A Winning Habit
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Montreal Canadiens: 7 Talking Points From Past 7 Days

By Sebastian High

MONTREAL, QC - MARCH 04: Jeff Petry #26 of the Montreal Canadiens and teammate Joel Armia #40 collide during the overtime period against the Winnipeg Jets at the Bell Centre on March 4, 2021 in Montreal, Canada. The Winnipeg Jets defeated the Montreal Canadiens 4-3 in overtime. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
MONTREAL, QC - MARCH 04: Jeff Petry #26 of the Montreal Canadiens and teammate Joel Armia #40 collide during the overtime period against the Winnipeg Jets at the Bell Centre on March 4, 2021 in Montreal, Canada. The Winnipeg Jets defeated the Montreal Canadiens 4-3 in overtime. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /
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MONTREAL, QC – FEBRUARY 11: Brendan Gallagher #11 of the Montreal Canadiens (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
MONTREAL, QC – FEBRUARY 11: Brendan Gallagher #11 of the Montreal Canadiens (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /

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.

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