When you've won 11 out of 14 games to lead the National Hockey League, there are a lot of things going right.
For the Habs, rolling four lines effectively has been key. The most surprising line is that of David Desharnais, Tomas Fleischman, and Dale Weise.
Of those, Dale Weise is a great story of turnaround.
In February 2014, Weise was traded by the Vancouver Canucks for Raphael Diaz. At the time, the Winnipeg native was a fourth liner barely seen on the ice in Vancouver; Canucks coach John Tortorella thought he was more a fighter than a player.
He arrived in Montreal and it all turned around for the right winger.
“I think when a hockey player gets confidence and he's happy in his surroundings, away from the rink, too, it does for this game. When you're having fun, it’s easy. When you're thinking, that’s when you run into trouble,” he said.
Weise scored 10 goals in 79 games last season. This season, he already has 7 in 14. It begs the question: what has he improved the most?
“I've put a lot of work into my game. I put a lot of hours in this summer: my hands, my shooting. Earlier conditioning, but now… it's really started to pay off,” he said.
Weise is having the best season of his career at exactly the right time as he can hit the open market next year and command more salary than at any time in his life.
“The biggest thing you see in the league is team success rewards individual success. Teams winning, everyone has good numbers, so I’m focused on team success and everything else will fall in place,” he said.
