Elliotte Friedman drops a major hint on Kirby Dach and his future took a stunning turn

Elliotte Friedman said out loud what plenty of Canadiens fans have been circling. Kirby Dach's fit in Montreal is no longer obvious.

The comment came on the September 14 episode of 32 Thoughts. NHL Rumour Report clipped it Tuesday night and the post has already crossed 50,000 views.

Friedman said the roster could look very different very quickly, with a lot of balls in the air. The more names Montreal adds, the harder one player is to place.

That player is the number 77. And the numbers back the question up.

He dressed for 37 games last season and finished with 15 points, none of them game winners.

The closing stretch was worse. One point across his final 10 appearances with a -5 rating attached.

Nick Suzuki is not going anywhere after a 101 point season at plus-37. The top of this lineup is spoken for.

Elliotte Friedman: Re Canadiens: Their roster could be very different very quickly, you get the sense they got a lotta balls in the air; Kirby Dach...I've kinda wondered about; the more they keep adding people, I wonder where his fit is - 32 Thoughts (9/14)

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Friedman's latest Dach update has Habs fans worried

Cole Caufield buried 51 goals and 12 of them won hockey games. Juraj Slafkovsky chipped in 73 points at 22 years old.

Then there is Ivan Demidov, who put up 62 points as a 20 year old on a $940,833 contract. Good luck bumping him down.

Chris Kreider is 35 and put 50 points on the board across 75 games.

Phillip Danault sits on the books at $5.5 million. Alex Newhook, Jake Evans, Oliver Kapanen, Zachary Bolduc and Alexandre Texier all took real minutes.

That is a lot of bodies for a shrinking number of shifts. Not one of Dach's goals came on the power play, and the captain alone piled up 32 power play assists.

Now look at what the spring actually showed. Montreal needed seven games to get past Tampa Bay, then seven more to handle Buffalo.

Nineteen playoff dates in total, and the big centre was dressed for every one of them. Five points to show for it.

Four of those were goals, matching half his regular season total. Read that any way you want.

The contract sits at $3,362,500. Carrying that number for a fourth line role is like paying for a parking spot you use nine times a year.

Here is the part that should worry people around this team. Kent Hughes built a group that went three rounds deep, then by Friedman's read kept adding anyway.

Somebody has to come off the board. When a general manager keeps stacking the deck, a 15 point forward with a middling cap hit is rarely the one who survives the cut.

Training camp will answer some of it. Martin St-Louis has to find 12 forwards who make sense, and a player without a defined spot tends to find out fast.

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