Montreal Canadiens: 3 Keys To Victory vs Winnipeg Jets

Get a few power plays

The Canadiens special teams have been much improved under the new coaching staff. It is a small sample size of just four games, but the Habs penalty kill has been much more efficient and their power play has been far more dangerous in that time.

The only problem is, they don’t seem to get many chances.

In their past four games, the Habs have had just eight power play opportunities. They have scored on four of those chances, giving them a 50% efficiency under Alex Burrows tutelage. Burrows was named an assistant coach when Kirk Muller was fired and he immediately took over the duties as the power play coach.

Though the early returns are encouraging, the Canadiens need to draw a few more chances per night.

This is not the easiest thing to do, especially when getting whacked in the mouth with a high stick doesn’t guarantee a power play.

Of course not every call will be caught, but the Habs have a lot of quick, skilled forwards that need to start driving to the net more often with the puck. A potential scoring chance always sets off the ref’s radar and has them zeroing in on whether a penalty will be taken. Canadiens forwards need to start getting into the traffic more with the puck and try to draw a penalty to give their team a chance to capitalize on the man advantage.

They are starting to click with the man advantage, and scored a big power play goal against the Jets on Thursday night. The only problem is, they didn’t draw another penalty the rest of the night. A good looking power play is only useful if they actually get three or four chances to work in a given game.

If the Canadiens get four power plays tonight, they’ll have plenty of time to create offence and give them a terrific chance of winning the game.