The Montreal Canadiens seem to be in one of the worst situations they’ve been in, potentially ever. But is it really as bad as it seems?
Simply put, No it’s not as bad as it seems at least on the surface. The Montreal Canadiens still have a world-class goaltender in Carey Price, a superstar defenseman in Shea Weber, and a forward group that isn’t all that far behind league average.
The problem that the Canadiens had last season, apart from Price being hurt, is that the team itself lacked an offensive system. I’m not saying that Claude Julien is a bad coach, I’m saying that he needs to adapt to the team he has now.
When he was coaching in Boston, he had the likes of Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Brad Marchand and having Zdeno Chara on the back-end doesn’t hurt either. There isn’t a Selke winner centering your first line in Montreal, and you don’t have a player that scores at a .74 points-per-game rate playing behind that Selke winner in the lineup (570 points in 769 games played).
Julien just has to adapt his system as the Habs have the potential to score, but it needs to be by committee. What the Vegas Golden Knights did last year is a good example as they came at you from the start of the game right until the end and all four lines outworked the opposition. And that really is what the Montreal Canadiens have to do in order to score goals.
The saying ‘defense wins championships,’ is accurate to an extent. Getting a shutout in a game is incredible (Price has 40 in his career), but when was the last time a team won a game 0-0? Montreal last season had 264 goals against according to NHL.com which had them tied with the Vancouver Canucks at 27th in the league.
On the surface, that looks pretty bad, but Price only playing 49 games (many of which people believe he was hurt for), as well as Weber, who was also hurt for a large portion of the year, can have a negative impact on the number of goals a team allows.
Montreal struggled in the offensive end of the ice last season only scoring 209 goals. This stat is indicative of a few things. As mentioned above, Julien doesn’t deploy the most offensive system on the planet as well. Max Pacioretty had an abnormally low 17 goals on his 212 shots which may have been a casualty system.
Getting the other forwards on the team, in particular in the top-six, to contribute evenly can solve the problem moving forward. The Montreal Canadiens don’t have superstars like the recent Stanely Cup Champion Washington Capitals, and Pittsburgh Penguins do. To beat them, they have to out work and “gang up” on them to score. To quote Herb Brooks from the 1980 U.S Olympic team “You don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.”
In summary, no the Canadiens really aren’t as bad as they seem. While the team’s statistics it looks disheartening. Taking into consideration their world-class goalie wasn’t his regular self, the superstar defense man was hurt and the reliable goal scorer hit a slump, poor statistics are expected.
The Montreal Canadiens might not be a playoff team next year, but I’m willing to bet that they will be in contention for a spot right up until late in the season.