A Winning Habit
Fansided

Reasons for Optimism Abundant for Habs Despite Playoff Exit

By Sebastian High

MONTREAL, QC - NOVEMBER 01: Jesperi Kotkaniemi #15 of the Montreal Canadiens celebrates a victory with goaltender Carey Price #31 against the Washington Capitals during the NHL game at the Bell Centre on November 1, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Washington Capitals 6-4. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
MONTREAL, QC - NOVEMBER 01: Jesperi Kotkaniemi #15 of the Montreal Canadiens celebrates a victory with goaltender Carey Price #31 against the Washington Capitals during the NHL game at the Bell Centre on November 1, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Washington Capitals 6-4. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /
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TORONTO, ONTARIO – AUGUST 16: Montreal Canadiens (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
TORONTO, ONTARIO – AUGUST 16: Montreal Canadiens (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /

The Montreal Canadiens were not a good defensive team in the 2019-20 regular season. Only 8 teams conceded more than Montreal’s 221 goals (an average of 3.11 goals conceded per game). While Montreal got overall poor goaltending from its backup goaltenders (despite Cayden Primeau‘s two excellent outings) and got mediocre play from Carey Price, the defending was the real issue all year long.

Shea Weber is a good defenseman, but his efforts did not make the Habs good defensively. Ben Chiarot is physical, alright defensively and pretty good offensively. Jeff Petry is good in just about all areas of the game. The individual pieces for a dominant trident, as Kevin Bieksa has now patented it, were there; but it just didn’t work. At least not until Brett Kulak elevated his play to make the trident a full-fledged pitchfork.

Analytically, Brett Kulak has been very good defensively for the past two seasons, but the eye test revealed that his play in his first and second seasons as a Hab differed tremendously. In 2018-19 he looked at home next to Jeff Petry, playing a really steady defensive style while chipping in quite a bit offensively, with 6 goals and 11 assists in 57 games. This season, when placed on the third pairing, Kulak really struggled to play the steady veteran role next to Cale Fleury and was a healthy scratch for a total of 15 games.

Still, when placed with Petry, he played decently; but Jeff Petry can make a very mediocre player look decent. Kulak was low on confidence and was a black hole in terms of offensive impact. The redemption arc that we saw from the Calgary native was, potentially, the biggest surprise of the Habs’ 2020 postseason. Kulak solidified himself as an offensively-threatening, defensively-stable top-4 defenseman.

While Carey Price, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Nick Suzuki all exceeded expectations, their raw talent has always been apparent, and their performances, impressive as they were, are understandable in retrospect. The same cannot be said about Kulak, he hit a new gear since the restart and reminded me quite a bit of Jonas Brodin, a player the Montreal Canadiens has been linked with in the past and who many fans wished had been acquired by Marc Bergevin in the past year to shore up the left side of the defense. Well, it seems like Brett Kulak is the player to settle down the defence here in La Belle Province, not Brodin.

As I covered during the Pittsburgh series, Brett Kulak has been key to the Habs’ shutting down of the opposition’s offensive weapons. However, the rest of the top-4 stepped up their play, as well, forming two very reliable top pairings for the Montreal Canadiens.

The bottom pairing wasn’t tested nearly as much, but they got the job done in these playoffs, mainly thanks to Victor Mete, who played quietly played very well defensively, being on the ice for just one goal against in the 10 postseason games the Habs played and sporting a Corsi For% (percentage of own team’s shots on target when on the ice compared to all shots on target when on the ice) of 56. His partner, Xavier Ouellet was on the ice for 3 goals against (note that one of those 3 came on the penalty kill) and had a CF% of 46.6.

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