Canadiens: Three Habs Who Need To Produce More To Beat Vegas

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Montreal Canadiens skaters have played extremely well in taking out the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets this postseason. There have been contributions from up and down the lineup with players stepping up to fill a role when needed.

They have also been able to rely on the terrific Carey Price in goal when the Maple Leafs or Jets mounted sustained pressure.

Okay, just the Maple Leafs, did the Jets even get a scoring chance in the two games at the Bell Centre?

The Canadiens will now face their toughest test yet as they take on the Vegas Golden Knights. So will fans of the Habs as Games 1 and 2 don’t even start until well after 9:00 PM EST. Doesn’t Gary Bettman know that Habs fans do have to work on Tuesday morning?

The Habs head into the final four on a seven game winning streak, but the Golden Knights just beat the Colorado Avalanche four times in a row and will be a formidable opponent. Facing such a great team means the Canadiens will need to play their “A” game every night if they are going to have a chance of advancing to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1993.

Marc-Andre Fleury has been excellent this postseason and the top three defencemen, Alex Pietrangelo, Shea Theodore and Alec Martinez have been making things easier for Fleury by limiting quality chances against.

The Golden Knights simply aren’t going to allow a pile of chances. Goals are going to be really hard to come by for the Canadiens in this series. That’s why the team is going to need these three players to produce more offence against the Golden Knights than they did against the Maple Leafs and Jets.

Brendan Gallagher

Brendan Gallagher has been the Canadiens best goal scorer for years. Well, that is until Tyler Toffoli showed up this season. Still, Gallagher scored at a 30 goal pace for the fourth consecutive season and did it by crashing the net and getting his nose dirty in front of the net like he always has since he entered the league in 2013.

Over the past couple of years, the Habs offence completely ran through Gallagher. The team has more scoring depth now, but it was proven again in his absence late in the season that this team needs Gallagher to win games.

They have had him in this postseason, but he isn’t putting pucks in the net quite as frequently as he normally does. Part of that is probably because he broke his thumb on April 5th and didn’t play again until Game 1 against the Maple Leafs.

Gallagher had zero points in the first six games of the first round, but scored a huge goal in Game 7, though it was one Leafs net minder Jack Campbell should have easily stopped.

The gritty right winger was better against the Jets, with three points in four games, but he had just one goal in the series. That’s two series in a row where Gallagher has found the back of the net just one.

The Canadiens are going to need a few more goals than that in the third round. The Golden Knights are a deep and talented team and could put a blanket over Toffoli and Nick Suzuki and shut down the Habs best scorers to date.

If they do, the Habs can still win the series, but it would be imperative that Gallagher starts putting pucks in the net.

Cole Caufield

You don’t want to rely on a rookie to carry a team through the NHL semifinals, but the Canadiens might not have any other choice. Caufield has been great since joining the team late in the season, scoring a pair of huge overtime goals in the regular season to ensure the Habs even got into the playoffs.

He also set up Nick Suzuki for an overtime winner in Game 6 against the Maple Leafs and fed Toffoli for the series clinching goal in overtime of Game 4 against the Jets.

With goals likely at a premium against Vegas, it is time for Caufield to start putting pucks in the net himself. He scored four times in ten regular season games, but hasn’t found the back of the net in the playoffs.

The 21 year old is playing on the team’s top line with Suzuki and Toffoli and has fit in well with them. He has found open ice and created plenty of offensive chances for himself with his great skating and dazzling puck handling skills. He has always been known for his ability to rifle pucks into the top corner and is going to need to put a few past Fleury if the Canadiens are going to have any chance of making it past the Golden Knights.

Josh Anderson

Josh Anderson scored 17 goals in 52 regular season games, which put him on pace for 27 over a full NHL season of 82 games. He certainly put aside any doubts from fans who were worried about his one goal season in 2019-20.

However, he has just one goal for the Canadiens so far in that postseason. He blew past a pair of Maple Leafs defenders to open the scoring in Game 1 of the first round, but hasn’t found the back of the net again since.

Anderson has a terrific and unparalleled combination of speed, physicality, skill. He skates as well as anyone, hits like a truck and can toe drag around a defender and deke out any goalie in the league. But it just hasn’t translated into goals or points for him in this postseason.

Anderson has been playing on a third line with Paul Byron and Jesperi Kotkaniemi. He hasn’t played bad at all, and in fact, was a huge reason the Canadiens advanced past the Maple Leafs and Jets. His ability to skate and get in on a forecheck and crush a defenceman on nearly every shift led to plenty of turnovers and offensive zone time, wearing down the opponent’s defencemen.

With the stakes even higher, Anderson is going to need to do even more. He is going to have to take advantage of the matchups he gets against the Golden Knights third defence pairing and not just wear them down and cause turnovers, but actually put pucks into the net as well.

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Even without putting up a point in the past ten games, he has been a key component of the Canadiens team. But if the Habs plan on moving on to the Stanley Cup Final, Josh Anderson needs to get on the scoresheet.

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