LAVAL, Que. — After 68 games in the NHL, Arber Xhekaj played the first AHL game of his career Wednesday night.
And he looked nothing like the player who was able to leapfrog the AHL on his way to the NHL.
It was appropriate this first game with the Laval Rocket came against the Belleville Senators because a lot of the Senators players on the ice were also on the ice for a rookie game in the fall of 2021 in which Xhekaj ran roughshod all over them. He was a terror, hitting everything that moved, fighting at the slightest provocation.
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In that game, a hit from Xhekaj resulted in a torn ACL for Angus Crookshank, and a year later Xhekaj laid a hit that injured Viktor Lodin in Buffalo at the rookie tournament.
Angus Crookshank on Arber Xhekaj's hit that injured Victor Lodin today:
"It's a dirty hit. You could ask anybody in that room, there's not a lot of respect for that guy and how he carries himself to be quite frank."
Crookshank suffered torn ACL after hit from Xhekaj last year.
— Ian Mendes (@ian_mendes) September 18, 2022
Crookshank was playing in this game Wednesday night. As were a few others who felt that way about Xhekaj — a situation that drives him, that generally gets him to play that way even more, to provoke and impose himself physically and take on all challengers.
This is who Xhekaj is, what makes him unique and what makes him a unicorn in the modern NHL, someone who can do all that and play the game at a high level. But it is clearly the second part of that equation that led the Montreal Canadiens to send Xhekaj down to the AHL; his ability to play the game was suffering and he needed to polish his defensive game coming off an injury, a need that clearly predated the injury in the organization’s eyes.
It is important Xhekaj not lose what makes him such a unique player in the process. Except he was clearly instructed to focus on one thing and one thing only in Laval, and that would be his defensive game. Every offensive opportunity he had was approached tentatively, as though he were treading into forbidden territory. After quarterbacking the Canadiens’ second power-play unit for the first month of the season, Xhekaj got no time on the power play until the very end of the game when Laval was attempting to mount a miraculous comeback from 5-0 down.
But more importantly, every opportunity Xhekaj had to impose himself physically, he shied away. He held back.
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He was not himself.
Before watching these clips, remember this is how I described Xhekaj entering a scrum back on Oct. 14 during the Canadiens’ second game of the season. This is the baseline.
Arber Xhekaj entering that scrum. pic.twitter.com/huFDQ2hvTL
— Arpon Basu (@ArponBasu) October 14, 2023
Anyone who has seen Xhekaj come flying into scrums like that would not recognize him here.
Anyone who has seen Xhekaj take every invitation to fight from the toughest customers in the NHL, and even initiate many of them as he did with Ryan Reaves on opening night, would not recognize him rejecting an invitation from AHL enforcer Bokondji Imama — who was sent out on a power play here — and simply skating away instead.
And again, toward the end of a disastrous game for the Rocket, no one would recognize Xhekaj’s reaction to this scrum after the most promising young player on the team, Joshua Roy, took a cross-check in the back.
Who is this guy? Is this who the Canadiens want Xhekaj to become? I doubt it.
Back in early November, after the Boston Bruins’ Brad Marchand injured Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Timothy Liljegren on a questionable tie-up in the corner, several days were spent in Toronto discussing the Maple Leafs’ lack of response to one of their teammates being injured on a borderline dirty play. I asked Xhekaj about it in passing shortly after that, just curious to get his opinion, and he immediately began shaking his head.
“I didn’t like it,” he said. “I mean, you’ve got to do something. Something.”
This is the guy who responded the way he did in the clips above.
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I can understand the Canadiens asking Xhekaj to focus on his defensive game and nothing else, and how that would be his path back to the NHL, but perhaps they went too far. Because the way Xhekaj played his first AHL game made him a completely different version of himself, and frankly, it made him ineffective. He was hesitant to try anything, whether that was physically, offensively, or yes, defensively. He looked confused.
