The Montreal Canadiens started the year with a bad power play and an awful penalty kill. Both special teams units have quickly become a strength for the team.
The Montreal Canadiens have been one of the best teams in the league at putting pucks in the net at even strength this season. Entering last night’s slate of games, the Habs had 75 goals for at five-on-five which ranked eighth in the league, just a goal behind the Washington Capitals and two goals behind the Toronto Maple Leafs who played one more game.
Goals against at even strength hasn’t been a huge problem, but doesn’t put them as close to the top of the heap as their scoring. They have allowed 68 goals at five-on-five which puts them 17th among the 31 teams in the NHL. So, they are average at keeping pucks out, and above average, if not great at scoring goals at even strength.
The struggles for this team to start the year came when one team had more players on the ice than the other. It didn’t really matter who was in the penalty box, a Montreal Canadiens player or an opponent, it seemed the Habs were at a disadvantage.
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In the month of October, the Habs had a good looking power play, which scored ten goals on 43 opportunities for a conversion percentage of 23.3. However, in November, the power play went dormant, scoring just five goals on 36 chances for a percentage of 13.9.
Their penalty kill was their biggest problem early in the season. They allowed ten power play goals on 40 opportunities in November for a 75% kill rate. It was a little worse in October where they allowed 11 goals on 39 penalties, killing off just 71.8% of their penalties.
If you are a decent team at even strength, okay on the power play but awful on the penalty kill, you aren’t going to win a ton of games. Even strength play is more important than good special teams, but a bad penalty killing unit can destroy a team. That’s what happened to the Habs during their eight game losing streak.
However, some signs of life in November and a strong December so far, shows that the Habs have been among the best special teams units in the league for the past month.
Overall, the Canadiens penalty kill still sits at 75.9% on the season which ranks just 27th. It takes a while to improve that percentage after a slow start. It’s like when you are in high school and completely bomb the first two tests and don’t hand in the first project. Then you start trying and get a 90% on the next test but your overall mark only goes up like 3%.
It’s frustrating, and it holds down the overall grade, but that’s the way percentages work. If you dig a little deeper into the Habs power play and penalty kill percentages, you can see they finally got their act together, but it doesn’t necessarily show in the overall mark quite yet.
In fact, we can pinpoint the exact date the Habs figured out their special teams and started to improve things. On November 7th against the Philadelphia Flyers, the Canadiens took six penalties in the game and had zero power plays. They killed off all six penalties they took and have been a good special teams squad since.
In the 19 games since then, including the Flyers game, the Canadiens have scored ten power play goals on 42 opportunities. That’s a conversion rate of 23.8%. This has brought their overall conversion rate up to 21.7% which actually places them just inside the top ten in the league.
Over that same time span, the Habs have killed off 48 of 59 penalties. That is 81.4% of their penalties which is a huge improvement from earlier in the year when they dropped to 30th in the league for a short stint. It’s almost like all the practice they got against the Flyers allowed them to clean up their mistakes and figure things out while shorthanded.
Now they just have to figure out how to draw more penalties. Montreal had 36 power plays in November which was the third least in the league. So far in December they’ve had just 13 man advantage opportunities, which is the second least of the 31 teams.
They have converted five of those 13 chances in December which is 38.5% of their power plays, ranking the Habs first in the league so far this month. For it to really matter, they need to start drawing more penalties. They have been short-handed 25 times this month, almost twice as often as they’ve been on the power play.
These are encouraging signs. You can’t squeeze into a playoff spot in a tight division race if you have the worst penalty kill in the league. The Habs don’t anymore, and continue to get better every month. That will make a huge difference in their playoff chase.