Montreal Canadiens: Cole Caufield Continues Scoring Streak

Montreal Canadiens prospect Cole Caufield had a solid tournament at the World Juniors, playing a two-way role in the USA’s top six en route to winning a gold medal.

He has carried over that success back to his NCAA season with the Wisconsin Badgers.

Caufield was the 15th overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft and is playing in his second season of college hockey. His freshman campaign was a resounding success as he scored 19 goals and 36 points in 36 games and was named the Big Ten Conference Rookie of the Year and was named to the conference All-Star Team.

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This season got off to a great start as well as the 20 year old right winger scored 12 points in his first ten games. He was then off to Edmonton to represent his country at the World Juniors. He scored five points in seven games there and helped his country shutout Canada in the final game to earn a gold medal.

Since returning to Wisconsin to rejoin his college teammates, Caufield has been exceptional. His first game back was against previously unbeaten Minnesota and Caufield managed an assist in an upset victory. He would then score the next day and fire seven shots on goal, but Wisconsin dropped a 5-3 game to Minnesota, the nation’s top team.

The next weekend, Wisconsin faced Arizona State and Caufield would score a goal and add two assists in a pair of victories. Last night, Caufield would set up the team’s first goal of the game against Penn State on a nice cross-ice feed to Ty Pelton-Byce on the power play. Pelton-Byce made no mistake firing it past the goaltender to open the scoring.

In the third period, with the game still in doubt, Caufield got some open ice on the power play. He stepped up in the middle of the slot and fired a wrist shot that the goaltender didn’t have a chance on and put the game out of reach.

When Caufield gets that much space at the top of the slot, there aren’t many goaltenders who stand a chance of getting in the way. They can hope he fires it wide, but his wrist shot is so hard and so accurate that it usually finds the back of the net.

That was Caufield’s fifth game back from the World Juniors and he now has three goals and four assists for seven points in those five contests. His team is 4-1-0 in those games and are starting to look like the second best team in their conference. This would put them in a great spot for the Big Ten playoffs as they would face the 7th seed in round one, but there is a lot of hockey to play yet before we can start counting the days until the postseason.

What we can start counting is the number of consecutive games that Caufield has reached the score sheet. He had points in consecutive games against Ohio State before heading to the World Juniors. Add that to the five straight games with points since he returned and he is up to seven games in a row with points.

In that time, Caufield has five goals and six assists for 11 points. He now has nine goals, ten assists and 19 points in 15 games on the season. He is now third in the country in points, behind two seniors who play for Bowling Green and Quinnipiac so they face much lighter competition than Caufield does in the Big Ten Conference.

Caufield erased a lot of doubts when he showed last season that he was more than capable of putting up points at the college level. He has taken his game to yet another level this season and has his team poised for success with the postseason on the horizon.