De La Rose gets chance to score as Canadiens move Drouin to the wing

Jacob De La Rose, who has only five goals in 89 career NHL games, is getting a chance to show what he can do with the Montreal Canadiens.

Amid mounting injuries, the Swedish centre skated on a top scoring line with Jonathan Drouin and Alex Galchenyuk in practice Tuesday.

De La Rose is expected to centre that unit Wednesday night when Montreal visits Boston. It will be Canadiens head coach Claude Julien’s first trip back to Beantown since being fired by Bruins last February.

Julien opted to tweak his lines following a 5-4 overtime home loss to the New York Islanders on Monday night.

Nicolas Deslauriers finished the game with Drouin and Galchenyuk and despite scoring a goal returned to the fourth line with Byron Froese and Daniel Carr.

De La Rose, 22, was excited to play with “two of the most talented players in the league.”

The six-foot-three centre has a goal and three assists in 25 games this season. The 2013 secondround draft pick has played parts of the last three campaigns in Montreal and while being solid defensively, he has struggled to put the puck in the net.

However, he showed promise when he ended last season in the American Hockey League with nine goals in 20 games.

Drouin, a winger who was Montreal’s key off-season acquisition, has struggled adjusting to centre since the start of the season. An inability to find a genuine first-line centre has plagued the Canadiens in recent seasons and, lacking a viable alternative, the job went to Drouin.

His six goals and 15 assists in 39 games are below his own and the team’s expectations. But injuries this week to Phillip Danault and Andrew Shaw left the Canadiens short down the middle.