Season Preview: Steve Montador

It's funny. At the beginning of 2009, and the season before, Brent Sopel manned the third pairing with a paycheck north of $2 million. And most everyone thought it was one of Dale Tallon's biggest boondoggles. But then throw in one competent season, a warm personality, and then a following season seeing what a non-dependable third pairing looks like, Hawks fans longed for a dependable No. 5 defenseman. So here we are again, with a pretty handsomely paid d-man who very well may only patrol the third pairing. But Steve Montador is no Brent Sopel. He's much more well-rounded, and can actually move from one end of the ice to the other in something that can be timed with a quicker device than a sun-dial. He's actually capable of racking up points, something Brent Sopel would consider confusing and frightening. In fact, Montador is an extremely underrated defenseman. Read this article. Or if you don't want to, basically what it boils down to is that in the last four ye...