Martin St. Louis doesn’t hand out symbolic line placements on Day 1 of camp. So when the Canadiens hit the ice in Brossard on Thursday and Chris Kreider was standing on the left wing next to Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, that wasn’t a warm welcome. That was a decision — and the ripple effect it set off down the lineup tells you more about how this roster is going to be built than a summer of speculation did.

The Canadiens’ official Day 1 camp banner — via @CanadiensMTL on X.

Kreider takes the left, Caufield moves off it

Kreider signed his one-year, $2.15 million deal with Montreal on Sept. 12, five days after a mutual termination ended his lone season in Anaheim. Six days later — Day 1 of camp, zero games played — he’s already skating with the Selke winner and the Lady Byng winner. That’s not a depth-chart courtesy for a 35-year-old on a bargain deal — it’s St. Louis reading matchups.

The move pushes Cole Caufield to the right wing for the first time since St. Louis took over as coach in February 2022. St. Louis has always preferred wingers on their off side, which is exactly why he flipped Caufield to the left in the first place. Kreider, a lifelong left-shot left winger, isn’t switching for anybody — so Caufield goes back to where he played growing up.

It also bumps Juraj Slafkovský down to a reunion with Ivan Demidov and Oliver Kapanen, a trio that spent a good chunk of last season together. Demidov, asked about the new guy, put it about as well as anyone could:

He reminds me of an old Slaf, I would say. Same size as him, just older than Slaf.

— Ivan Demidov, on Chris Kreider

That’s the whole bet in one sentence. Kreider spent last season parked on Anaheim’s top line next to Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry, scoring eight of his 22 goals on the power play. Net-front size, a heavy shot, a one-timer trigger — it’s a version of what Slafkovský brings, just with 13 NHL seasons of knowing exactly where to stand.

The bottom six got more crowded overnight

• Line 1: Kreider – Suzuki – Caufield
• Line 2: Slafkovský – Kapanen – Demidov
• Line 3: Bolduc – Dach – Texier
• Line 4: Newhook – Evans – Berard
• Line 5: F. Xhekaj – Danault – Anderson

Kapanen getting first crack at centering Slafkovský and Demidov again is worth reading as a small vote of confidence after a rough final stretch to his rookie season. He seemed to know it, too: “I feel like I had a good year if I don’t take those last months into it,” he said Thursday. “It’s a good thing to build on.”

The real casualty of Kreider’s arrival isn’t a King’s-line seat — it’s a roster spot. Brett Berard and Florian Xhekaj both looked like they had a real shot at making this team in August. With Kreider now occupying a forward slot that didn’t exist on the depth chart three weeks ago, that path narrows considerably for at least one of them.

The blue line is basically set — except for one battle

Thursday’s pairs: Matheson–Dobson, Hutson–Carrier, Struble–A. Xhekaj, and Engström–Reinbacher. The first three are locks. The last pairing is the actual audition — Adam Engström and David Reinbacher fighting for the seventh-defenceman job, and only until Kaiden Guhle is back from his adductor surgery around mid-October.

He’s got all the tools. He’s going to keep pushing.

— Martin St. Louis, on David Reinbacher

Translation — he’s not walking into a job just because he was a first-round pick. He has to win it in exhibition games most fans won’t watch closely.

The Hutson–Carrier pairing is worth a longer look than Day 1 usually gets. It lets Hutson play his stronger left side, and the two of them combined for a plus-13 goal differential in roughly 340 five-on-five minutes together last season — with a better expected-goals share than Hutson posted without Carrier. Two defencemen under six feet playing together sounds like a liability on paper. Last season, it wasn’t.

Dobeš is the guy. Backup is not decided.

Jakub Dobeš is the starter — that part was settled in July when he signed his three-year, $16.1 million extension. What’s still open is who backs him up. Sam Montembeault has the experience and, unlike Jacob Fowler, doesn’t need to clear waivers to go to Laval, which gives him the practical inside track even if it isn’t officially a competition. Fowler spent the whole summer training at the team facility and says he’s not thinking about the roster math at all: “Tomorrow’s never guaranteed. Just try to put my best foot forward every time I’m in the facility.”

Coach’s Take

Kreider changes the whole picture of this roster. He fills the actual hole the Canadiens had in their top six, and that’s what gives St. Louis the room to move pieces around him. It’s how Caufield gets back to his strong side for good — Kreider is a better balance for that line than Slafkovský ever was in that spot.

My concern is Kapanen at second-line centre. He and Slafkovský and Demidov had real moments together last season, but I’m not convinced Kapanen is a legitimate No. 2 centre in this league yet — he’s responsible, he’s a good two-way piece, but the season tells you which Kapanen you’re actually getting. Over his first 46 games he had 16 goals, 11 assists and 27 points on an 18.8 percent shooting clip. Over his final 36, that fell to 6 goals, 4 assists and 10 points at 13.0 percent — his production roughly cut in half down the stretch. He played all 82 regular-season games, which says something about his durability, but Montreal still sat him for a dozen of their 19 playoff games afterward.

On the blue line, it comes down to Reinbacher or Engström for that seventh spot, and Reinbacher is the favourite — not just because of the pedigree, but because he shoots right. The six defencemen Montreal already has locked in are four lefties and two righties, so adding another lefty in Engström tilts that further; Reinbacher actually balances the pairs the way St. Louis wants them.

Montembeault isn’t a problem for this team. He’s just been stuck in trade speculation for months without it ever going anywhere. If he’s still here when camp breaks, I’d expect Fowler back in Laval getting starts and Montembeault staying on as the backup.

It’s one practice — nobody should draw hard conclusions off Day 1. But look at what St. Louis actually did: he didn’t wait for exhibition games to sort any of this out. He made his biggest call, Kreider on the top line, before a single puck dropped.

The bigger picture

None of this reads like a team easing into a season. It reads like the team we described two days ago — a roster with its core locked up and its window open, acting like it. St. Louis isn’t running an open competition for the top line or giving a depth-chart courtesy to a 35-year-old on a one-year deal. He’s plugging Kreider in next to his two best players on Day 1 because he thinks it makes the team better on Day 1. Everything else — Caufield’s new wing, the crowded bottom six, Reinbacher’s clock ticking down to mid-October — is downstream of that one call.

Next test: Montreal splits its squad for a pair of exhibition games Saturday night, both against Toronto — one group in Montreal, the other on the road at the Leafs. That’s the first look at how far these combinations hold once the games start to count for something, even a little.

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Line rushes and quotes via Arpon Basu, The Athletic, from Thursday’s practice in Brossard. Kreider’s Anaheim/career numbers, the Hutson–Carrier five-on-five splits, Kapanen’s game-by-game season splits, and Reinbacher/Engström shot data independently verified against official NHL box scores.