Jarred Tinordi Jersey Card

As I mentioned a few days ago in my post about Nathan Beaulieu, he and Jarred Tinordi are involved in a three-man race (with Greg Pateryn) as the Montréal Canadiens' 6th and 7th defensemen behind Andrei Markov, Alexei Emelin, P.K. Subban, Tom Gilbert and Mike Weaver. Magnus Nygren has also impressed at camp so far, but he started as a man on the outside looking in.

Then again, Tinordi hasn't had that great a camp, but he has shown what he can do despite his young age in 30 regular-season and 5 playoff NHL games so far, as well as in two seasons in the AHL. At still just 22 years of age, I wouldn't mind seeing Tinordi go back with the Hamilton Bulldogs for one more season, and take on the role of #1 defenseman, perhaps even hone his leadership skills on a team that promises to not finish at the bottom of the standings for once. He has captained the U.S. Development Team as well as the OHL's London Knights, his Juniors team, after all.

Let's not kid ourselves, though, like his father Mark Tinordi, Jarred is a shut-down defender who can hit hard with his 6'6'' frame and 225 pounds (which may go up to 235 in time), and players of his type take longer to develop and rarely become 40-point producers, but a year manning the powerplay and penalty-kill in the AHL may improve his shot accuracy and passing skills, which would only help at the NHL level.

He has already represented Team USA twice, going medal-less at the 2012 World Juniors but winning gold at the 2010 Under-18 tournament. In both cases, he had a goal and an assist.

Some fans may have been hoping for a Chris Pronger-type of player when the Habs chose him with the 22nd pick in 2010, because he has the size and decent speed considering, but if he can develop into a tougher Hall Gill/faster Zdeno Chara (or somewhere in between), that'll still be a very worthwhile pick.

I'll have plenty more cards of his to showcase this year, but since I also went with the 2013-14 SP Game-Used Edition set by Upper Deck (#RF-JT of the Rookie Fabrics sub-set) for Beaulieu's, I figured the Tinordi post could use the same treatment, so here he is wearing the Habs' white (away) uniform with an all-red swatch from a photo shoot:

It's interesting to note that in his rookie season, Tinordi wore #42; he has since switched to #24, and should the team retire it for Chris Chelios (which I doubt, considering he spent the bulk of his career elsewhere and only won one Stanley Cup and Norris here, out of three each in total), he'd be the last to have worn it.