) October 6, 2016
Barberio played 26 games for St. John’s to begin last season, scoring two goals and 18 assists in the first three months, earning a spot in the AHL All-Star Game.
He never made that appearance in the mid-season event, as he was called up to Montreal in late December, and remained on the Canadiens’ roster for the rest of the season, with two goals, eight assists and just six penalty minutes in 30 games with the club. He was one of the many defencemen to sustain an injury last season, forcing the team to use a franchise-record 15 defencemen during the regular season.
Barberio’s standing in the organization was brought into question by the pre-season play of Zach Redmond, who signed as a free agent in the summer. It appears that Redmond has won one of the most tightly contested training-camp battles for the reserve seventh defenceman position, and Barberio becomes the IceCaps top defenceman for the season, with a spot at the top of the NHL call-up list.
The eight defencemen still with the Canadiens are:
| Left Defence | Right Defence |
|---|---|
| Nathan Beaulieu | Shea Weber |
| Andrei Markov | Jeff Petry |
| Alexei Emelin | Greg Pateryn |
| Mikhail Sergachev* | Zach Redmond |
*waiver exempt
It will be interesting to learn what the motive for the initial submission to waivers was. It may have been to open the door for Sergachev to get a nine-game tryout with the team to open the season before returning to the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. Another possibility is that the play of one of the young forwards forced the team to change course from the plan to carry eight defencemen and 13 forwards into opening night, to needing spots for 14 forward options.
