Montreal Canadiens: 7 Talking Points From Past 7 Days
1. 3-on-3 overtime
The Canadiens have been hopeless beyond regulation time this season. Their 6 OT/SO losses are the most in the league, which on the surface seems alright as it means the Habs have bagged 6 extra points. What’s not as great is that the Habs have only played in 6 games that have gone to overtime, losing four in 3v3 play and the two others in the shootout. In the Habs’ last five defeats, three came in OT and one was settled in the shootout.
Before Claude Julien’s firing, Nick Suzuki stated that this team needs to play to win rather than to play not to lose, which is exactly what the Canadiens have done at 3v3 this season. The proof, quite simply, lies within the players sent out in OT. Danault, Armia, Chiarot, Weber and Byron have all played big minutes in overtime, and with reason.
Danault wins faceoffs and defends, Byron skates like the wind, Weber has a cannon of a shot and can defend, Chiarot scored multiple OT goals last season and Armia has many tools. However, despite these qualities, none of these players should touch the ice at 3v3. Danault is the least threatening forward this team has, Byron is barely hanging on to a spot in the lineup, Armia bumps into his own teammate in OT (when he only has 2 teammates on the ice!) while Weber and Chiarot are too slow for 3v3 play.
Overtime is the situation in which highly-skilled, quick and mobile players thrive. It is not a time to send out checking forwards or big, lumbering defencemen. And the Canadiens’ doing so has cost them a few points so far this season. Quite a few fans were complaining on Thursday that Brendan Gallagher got no ice time in OT, which I disagree with. I think he should be fairly low on the list of forwards to send out at 3v3, his strengths don’t shine when there are so few players on the ice and his foot speed isn’t ideal either.
I am of the mind that the Canadiens should rotate 6 forwards and 2 defensemen in OT. Jonathan Drouin is tailor-made for 3v3 play, Josh Anderson’s speed is a great asset, Nick Suzuki and Jesperi Kotkaniemi are smart enough to find dangerous passing lanes and capitalize on late backchecks, while Tomas Tatar has a good shot and is fairly quick; lastly, Tyler Toffoli makes up for his slow footspeed by getting regular breakaways through reading the play at a high level. On the backend, only Jeff Petry and Alexander Romanov have the speed, mobility and shots necessary to pose a real threat in OT.
Playing not to lose has resulted in the Canadiens losing games in overtime, change is needed in that respect and these 8 players would pose actual threats to the opposition, unlike the Danaults and Byrons of this world.
2. Lineup changes
Josh Anderson has swiftly become an integral part of this team. His absence in the past week has shown how greatly the Canadiens rely on his unique combination of speed, strength and scoring touch. He will hopefully return to the lineup as soon as tonight, though we may need to wait until Monday to see him barrelling down the right-wing once again. When he does return, one player currently in the Habs’ forward corps will need to be extracted; who might that be?
Corey Perry seemed to be the de facto 13th forward to start the season, so he could be a candidate. However, the second powerplay unit has scored three goals in the past two games with him acting as the screen. Furthermore, he scored the tying goal against Winnipeg on Thursday, it would be difficult to justify taking him out of the formation at this point in time. He has also registered 8 points in 15 games, an identical tally to Joel Armia, so he’s producing at a higher level than expected.
Armia is another candidate. He has all the tools necessary to be a force in this league. He has a wicked wrister, great strength, phenomenal ability in puck battles and is solid defensively. And yet, he is mired with inconsistency. Some nights he plays like a top-tier power forward, but on most, he seems slow and disengaged. Given the fact that this team is still playing a dump-and-chase system for some reason, he will likely remain in the lineup as he is invaluable on the forecheck, but scratching him for a few games as a wake-up call should be considered.
While some might consider Artturi Lehkonen as the healthy scratch going forward, I am quite averse to that idea. He most definitely has his faults, finishing being the most obvious one, but his constant work-ethic, penalty-killing prowess and speed make him an ideal fourth liner in my books. Jake Evans should also stay in the lineup for similar reasons, but his faceoff ability should cement his spot. He is one of two centres on this team that does not have a faceoff percentage below 50% (he’s at exactly 50%). Given that there are only 4 natural centres on the team at the moment, they should all stay in the lineup.
That leaves us with Paul Byron, who is stuck in a real rut. Discounting his solid play in the bubble, Byron has really struggled since the concussion he received in a fight against Mackenzie Weegar in the spring of 2019. His speed has not been creating scoring chances and he has been the most invisible member of the fourth line this season. He would be my pick for being bumped out of the lineup when Josh Anderson returns, but who knows, maybe another injury will make Dominic Ducharme’s decision for him.
