Since Brandon Montour was acquired from the Ducks a week and a half ago, he’s been in more games than he has full practices with the team. Such is life when you’re moved ahead of the trade deadline. But what we’ve seen out of Montour early on shows us why Sabres GM Jason Botterill was so excited to add him to the roster.

Through his first four games, Montour has a goal and an assist (each came in a 4-3 overtime win against Pittsburgh) and he’s been on the third defense pairing. In those games he’s matched up two times each with Matt Hunwick and Marco Scandella. Although we can imagine Montour’s future will see him in the top four, for now, he’s been behind Rasmus Ristolainen and Zach Bogosian on the right side. Although it’s early in his Sabres career, his defense partners are excited by what he’s already shown he can do.

“He’s a great skater; he’s always trying to press the attack,” Scandella said. “He moves the puck really well and jumps in the hole. He’s got great communication out there so he’s a pretty easy guy to play with. He likes to get the puck out using his feet.”

Hunwick has similar praise.

“I knew he was a good player but I didn’t see him a lot being in the Western Conference,” he said. “Just kind of his all-around game, it seems like he can do it all. He’s obviously a very aggressive player and a fun guy to play with, fun guy to watch.”

Montour’s skating ability and speed are always talked about when it comes to what he brings to the back line. After all, with the NHL’s change over the past few years where the better teams are getting more of a push offensively from defensemen, players with abilities like his are going to be valued more.

“Skating has been a strength of mine but I like to skate and it seems like I have a lot of energy out there,” Montour said. “Sometimes I’m more tired than others but I think it’s just growing up with lacrosse and hockey. I grew up playing both sports and I think that translated to conditioning a lot.”

During his first two-plus seasons in Anaheim, Montour played for former Norris Trophy winner Randy Carlyle but was also coached defensively by Trent Yawney. Now with the Edmonton Oilers as an assistant, Yawney helped bring Montour into the NHL and worked to make him better-rounded in his game.

“He’s really improved over the time,” Yawney said. “He’s quick and when he plays with it he can use his quickness as a means of defending – it’s very effective. He’s got that little bit of bantam rooster in him, that’s a good thing, but when he gets against the bigger guys sometimes that can be a bit of a disadvantage.”

Montour gives a lot of credit to Yawney for helping him acclimate to the NHL, as the defenseman really hit his stride in his rookie season during the Ducks’ playoff run to the 2017 Western Conference Final. Figuring out the balance between playing offense and defense was something they worked on in Anaheim.

“We would always talk about joining the rush from the front of the net and not always think about leading the rush. He’s so quick out of the defensive zone that he can be that fourth guy and is very good at it,” Yawney said. “He basically limited those times where he was trying to do it by himself and I gave him the penalty kill. I felt that he needed that, that he could do it and what was funny was at the end of the year when I looked through all of the clips, all of the positive ones were around the net and stuff involved him. So he really took to that and he had a really good year offensively and that was a really good byproduct of how he played in his own zone because he was able to disrupt pucks and jump into the play and provide offense in that next layer as the fourth man and he was very good at it.”

How that’s factored into Montour’s usage with the Sabres has been easy to see so far. Even though Buffalo has won only one of the four games he’s played in, it’s allowed Housley to deploy him away from his defense partners late in games in which they’re trailing to help spur the attack in search of a goal. We saw that work out ideally against Pittsburgh.

Montour's first goal with Buffalo pic.twitter.com/a2XrFuyAnH — Ben Mathewson (@Ben_Mathewson) March 2, 2019

Montour’s CorsiFor rates with and without his defense partners, however, have been a good enough reason to think he’ll be just fine when it’s time for him to get into the top-four. (Numbers from NaturalStatTrick.com and measure 5-on-5 play)

Time on Ice CorsiFor% With CorsiFor% Without Hunwick 20:33 40.6 66.7 Scandella 18:52 32.5 66.1

With the Sabres, Montour has been at 52.3 percent CorsiFor which (***small sample size warning***) is better than he’s been in his career with Anaheim. Montour has already landed as the power play quarterback with the second unit in Buffalo and even has had some tastes of life on the penalty kill. If the Sabres are going to employ an attack like that of Nashville, they’re going to need more of this out of Montour and others and to do it responsibly.

Montour up in the play pic.twitter.com/2aBZt3hena — Ben Mathewson (@Ben_Mathewson) February 27, 2019

“I think with guys like that you try to complement them as best you can; be a good outlet, be available, be stable, and then in the D-zone it’s just about talking because there are times he’ll be up on the rush and be coming back communicating those things,” Hunwick said of Montour. “He gets back so fast it’s not like he’s out of the play.”

(Top photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)