Have the Canadiens Played This Season In Neutral?

The Montreal Canadiens are a Jekyll and Hyde team on their best day. One minute, they can open up the flood gates and score goals in bunches, the next, they clamp down defensively and turn the offense off completely.

The variance in strategy is a problem that has caused confusion among some of the younger players on the Habs’ roster. In turn, it creates an inability to find any sort of chemistry with the team’s veterans, who are expecting a certain type of play execution and get something completely different.

Mar 21, 2015; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Montreal Canadiens center Alex Galchenyuk (27) before the game against San Jose Sharks at Bell Centre. Mandatory Credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports

In recent games, we’ve seen Canadiens’ budding superstar Alex Galchenyuk show flashes of the offensive talent that had him ranked second among forwards in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft. However, it’s painstakingly obvious in looking at him that head coach Michel Therrien doesn’t want Galchenyuk to skate into the mid-ice lane. As witnessed in the loss to the New Jersey Devils on Good Friday, Galchenyuk had a clear path to drive to the net through the slot, but instead passed the puck cross-crease to an unprepared David Desharnais.

If you watched Galchenyuk play junior hockey with the Sarnia Sting of the Ontario Hockey League, you’d know he would almost certainly cut into the slot and give himself a better shooting angle. Even with a winger as talented as his former Sting linemate Nail Yakupov, Galchenyuk knew the better option was to drive the puck to the net.

Feb 26, 2015; Columbus, OH, USA; Montreal Canadiens defenseman Nathan Beaulieu (28) against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena. The Canadiens 5-2. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

The same can be said for rookie defenseman Nathan Beaulieu, who’s offensive game has gone to the wayside since his return to the Canadiens earlier this season.

When we initially saw Beaulieu in the NHL last season, we were all impressed with his ability to skate with the puck, his puck distribution skills and his shot quality from the blue line. He also had innate ability to pinch into the offensive zone, while having the speed to recover should he make a mistake along the half-wall.

This season, we’ve seen little offensive flair from Beaulieu. He rarely skates the puck up the ice, unless his team is either on the power play or in the midst of a line change. Instead, like veterans Sergei Gonchar and Tom Gilbert, he waits for his forwards to extend into the neutral zone and distributes the puck accordingly. Sure, he needed to augment his defensive game, but there is a certain point in every player’s season where the coaching staff has to allow individuals to show their ability to play both sides of the puck, in order to further progress with a player’s development.

These are just a couple of examples this season, but it begs the question,  “Have the Canadiens gone through the season in neutral, depending heavily on the goaltending of M.V.P. candidate Carey Price to get them to the promised land?”

Looking back at the lock-out shortened season until this point of the current season, you can almost certainly answer yes. Coming out of the work stoppage, the Canadiens were among the best offensive teams in the NHL,  with 149 goals for in just 48 games, good for 3rd best in the league. This season, the Habs sit 23rd in goals for with 209, just 2 ahead of the Boston Bruins who currently sit in the second wild card position in the Eastern Conference.*

Sure, most of the analytics crowd will turn to the Corsi numbers of the Canadiens’ top six and say that is far from the truth, but those numbers don’t reflect the truth about many players.

Mar 24, 2015; Nashville, TN, USA; Montreal Canadiens right winger P.A. Parenteau (15) skates with the puck as Nashville Predators center Craig Smith (15) defends during the first period at Bridgestone Arena. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

The advanced stat for what I am suggesting isn’t available, but if you were to take an individual Corsi stat between position players (like a 1st line center versus his counterpart), players like David Desharnais and Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau would show numbers closer to minus-infinity than they currently reflect.

So long as Michel Therrien remains head coach of the NHL’s most storied franchise, the Canadiens will continue with their defense first mentality. After all, both assistant coaches Daniel Lacroix and Jean-Jacques Daigneault were both defensive minded players. Add the fact that Therrien himself is a former defenseman, and it’s obvious there a lack of offensive knowledge on the Canadiens’ coaching staff, which reflects not only in the lack of offensive liberty players are given, but also to the ineptness of the Habs’ power play.

Is it time the Canadiens’ coaching staff went back to school? Not necessarily. If you can break down your opposition’s offensive strategy and find a game plan to slow it down, then you have enough ability to change your own offensive strategy to compliment the talent on your roster.

With just 3 games remaining in the regular season, however, the likelihood of that not happening is almost as certain the sun coming up in the morning.

* – at the time this piece was posted.