3. Jonathan Drouin
Another week, another talking point about the evolution of Jonathan Drouin (I swear I’m not a fanboy). I said last week that Drouin’s first period under Ducharme’s tenure as head coach was the best he’d played in the Bleu-Blanc-Rouge, and I stand by that, though his performances this week threatened to make that statement obsolete. Drouin and Kotkaniemi are most definitely the two players that impressed me the most over the past week of play, with Joel Edmundson claiming my personal third star.
Drouin truly seems to be free to use his skill set to its fullest since Ducharme took over and it is a joy to watch. He has been very good all season, significantly better than his 2 goals and 15 points in 22 games would suggest. But this past week, he has been the player Marc Bergevin believed he was getting in the Sergachev trade. He slows the game down, dances around the offensive zone with no defender getting near the puck and creates holes for his teammates to take advantage of; he’s dangerous.
He may have only recorded 2 assists in the 3 games this week, both of which came on Thursday, but the points – and goals – will come if he keeps playing the way he is. His confidence seems sky-high and his play in the defensive zone has remained solid. It has only been 4 games since Ducharme took charge and since Drouin seems to have unlocked his offensive flair, and it must be recognized how small of a sample this is.
However, his solid, if unspectacular play to start the season, demonstrates that his current play is based on a solid foundation that he can fall back on when he hits a rut. I’m optimistic that Jonathan Drouin will play a whole lot more like a first-line winger than a second-line winger from this point onward.
4. Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Phillip Danault
To put it simply, Jesperi Kotkaniemi has played himself into a top-6 role and Phillip Danault has played himself out of one; and yet, Danault remains on the second line and Kotkaniemi on the third. Danault has averaged 16:42 of ice-time a game, while Kotkaniemi has averaged 13:56. Danault is given offensive wingers in Gallagher and Tatar, while Kotkaniemi has had his offensive winger (Toffoli) taken away from him.
Despite having checking linemates for much of the season, Kotkaniemi has significantly outperformed Danault offensively. He has only notched two more goals than Danault while matching his assist total of 8 but has done so in far fewer minutes.
Kotkaniemi has put up 1.958 points/60, while Danault has produced just 1.307. To contextualize this, Kotkaniemi sits 157th among NHL forwards while Danault sits at 249th. KK’s numbers make him an average 5th forward, while Danault’s make him an 8th in terms of per 60 offensive output (QuantHockey).
When Kotkaniemi has been given an offensively-minded linemate, he has flourished. Kotkaniemi and Toffoli had good chemistry. When together on the ice at 5v5, the Habs scored 9 goals while conceding 2 and controlled 61.44% of the expected goals. With Toffoli on the ice without the Finnish centreman, the Habs have scored 6 goals and conceded 7, while controlling 53.97% of the expected goals, while the team has scored 5 and allowed 7 while controlling 52.84% of the expected goals with Kotkaniemi but not Toffoli on the ice.
This is a rather unorganized cluster of numbers, but they basically convey that the pair together was phenomenal and that, apart, they have been good but not great. It must be acknowledged that their split and the beginning of the Canadiens’ woes were more or less simultaneous, which can certainly skew the statistics, but perhaps their split contributed to the woes themselves.
Kotkaniemi would certainly have growing pains if given a top-6 role, and having the two top centremen on a team be below 46% in the faceoff dot is far from ideal But Kotkaniemi can produce when given talented linemates and Danault has been unable to do so for quite a while. Give Kotkaniemi those linemates and make a strong checking line centred by Danault to suffocate the opposition.
If ice-time were directly correlated with merit, this swap would have occurred long ago; the time has come to give it a test-run. If it doesn’t work, so be it. But the Habs have two wins in their past 10 games and Danault, who believes he is a top centreman, has recorded just 3 assists in that span. The Canadiens have everything to lose if they keep trying the same losing formula over and over again.
Oh, and Kotkaniemi has been running the second powerplay unit with great success these past two games, taking command of the flow of play. He’s in good form, the Habs should be smart enough to ride the hot hand… which is not Danault.
5. Joel Edmundson
Big Joel Edmundson, not to be confused with Big Josh Anderson, has quietly been the Canadiens’ best defenceman this past week. He seems to have benefitted from the coaching change nearly as much as Jonathan Drouin, which has caught me by surprise. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was unenthused by his acquisition and signing in the offseason, I thought he wouldn’t bring anything to the equation that this team didn’t already have and that his arrival would only further the lack of mobility on the team’s backend, as I stated in my offseason grades.
