As the Montreal Canadiens face difficult times and Martin St-Louis encounters his first storm as head coach, there’s some news.

We’re witnessing several firsts.

Martin St-Louis is starting to do things he had never (or almost never) done since taking over as the head coach of the Canadiens.

We can think of the rising tension in press conferences, Friday’s punitive practice, and now we can add another item to the list.

Martin St-Louis shortened his bench yesterday, and Arber Xhekaj paid the price

MSL indeed chose to seriously shorten his bench last night against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and two players, in particular, felt the impact.

«MSL shortens his bench. Only one shift for Xhekaj and Struble in the first 13 minutes of the second period.»

Xhekaj ultimately finished the game with a slim 11 minutes and 56 seconds of ice time, nearly matching Jayden Struble’s time (12 minutes and 23 seconds).

So we could say that St-Louis practically played yesterday’s game with only four defensemen.

Or at least, we can say that his top-four defensemen were very clearly set apart from his third pair.

Mike Matheson played nearly 26 minutes, Kaiden Guhle over 22 minutes, Lane Hutson over 24 minutes, and David Savard close to 20 minutes.

This will be a storyline to watch in the upcoming games, to see if this trend continues and if Martin St-Louis increasingly starts to shorten his bench.

Arber Xhekaj, 23, is a 6-foot-4, 240-pound left-shot defenseman. He was never drafted and has accumulated 0 points in 9 games this season in Montreal.

He has a -5 plus/minus rating, but his contributions on the ice obviously go far beyond the stats.