I would have loved to ask Xhekaj if he was simply following directives, but the Rocket/Canadiens did not make him available to speak to five reporters after the game. Perhaps Xhekaj refused to talk, and if so, that’s on him. But if not, that’s on the Canadiens, so I guess we’ll simply have to interpret what we saw on the ice without Xhekaj being able to provide his side of things, which is unfortunate for him because what he showed was a shadow of what he is as a player.
From the looks of it, without being able to ask Xhekaj about it, it appeared as though the Canadiens muzzled him on the ice during the game and off the ice after the game.
Rocket coach Jean-François Houle, however, said no mandate was given to Xhekaj to stay away from the rough stuff that usually drives everything he does.
“We didn’t really talk about that,” Houle said. “For us, we just want Arber to get his feet wet and play here. First game, he’s trying to get to know his opponents, trying to get to know his teammates right now. He came into a game that was kind of … They imposed their will on us quite early, and our young team kind of played on our heels a little bit, and it showed.”
Understandably, Houle has more pressing matters to handle than Xhekaj. The Rocket lost an eighth straight game and looked awful doing it. Houle went so far as to say the Rocket played as though they were scared.
Ouch.
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You know who never plays scared, at least normally, in his natural habitat? Arber Xhekaj. This was a game in which the Rocket could have legitimately used the normal version of Xhekaj, not the one who was being challenged to correct things in his defensive game to the detriment of encouraging what makes him so effective in the NHL.
There is nothing wrong with sending Xhekaj to the AHL, that should be made clear. Frankly, coming out of training camp, I thought it was a possibility for him then because of the competition on the blue line and the way he was playing. But there is something wrong with sending Xhekaj to the AHL and having him play like this, because if you eliminate the edge from Xhekaj’s game, you are taking away what makes him unique, the dimension to his game so few can bring. Not just on the Canadiens, but in the league.
The last time I spoke to Xhekaj was the morning of Nov. 7 before a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. He had just lost his job on the second power-play unit to Justin Barron, a player the Canadiens were asking to focus on the defensive side of his game. Barron had been getting minutes on the penalty kill to emphasize further the need for him to improve in his own end. Now, this is what the Canadiens were asking Xhekaj to do.
“They said I did well on the power play, did nothing wrong, they just wanted to change it and allow me to just really focus on my defensive game,” Xhekaj said that day. “Maybe down the road, I’m not a power-play guy. Maybe I am, you never know. We’ve got a lot of good prospects coming in and a lot of guys who can play a power-play role. I take it as a compliment maybe that they want to build my defensive game, that’s what’s probably going to keep me in this league for a long time. It just helps me only focus on my defensive game — it’s not like I could take my mind off the D-side and it’s like OK, I’ve got to go play power play now. Because you’ve got to switch your mind completely and go get a goal for the team instead of defend.”
What’s missing from that answer is how much hesitation there was in Xhekaj’s voice, how he wasn’t sure how to answer the question about being removed from the power play, how he was looking for a positive in real time and was struggling to do it.
That night, Xhekaj took nine minutes in penalties, including a double-minor for roughing on Tanner Jeannot — with whom he had fought earlier in the game — just 36 seconds after Michael Pezzetta had scored to make it 4-2 Lightning with 12:36 left to play. Jeannot also got a minor for roughing, but the Canadiens were left short-handed. It was the third game in a row Xhekaj had given the opposing team a power play, which is probably what led to coach Martin St. Louis calling it out after the game.
“I didn’t like Xhekaj’s penalty,” he said that night. “We had rhythm, we had just scored two goals and it was a two-goal game. If we score another, who knows? But we don’t give ourselves a chance when we take penalties like that late in the game.”
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Xhekaj’s penalties were definitely a problem, but it is worth noting he didn’t take another over his next five games, right up until he was injured against the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 16.
His next game was against the Belleville Senators.
There is nothing wrong with the Canadiens wanting to correct what is wrong with Xhekaj’s game. There were definitely things that needed correction. They just need to be careful not to erase what makes Xhekaj so valuable in the process.
(Photo of Arber Xhekaj: David Berding / Getty Images)
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