Montreal Fixed the Top of the Lineup. Behind It, There's Almost Nothing.

The depth chart at center and left wing tells you something the offseason narrative never quite did. At center, the drop from Luke Mittelstadt to Laurent Dauphin is not a gradual decline — Dauphin produces essentially nothing at the NHL level. At left wing, the same cliff exists: Chris Kreider leads the position, and behind him sits Lucas Condotta, who registers at the same level of output. Two positions, two complete voids behind the first name on the list. That's not a depth concern. That's a structural problem dressed up as one.

This matters because of what we already know about how Montreal's season actually unfolds. I wrote last week about the 2.9 goals-per-game figure that opened last season — the fragility that the offseason was supposed to cure and didn't. The front office's answer was to add Kreider, Kirby Dach, and Brett Berard as secondary scoring solutions. What the depth chart now reveals is that those additions addressed the top of the lineup while leaving the backup slots at two critical positions functionally empty. When Kreider misses time — and at his career stage, that's a when, not an if — the left wing behind him isn't a lesser version of the same thing. It's nothing.

The center situation carries its own specific weight. Nick Suzuki at 54 points in 49 games is the engine, and Oliver Kapanen contributed meaningfully as a secondary option. But Suzuki's 20.7 minutes of ice time per game tells you how hard this team leans on him — there's no margin for error when the backup center slot is occupied by a player who can't hold a regular-season job. The Kaiden Guhle injury last September showed what happens when Montreal's depth assumptions meet reality: the front office scrambled, the timeline extended, and the team absorbed the volatility. The forward depth chart is set up to produce the same scramble, just at center and left wing instead of defense.

What makes this particularly uncomfortable is that the offseason was genuinely ambitious. The Demidov eight-year extension, the Bolduc and Newhook four-year commitments, the Martin St. Louis multiyear deal — these were long-term bets on a specific vision of what this team becomes. That vision requires the core to stay healthy, because the infrastructure to absorb an injury at either of these positions simply doesn't exist. Juraj Slafkovsky at left wing is the real third option there, and he's good — 40 points in 50 games last season — but he's already counted on as a top-six contributor, not emergency depth.

My read is that the front office made a reasonable bet that the top of the lineup was the priority, and they weren't wrong about that. But there's a difference between addressing a problem and solving it, and the depth chart at center and left wing is evidence of the former. Montreal enters next season with two positions where a single significant injury turns a competitive roster into one running on fumes. The offseason rebuilt the headline act. The supporting cast, in two specific spots, is still missing.