Montreal Canadiens Role Profiles: Phillip Danault 

As we get into the dog days of summer and until training camp, thesickpodcast.com will profile Montreal Canadiens players based on their expected role for the 2026-27 NHL season.

Forward Phillip Danault may not be the player that he was for the Montreal Canadiens during his first stint with the team, but he is still a very serviceable veteran presence for an otherwise very young team. Long gone are the days of Danault putting up 45-55 points a season while still being a great shutdown centre, but his defensive experience will still be a key part of his role for the 2026-27 season.

Danault is coming off a year where a mid-season trade brought him back to the Montreal Canadiens after spending the last four and a half years playing with the Los Angeles Kings. He was traded back to the Canadiens mainly because his offensive numbers began to decline severely. 

With the Kings, Danault went from recording a respectable eight goals and 43 points during the 2024-25 season to just five assists in 30 games to start the 2025-26 season, which would have put him on pace for no goals and 14 assists over an 82-game schedule. Luckily, he was able to find some offence when he returned to the Canadiens, but it was still far from the 43 points from the year prior. In 45 games with the Montreal Canadiens, Danault scored six goals and 12 points while shifting over to more of an exclusively shutdown role. 

It should be noted that he recorded just a single goal in his final 18 games of the regular season as the grind of a condensed Olympic schedule caught up to the 33-year-old. Danault did get rest for a few games before the playoffs, which really revitalized his game for the postseason. The playoffs were when his game really started to stand out as he became an unsung hero of some sort for the Canadiens during the 19-game run.

Danault scored two goals and eight assists (tied for third on the team) for 10 points (tied for fifth on the Canadiens) in 19 playoff games to show that he still had some offence left to bring. While his offensive boost was great, the part that really stood out was just how reliable he was on faceoffs throughout the run.