While the last part of that remains true, this team is desperate for more mobility on defence, Joel Edmundson has proven to be a valuable part of the team. In my mind, he should be the third defenceman protected in the expansion draft rather than Ben Chiarot. In the past week, Jeff Petry has struggled a fair amount defensively, routinely turning the puck over and making poor decisions. Edmundson was always there to steady the ship and the Habs would have lost at least one of the OT games in regulation were it not for his defensive efforts.
He has been effective in denying zone entries, he has been physical and his gap control has improved. Most noticeably, however, his breakout passes have been significantly better; crisp rather than the indecisive and inaccurate ones he routinely displayed previously. I felt more comfortable defensively with Edmundson on the ice this week than I did when Shea Weber was.
I came across a comment on Reddit that I can’t seem to find again that really encapsulated Edmundson’s play. It was something along the lines of “Edmundson is to Petry what the media believes Chiarot is to Weber”. Edmundson has allowed Petry to truly breakout offensively; he has been extremely reliable on the backend… unlike Chiarot.
While Edmundson is not primed for the spotlight, he has been as invaluable to the Canadiens this season as Jake Allen, Tyler Toffoli and Josh Anderson have been. I would not want to see how the Habs would play without these four at the moment, it would most certainly be worse than last season; and by a good margin.
6. Growing pains
The coaching change has been accompanied by a change in tactics, and it is reasonable that such a change comes with growing pains. These pains are exemplified in the higher rate of defensive and neutral zone turnovers the Habs have made in the past few games when trying to initiate their transitions.
Guy Boucher made my analysis for me during the first intermission of the Thursday game against Winnipeg and explained it more eloquently than I could. The gist of his analysis is that the Canadiens’ forwards have played more deeply in transition to support the defencemen rather than to transition at max speed as they were accustomed to under Julien. This has enabled defences to construct a perfect trap to clog the neutral zone, as they are given the time to block off all passing lanes, which in turn leads to many more turnovers.
This is indicative of this new system being very new to the players. With time their efficiency with the new transition model will improve, but there will be many errors along the way. While these growing pains are simply for a single facet of the game, the change in systems will cause growing pains in others as well. This team will not be playing to its full capacity for quite some time, but it should be noted that Julien lost the locker room and that the team was playing far beneath its potential at the time of his dismissal.
There will be ups and downs while the Habs’ learn the new system and grow accustomed to Ducharme’s vision. That is the price of changing coaches midseason. But, the change had to be made and maybe, just maybe, the Habs will be firing at full capacity come playoff time, so they just need to make the postseason at this stage, which they seem primed to do.
7. Tomas Tatar
The “throw-in” and “cap-dump” of the Pacioretty trade has been great for the Canadiens since his arrival, having produced more points than any other Canadien since the trade. Last season, he put up a career-high 61 points – including 22 goals – in just 68 games. This season is a different story entirely; he has potted just 5 goals and 12 points in 21 games.
While he was on pace to produce 26 goals and 73 points over a full 82-game season last year, his pace this season is of just 19 goals and 46 points, which would be his worst output since the season he split between Detroit and Vegas, though he did manage 20 goals that year. Tatar has simply been uninvolved in play so far this year; he has held his stick a little bit too tightly in this contract year, at least since the third game of the season, as he scored 3 goals in the first 2 contests.
Tatar turned 30 in December and is likely looking at the final possibility of a big payday this offseason. He will likely get a raise from the $5.3 he is currently making; he is just a year removed from his best-ever season, after all. He also has a very good shot and has been a component of one of the league’s best 5v5 lines over the past 3 years. The issue is, he and Danault can’t both be signed.
This is certainly a less significant problem than it was two months ago before their levels of production took nosedive. They will get less money than they otherwise would have and the probability of their respective stays in Montreal being prolonged is decreasing. It is possible that Marc Bergevin gets one or both of them on bargain deals following a down year, but the likelihood of that occurring is rather low.
While fans are rightfully complaining about Danault’s lack of offensive output, and frankly his lack of effort, this season, he would be the ideal 3rd-line centre moving forward. His 22 games of poor play do not erase the fact that his two previous seasons were Selke-nominee-calibre. It should also not be forgotten that his status as a Quebecois will put pressure on management to retain his services.
All of this is to say that Tatar, who has struggled just as much as his linemate to start the season is not only playing himself out of his ideal payday but out of the team’s future as well. Cole Caufield could join the team in April, which may warm Bergevin up to the idea of trading Tatar for assets at the deadline rather than losing him for nothing.
I’m just spitballing, of course, but the Tatar we have seen this season is replaceable and won’t be the deciding factor between making and missing the playoffs. I sure hope he steps his play up, but he might not, and if he doesn’t his days as a Hab are over, whether he leaves via trade or free agency.
All statistics sourced from NaturalStatTrick unless indicated otherwise.