Habs Set to Open Camp

In Monteal, the Canadiens are preparing for a season that will hopefully improve upon their overall result in 2010, which was an exit from the playoffs at the Conference Finals against the Philadelphia Flyers.  A few faces have departed from that team and some new ones have taken their place on the roster, but we'll have to wait and see what the chemistry is like on the ice before we can judge how far they'll actually go this year.

The Habs will start behind the 8-ball a bit with a couple of injuries to their blueline though training camp, as both Markov and Hamrlik are dealing with knee issues, Markov's being far more severe and will keep him out much longer.  These two vacancies will at least give the Canadiens some more time to evaluate some of the talent that they have waiting in the wings or possibly have them make a move for another defenseman, as the rumour mill has been suggesting for a while now.

Up front, the Habs have added some depth to their line-up, but still have a couple of spots open for someone that possibly has some flexibility between the top six and the bottom six, since there could be some movement of a few names up and down the depth chart in camp.  The Canadiens have some NHL experience on their camp roster, which may have some shorter-term benefits and will continue to develop some of their longer-term assets.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Tomas Plekanec	Andrei Markov	Carey Price
Scott Gomez	Roman Hamrlik	Alex Auld
Mike Cammalleri	Jaroslav Spacek
Brian Gionta	Alexandre Picard
Andrei Kostitsyn	Hal Gill
Benoit Pouliot	Josh Gorges
Dustin Boyd	Ryan O'Byrne
Jeff Halpern
Travis Moen
Max Lapierre
Tom Pyatt
Alex Avtsin	Sebastien Bisaillon	Nicolas Champion
Hunter Bishop	Mathieu Carle	Peter Delmas
Jimmy Bonneau	Marc-Antione Desnoyers	Robert Mayer
Andrew Conboy	Morgan Ellis	Curtis Sanford
Mathieu Darche	Alex Henry
David Desharnais	Kyle Klubertanz
Gabriel Dumont	Brendon Nash
Lars Eller	Fredric St. Denis
Andreas Engqvist	Joe Stejskal
Oliver Fortier	P.K. Subban
Brendan Gallagher	Jarred Tinordi
Louis Leblanc	David Urquhart
Philippe Lefebvre	Yannick Weber
Dany Masse
Ben Maxwell
Max Pacioretty
Aaron Palushaj
Ryan Russell
Ian Schultz
Ryan White
James Wyman

The biggest battle that the Canadiens were facing in the off-season was how they were going to fit two free agent goalies, who were both looking for bigger deals under the cap, so they ended up trading away Jaroslav Halak and keeping Carey Price.  That pretty well solved that problem there, so their Summer roster (plus a buyout and cap penalty) coming into camp is now worth $56.4 million and they still have room for a couple of players to fill their vacancies up front.  There is also a discount expected for the amount of time Markov will be away from the club, so they should save some more cap space with whoever fills in for him.

I was definitely a fan of the potential that the Canadiens showed last season, but I think I was a tad disappointed by the end result, not quite having the right guys from the team.  This year, I think I still have some optimism, but I might spread it around a little bit more and look for a couple different names to emerge early on.  I think the biggest sleeper that might lift himself up with a quicker bunch of players will be Dustin Boyd, who came over from Nashville in an off-season trade.  There is no doubt that PK Subban will be a popular pick and the top four forwards will also be popular, but I think there might be a sleeper or two more in here somewhere.