The Montreal Canadiens made an excellent trade when they acquired Brett Kulak from the Calgary Flames. They scratched him for two games, but should have him on the team’s top defence pairing.
The Montreal Canadiens have taken advantage of poor asset management by the Calgary Flames a couple of times in the past four years. First, they picked Paul Byron up on waivers and then helped him develop into an excellent defensive forward who is capable of killing penalties and scoring 20 goals from the bottom six of the lineup.
That was great, but acquiring Brett Kulak might have been even better. The Canadiens did not pick Kulak up from the Flames on waivers because they weren’t willing to add another contract to their organization. Instead they waited for him to pass through waivers and then somehow talked the Flames into taking two contracts off their hands when they shipped RInat Valiev and Matt Taormina to Calgary for Kulak.
Neither Valiev or Taormina had an NHL future at the time of the trade. The Flames obviously thought Kulak didn’t either, although he played 71 games with them in the 2017-18 season. With a few youngsters likes Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington and Juuso Valimaki looking good in camp, the Flames decided they didn’t need Kulak around any longer.
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So, they made a trade with the Canadiens just before the puck dropped on the 2018-19 campaign. Kulak began the year with the Laval Rocket, but quickly earned a promotion to the big club. Once there, he dipped his toes in on the third pairing but found a home next to Jeff Petry on the second pairing, and they proved to be an exceptional duo.
Kulak played split most of his minutes with the Habs on the third pairing with Jordie Benn or the second pairing with Petry. He was on the ice with Benn for 339 minutes and Petry for 318. He also played 164 minutes with Shea Weber. He played a few games with Mike Reilly, David Schlemko and Christian Folin as well.
Though his defence partner may not have been consistent, his results were. Corsi-For percentage (CF%) measures the rate at which your team attempts shots on goal compared to the opponent attempting a shot at your goal. It can be misleading or misconstrued, especially with small sample sizes, but when a player demonstrates dominant Corsi no matter who he is on the ice with, it tells you there is a definite trend emerging.
The trend that emerged every time Kulak stepped on the ice was the Montreal Canadiens fired way more shots at the opposing goaltender than the other team directed toward Carey Price and Antti Niemi. Obviously if you take more shots, it should lead to more shots on goal which leads to more goals which leads to wins. That’s the conventional wisdom with these statistics at least.
It stands to reason though, that a better Corsi in the long run will lead to success. If that is the case, Kulak has made quite the case for himself to be featured in the Canadiens lineup. No matter who he played with last season, they had great statistics.
Kulak played the most with Benn and they had a CF% of 54.95. They also had a shots on goal percentage (SF%) of 54.57% and a goals scored percentage (GF%) of 59.38%. That’s exceptional, but it is also from a third pairing so Kulak-Benn were not facing top opposition every night. Some teams might have tried to take advantage of the third pairing when they had last change against Montreal, but it clearly didn’t work out for them.
Kulak’s numbers were pretty similar when he played in the top four. Lots of players around the league can have decent statistics when they are sheltered on the third pairing, but get dominated when they move up the lineup. This was definitely not the case for Kulak.
When he played his 318 minutes with Petry, they were even better that the Kulak-Benn combination. Their CF% was an astounding 57.2%, their SF% was 58.28% and their GF% was 51.61%. You could say they were extremely unlucky to only have a goals scored percentage of 51.61% but I will take this time to remind you Antti Niemi was their goaltender for several games.
Even when Kulak played with Weber they produced great results. Weber doesn’t have the most flattering stats when you start to dig a little deeper and that can be attributed to the fact he plays against the best competition on the other team and is tasked with shutting them down.
They played 164 minutes together and had a CF% of 58.82. With everyone else, Weber had a combined CF% of 52.36%. Kulak and Weber had a SF% of 58.05% and when he played with anyone else, Weber’s was just 50.98%. The Kulak-Weber partnership had an incredible GF% of 69.23% and Weber was at 57.89% with everyone else.
So, Kulak was great on a third pairing with Jordie Benn, exceptional with Jeff Petry on the second pairing and brought out the best on the top pairing with Shea Weber. He was rewarded heading into this season by having his job in the top four taken away by Ben Chiarot, and then made a healthy scratch in game’s three and four of the season.
When put back in the lineup for the team’s fifth game of the year against the St. Louis Blues he was incredible again. You couldn’t put a defenseman in a tougher spot to succeed, having sat out for a week and then tasked with a top four role against the defending Stanley Cup champions.
Kulak was playing with Petry once again and they were even better than last season. They played 13 minutes together at five on five and had a CF% of 81.25%. When they were on the ice, usually against the Brayden Schenn, Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz line, the Canadiens had six shots on goal and the Blues had two. The Habs scored two goals in that time and the Blues scored zero.
You can’t ask for anything more than that from a defenseman. For Kulak to step back into the lineup and not just shut down but absolutely dominate the top top line of the team that won a Stanley Cup six months ago is amazing.
He is so undervalued around the league it is hard to explain how good his results are without sounding like a complete idiot. That’s why I offered little opinion as of yet and just provided plenty of facts and statistics. If I just sent out a tweet saying Kulak is a dominant top four defenseman and should be on the Habs top pairing, everyone would think I was a lunatic.
Now for the opinion part. Based on all of the above stats listed, I think it is time for Kulak to start playing the most minutes of any left defenseman on the Habs roster. I’m not necessarily saying he should play with Weber, though. He could, or he could stay with Petry who he has more experience playing with, but whoever Kulak plays with, that should be the Habs top defence pairing.
He may not skate as fast as Victor Mete or hit as hard as Ben Chiarot. Heck, he doesn’t even skate as well as Mike Reilly. But what he does do, no matter who he is on the ice with is get the job done. He stays out of the spotlight by limiting mistakes, he plays smart, positional, efficient defensive hockey and moves the puck quickly out of his own zone.
When Kulak was on the ice last season, 56.14% of the shot attempts were made by the Habs, 57.36% of the shots on goal were in the Habs favour and the Canadiens scored 57.3% of the goals. Give me that 23 minutes per night, whether Petry or Weber are on the right side. Enough with the healthy scratches, enough with Chiarot playing more than him, not even Mete deserves to play more.
Brett Kulak is the Montreal Canadiens best left defenseman. It is time he is given a real opportunity to play on the Habs top pairing.
All statistics used in this article came from Natural Stat Trick.