Joel Armia was all smiles in the Canadiens’ locker room after Wednesday’s morning skate at the Bell Centre.
That’s a big change from this time last year.
Last year, Armia watched the Canadiens’ season-opening game — a 6-5 shootout loss to the Maple Leafs in Toronto — on TV after being sent down to the AHL’s Laval Rocket.
This year, the 31-year-old right-winger will be on the second line with centre Kirby Dach and left-winger Alex Newhook when the Canadiens open the regular season against the Maple Leafs Wednesday (7 p.m., SN, TVA Sports). Armia is taking the spot of fellow Finn Patrik Laine, who is out 2-3 months with a sprained knee, and he’s also on the second power-play unit.
Armia admits he was shocked last season when the Canadiens sent him down to Laval. He missed the Canadiens’ first seven games, was called up for six games — during which he scored one goal — and was then sent back to the AHL.
After posting 6-3-9 totals in eight total games with the Rocket, Armia was called up again and spent the rest of the season with the Canadiens. He finished strong with six goals in the last 12 games, giving him a career-high 17 goals in 66 games to rank fourth on the Canadiens behind Nick Suzuki (33), Cole Caufield (28) and Juraj Slafkovsky (20).
“It’s not something anybody expects,” Armia said Wednesday morning when asked about being sent down to Laval to start last season. “The first thing you think about is just get back to work. Do the things you can control, which is your game. That’s it.”
Head coach Martin St. Louis said it wasn’t an easy decision to send Armia — who has 10 years of NHL experience — down to the AHL.
“The easiest thing to do is nothing,” St. Louis said Wednesday morning. “The best thing to do sometimes is the hardest thing. But you can’t be afraid to make those decisions because it’s the hardest thing.
“He took it and just moved on,” St. Louis added. “‘OK, what’s next? This is where I’m at, this is where I want to be.’ So the struggle is part of his growth and he just took responsibility. For me, what he got better at is he got to find the love of the game again. Nothing matters if you don’t like the game. So for me he went down there and started just enjoying the game and bringing back some passion into it and he comes to the rink with a more positive attitude. Once you have that, the rest usually comes when you’re that talented and that’s what we saw.”
St. Louis said the 6-foot-3, 216-pound Armia has always had the talent to play on a second line, but wasn’t ready for that “chair.” The coach believes Armia is ready now, but added: “We’ll see.”
Armia is entering the final season of his contract with a US$3.4 million salary-cap hit, so there should be added motivation.
There is no doubt about Armia’s talent level. That’s why the Buffalo Sabres selected him in the first round (16th overall) of the 2011 NHL Draft. Last season, he worked on the mental side of the game with Jean-François Ménard, the Canadiens’ mental-performance coach.
“I’m not trying to be too hard on myself and know that there’s going to be a bad game here and there,” Armia said. “It’s hockey. It’s a fun game. You can only be better at it. I don’t think there’s a ceiling for that. That’s what I love about the game. It’s up to you, I feel, how you handle those situations.”
Armia comes across as a shy, quiet guy in interviews and teammate Kaiden Guhle describes him as a Friendly Giant. There are times when it looks like Armia needs to be less friendly on the ice and be more physical.
“Well, I don’t know,” St. Louis said when asked if that’s the case. “I mean, he gets involved physically. He steals a lot of pucks. He’s got an annoying stick. He’s tough to knock around. Army’s not going to be the guy that’s going to go run around and kill guys. But he’s going to get in people’s way and he’s very calculated and very smart. Very calculated in the way he plays. He’s very respectful of everybody around him, the environment and stuff. But also it reflects into the way he plays the game. He respects the rules of the game, so it’s very rare that he’s out of position. It’s very rare that he’s cheating the game.
“I don’t want him to lose that,” St. Louis added. “But still, yeah, there’s times that sometimes maybe I’d like to see what it looks like when he gets really mad. I think he’s very patient. Everything has an expiration date. Patience could be, too.”
As St. Louis said: We’ll see.