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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Montreal Canadiens, Nick Suzuki
MONTREAL, QC – FEBRUARY 08: Montreal Canadiens (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /

But it’s not just the defensemen that play a key role in defending, centremen are almost equally crucial to impeding high-danger scoring chances. During the regular season, Phillip Danault was the only top-9 centreman who excelled defensively. Nick Suzuki got better and better as the season went on, but was far from dominant in his own end. In these playoffs, however, the Montreal Canadiens had three top-9 centremen who played brilliantly defensively, with the aforementioned Suzuki as well as Jesperi Kotkaniemi taking huge steps forward in their play in their own end and with Danault continuing to play his patented steady defensive style.

It is quite interesting to analyze and compare Nick Suzuki’s and Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s postseason advanced statistics because on the surface, Kotkaniemi’s metrics jump off the page for being superb while Suzuki’s only very good. Of course, this is due to the difference in the quality of opposition the two-faced. Suzuki faced the top lines for most of the 10 games, while Kotkaniemi only did so for three or four, and Suzuki averaged 19:11 minutes of ice time per game, while Kotkaniemi was at 13:53 minutes.

That being said, Kotkaniemi’s performance was nevertheless superb. According to Natural Stat Trick’s database, he absolutely dominated possession at even strength, racking up 70.82% expected goals for, 83.3% actual goals for and a 62.19 CF%. Considering Suzuki played most of his even-strength minutes facing at least one of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Sean Couturier and Claude Giroux, his numbers also look excellent. He tallied 53.66 xGF%, 66.67 GF% and 51.47 CF% at even strength. He outplayed his opposition, and that opposition consisted of some truly excellent players.

These two centremen of just 20 and 21-years-old respectively created more offence than they allowed the opposition to create when they were on the ice, no small feat for the roles they played, who they played against and the stage on which they did so. Furthermore, Suzuki played 19:55 on the penalty kill, cementing himself as the centreman on the second PK unit, with Danault on the first; and only two goals were scored in those nearly 20 minutes of penalty killing. Kotkaniemi also helped out his defensemen by throwing hits far more frequently, with 36 hits in nine and a half games.

One area in which both young centremen struggled, however, is on the faceoff dot. Kotkaniemi won just 33.78% of his faceoffs, while Suzuki won 40.22%. They did, for the most part, take these faceoffs against players who are quite strong at faceoffs, but it is nonetheless an area that will need to see improvement.

However, these two centremen played excellently defensively, keeping the puck on the perimeter when defending and limiting the Penguins and Flyers to rather few high-danger scoring opportunities, proving that they both have the potential to become lethal two-way centremen in the not-so-distant future. Now that their stellar defensive play has been covered let us move on to their offensive production.

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