Montreal Canadiens: A surprising pace to start the season

The Montreal Canadiens are performing a lot better than many predicted over the offseason, and there’s no telling where it gets them.

Throw this conversation in the, “It’s early,” filing cabinet, but the Montreal Canadiens aren’t as bad as the media predicted so far. Think about it. The belief ahead of the season was this team was going to be scrapping against the bottom of the barrel for the majority of the year. Sure they’re only four games in, but the narrative around the Habs seems to be more on the positive end.

Kudos goes to the players on the team. They took the Toronto Maple Leafs by surprise in how hard and fast they played, especially down low with the puck. That continued in both games against the Pittsburgh Penguins whereas Thursday night’s 3-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings saw them move away from it.

What’s remained consistent are their possession stats. Pittsburgh took over the third period 5v5, but it was all Habs before that. Even their Kings defeat had Montreal controlling the pace. However, the Canadiens have been leaving the bulk of their scoring chances father away from the net. Heat maps from Natural Stat Trick show a lot of Montreal’s shots coming from the mid-range of the ice, and mostly from the left point. They managed to get deeper chances against Los Angeles, but not as close to the net as their previous two games.

Another difference is who they needed to score on. Jonathan Quick is established as a top goaltender in the NHL. Casey DeSmith isn’t a young rookie in the league but has limited experience playing games in the show. In fact, that Saturday night match was the16th of the career. The Habs gave him a decent workload forcing him to make 37 saves after allowing three at the hands of Tomas Tatar and Brendan Gallagher, but DeSmith couldn’t get it done in the shootout.

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This isn’t to neglect what the Montreal Canadiens have done so far. Some things need to be worked on – one of which is the power play where the team has scored twice on 17 opportunities – but for now, it’s a positive vibe at Bell Centre.

It’s a new week, and points are up for grabs. The Detroit Red Wings and St. Louis Blues are coming to town first followed by a trip to Ottawa for a game against the Senators. In most situations, it’s easy to look at the Detroit and Ottawa matches and dub those as easy wins. The Montreal Canadiens aren’t in the position to consider any game having that description and need to bring their fierce compete and execution to the playing field.

Carey Price seems to be ready to go after missing Saturday’s game with the flu. His story will be a neverending one to follow as the bulk of the team’s success fall on him. But it does seem like the summer adjustments to his playing style have paid off so far.

NHL experts love to say teams are as good as their start. The Montreal Canadiens had a very poor one last season after winning their first game in the shootout against Buffalo, and we all know how it ended.

A stretch of playing well and getting points will be a good way for the Habs to stay in the hunt all year. It’s not farfetched to say what the hunt is considering Marc Bergevin made it clear what the focus for the 2018/19 campaign.