The Montreal Canadiens Canadiens’ postseason came to an end following their series against the Philadelphia Flyers and each performance was worthy of a reflective grade
The ten games of Montreal Canadiens playoff hockey were truly an oasis for myself (and for many other Canadiens fans as well, I would assume) during the wretched year that is 2020. But alas, it came to an, if you were to ask me, untimely end on August 21st. The series should have gone to Game 7 and Montreal was perhaps even the better team, which may make this loss all the more bitter, but certainly makes the future of this franchise shine brighter.
While the postseason consisted of just 10 games for the Habs, those games will certainly impact how this team will move forward. One of Max Domi and Phillip Danault may perhaps be deemed a surplus to requirements following the strong playoff performances of Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Nick Suzuki. The desperate need to bolster the left side of defence has seemingly dissipated, with Brett Kulak taking a big step forward and with Alexander Romanov poised to crack the lineup next season.
All in all, I think the Canadiens got tremendous value from this playoff appearance with the young players gaining key experience, the coaching staff seeing which players thrived when placed together in important games (Drouin-Suzuki-Armia) and with the management, getting added insights on the organization’s players, especially in terms of which players may be expendable.
I also did a report card for each player for their performances in the regular season and against Pittsburgh in the Play-In round. But now, without further ado, let us dive into the in-depth postseason report cards for the Montreal Canadiens, the third and final report card of the 2019-20 season.
Note: When it comes to slightly more advanced player analytics, I generally stick to GF% (percentage of total goals scored when a given player is on the ice belong to said player’s own team), xGF% (same as the previous stat, except that it is based on the expected goals to be scored rather than the actual goals scored), CF% (percentage of total shot attempts when a given player is on the ice belong to the player’s own team) and I sometimes use HDCF% (percentage of high danger scoring chances belong to the players own team).
I do this for three main reasons: I think these four stats cover the most important bases, I don’t see the need in introducing new metrics every other paragraph and, most importantly, to make sure that it is clear that I am not cherry-picking statistics to make any player look particularly good or bad.
Conclusion
This was a fun little playoff run and it has given me some hope for next season. With the new young centre core and the plethora of prospects coming up (Caufield and Norlinder are looking like studs) the future is bright as well. It will be interesting to see how Bergevin approaches this offseason. Will he offload veterans for picks and prospects? Will he offload picks and prospects for veterans? Or will it be something in between? I’m very curious.
I hope you stay tuned over the next week, as I’ll publish my list of prospects that the Habs will consider at 16th overall, since my article about the 9th overall pick is redundant for us Habs fans now, though I hope Minnesota fans make good use of it instead.
Now I’m going to pour myself a hot cup of tea and watch some hockey to recover a bit from this very long day of writing.
With that being said, I sincerely hope you enjoyed this in-depth Report Card for each and every Hab to appear in a playoff game!
All statistics are sourced from NaturalStatTrick.com.