by Blake Bennett, Staff Writer, All Habs Hockey Magazine

TORONTO, ON— Dustin Tokarski got married over the weekend, and you can’t help but look at the great attitude the Habs backup has always had towards his job and not think that he’s just like that all the time. Upbeat, calm, prepared to play every night: the guy deserves good things. Congrats, Ticker.

The reality is that he’s never going to get the spotlight in Montreal unless the NHL’s MVP goes down with an injury, like he did against the New York Rangers during the 2013-14 Eastern Conference Finals. And that isn’t an ideal situation for anybody on the team, not even Tokarski himself. That might seem a bit contradictory, but the fact is that the Habs are not built to rely on a player of Tokarski’s calibre in goal.

Which isn’t to diminish his abilities in the least; but the fact is that all throughout last season, analysts looking at Montreal’s numbers were unable to add up how their low possession and shots-for numbers translated into the number of wins they got without going back to Carey Price. They waited for the other shoe to drop, for the law of averages to work itself out, and it never did. They had an übermensch in net that obscured the weaknesses of the team, and it worked out into the second round of the playoffs, and if not for the nagging injuries said übermensch was playing through, it may have worked out even longer.

So looking at Tokarski’s 6-6-4 record and .910 save percentage through his 17 games played this season to judge his ability as a player isn’t exactly fair. There were his two starts on November 5^th and November 16^th against Buffalo and Detroit, respectively, when he posted shutouts in both games (which were consecutive, for him- he played no games between the two shutouts.) In both of those games, however, the team in front of him did a fine job in limiting the shots he saw: he only faced 21 shots against Buffalo and 18 against Detroit. In other words, there was a concerted effort on the team to tighten up and not rely on Price’s heroics to save the day.

Flash forward to Tokarski’s next start, against the Rangers, one week after his goose egg against Detroit: the team let him face 27 shots against the eventual President’s Trophy winners, which was all they needed to pot five against the Tick. Did they loosen up and play as though Price was in net, based on the confidence that two shutouts from the backup had given them? Maybe. But the point is that those three games are more indicative of Tokarski’s capabilities than his middling .910 save percentage across all seventeen starts. He either plays great (among all his games with at least .900 sv%, his lowest was .928, and out of the nine such outings, he finished six of them with over .950) or… less than great (eight games at sub-.900).

The point is, the guy has potential, and we all knew that. He has the pedigree of an eventual starting goalie—his gold medal from the 2009 WJC, his Memorial Cup with the Spokane Chiefs, his Calder Cup with the Norfolk Admirals, they all testify that he’s won at every level, and that there’s no reason he won’t continue to do so. He’s still young for a goaltender: Henrik Lundqvist is 33, Pekka Rinne is 32, Devan Dubnyk and Jonathan Quick are both 29. Even Carey Price is considered young at 27, considering his accolades. Tokarski is 25 and has plenty of time to improve. He’ll continue to develop. But will it be with the Habs?

The situation in net going into next season is comparable to what Los Angeles was working with a few years ago when Jonathan Bernier backed up Jonathan Quick. There wasn’t any chance that Bernier could steal the spotlight away from Quick, who was proving himself to be world-class by just his second season in the league by winning a spot on the USA’s Olympic team in 2010 behind Ryan Miller and Tim Thomas, then cementing that reputation by earning the Conn Smythe en route to the Cup in 2012, which was Bernier’s last season with the team. At the time, Bernier was regularly touted as the best backup in the league and was often speculated to be shopped for teams looking for their next young starter.

In his three seasons from 2010-11 to 2012-13 as a bona fide backup, he played 25, 16, and 14 games, respectively: in the same ballpark as Tokarski’s 17 games last season. Bernier and Tokarski show similar AHL numbers in the years they went deep in the Calder Cup playoffs: Bernier put up a .939 sv% and 1.81 GAA in three rounds before the Manchester Monarchs fell to the Hershey Bears in the Eastern Conference Final; Tokarski managed a .944 sv% and a 1.44 GAA to win the Calder Cup with the Norfolk Admirals in 2011-12.

So if Bernier, with that pedigree, was believed to be in line for a starting job after three seasons backing up Jonathan Quick, Tokarski has to have a similar trajectory. But with him coming into RFA status at the end of the coming season, what’s Montreal’s best plan for their depth in net? Zach Fucale is coming off winning gold at the World Juniors, just like Tokarski was several years ago. His junior career is wrapped up and he’s most likely going to back up Mike Condon in St. John’s. Will Montreal shift everyone in the system up a notch in a year or two when Tokarski is ready to be moved somewhere where he can seize the spotlight? Mike Condon had a respectable year with Hamilton, so it isn’t inconceivable to see him promoted to back up Price as long as he stays steady, leaving the St. John’s starting job open for Fucale’s development.

But goalies tend not to command very much value on the market, even one with Tokarski’s upside. The Maple Leafs acquired Bernier for Ben Scrivens, Matt Frattin, and a second-round pick; LA has since sent Scrivens on his way to Edmonton, who acquired Cam Talbot this offseason, which could put him back in a backup role. Frattin failed to impress LA after 40 games in 2013-14, and was sent to Columbus, who then flipped him back to Toronto, where’s he’s excelled with the Marlies and been completely invisible in nine games with the Leafs. The second-round pick also made its labyrinthine way back to the Leafs, who used it to select Travis Dermott from the Erie Otters. So the returns on the ‘best backup in the league’ ended up being interim pieces at best for LA (though Frattin was, admittedly, part of the package that brought Marian Gaborik to the Kings from Columbus—though the two picks that went with him lessen the overall value he represented in that trade).

So when it comes time that Tokarski is ready to move on up to his very own starting role, might the Habs be simply too comfortable with having him remain a great backup option behind the entrenched figure of Price? Marc Bergevin has been a shrewd negotiator in his tenure and could definitely wrangle more value out of Tokarski than what the Kings got out of Bernier. On the other hand, the regular season is a brutal marathon for a 65-plus game starter like Price. By the time playoffs roll around, it’s anybody’s bet whether the übermensch could be injured (for he is, after all, human, all too human) and a guy like Tokarski has proven his ability to steal games in the clinch.

But as I already said, Tokarski seems like a great guy. He deserves good things. Maybe, in a year or two, he’ll deserve to be moved to a team that’s built to help out their starter and not lean on him, and he’ll get his chance to ascend to the next level of his potential. But I personally hope he gets a Cup ring as a backup before he takes off.