Martin St. Louis wants more urgency in defense from his forwards including $13.45M player

Montreal Canadiens forward Kirby Dach, who is in his last year of a four-year, $13.45 million contract, returned to the ice after undergoing a second consecutive ACL tear back in February. However, it wasn't an easy night for the Canadiens forward and the rest of their team as they were humbled 7-2 by the Toronto Maple Leafs in a pre-season game on Thursday.

Kirby Dach was paired alongside Ivan Demidov and Patrik Laine in what is likely to be Montreal's primary second line for most of the 2025-26 season. However, all three players earned a team-low -3 rating. When asked if he'd liked some more urgency from his top lines, Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis touched upon the defensive side of their game.

"Yeah and it's not even offensively," St. Louis said. (13:15 onwards) "To me it's just a defensive part of the game and that's not as fun. That's got to be dialed in now."

Despite the overall assessment, Martin St. Louis complimented the second line, stating that the trio will be hard to play against. But that would also require a full commitment from all three forwards.

"I think it's not one guy," St. Louis said. "I think to be a hard line to play against defensively, all three guys have to be committed to it. You can have one guy committed, two not. You can have two and one not.

"And it's just all three have to be committed to it and for me with Dach, I just felt he had energy and legs tonight and he hasn't played a game in a long time, so I'm not going to evaluate so much. I'm sure we're going to do some teaching. I'm just happy he got to get in the game."

Kirby Dach is expected to fill the hole of the second-line center that the Canadiens had been hoping to pad up due to the Canadian's injury history. The position is particularly important as it would be the center alongside Ivan Demidov in his first full rookie season.

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Kirby Dach not paying attention to talk about 2C role

The 2C role has been Kirby Dach's ever since he was traded for by the club in 2022 from the Chicago Blackhawks. He is aware of the talk surrounding the team and whether Montreal will be looking for more options as his contract expires at the end of the season. However, the forward is currently focused on getting healthier each day.

“I didn’t really give it any attention, to be honest with you,” he said before the game, “I was more focused on myself and getting better and rehabbing and getting back to a place where I can be effective and be that second-line centre for this team.”

The 24-year-old has scored 121 points in 269 NHL games at an average time of 16:44 on the ice. Now with his return on the ice, the next goal would be to start the regular season on a high note.