Montreal Canadiens: 2020-21 Report Card Grades For Every Player

Xavier Ouellet is a weird player to me. He only played 6 games with the Habs this season, playing most of his hockey as Laval captain. Whenever I watch him play, AHL and NHL alike, I think to myself that he just isn’t very good: minimal offensive and transition value to go along with shaky defence and a knack for running into his goalie. I honestly thought he looked worse in Laval than WHLers Kaiden Guhle and Gianni Fairbrother, not to mention Cale Fleury, Otto Leskinen, Josh Brook and Corey Shueneman. Despite this, Ouellet’s on-ice impacts seem very… fine in the NHL. His low PDO (.959) this season mitigates his slightly below 50% CF%, xGF% and HDCF%. Basically, he looked bad but was alright. Meh, he’s a fine AHL-callup I guess, I just prefer him not getting called him.. . . XAVIER OUELLET. C+

B +. I really enjoyed watching Otto Leskinen play this season. Only one of his games came in the NHL (and he played genuinely great in limited minutes) but his performances in Laval were tremendous. His offensive tools are plenty and dangerous and his defensive ability grew leaps and bounds from the previous season. He was named to the AHL Canadian Division All-Star Team after racking up 17 points in 33 games. Unfortunately, he is returning to Finland for at least the next two seasons. While the Canadiens will retain his rights, this may be the end of his time in Montreal.. . . OTTO LESKINEN

. . JON MERRILL. D. Jon Merrill is a really frustrating one for me. I was legitimately excited over his acquisition as his advanced stats along with the word from Red Wings fans and media seemed to bode really well. For context, Merrill was analytically a phenomenal defensive defenseman in Detroit prior to the trade to the Canadiens. Unfortunately, those positive results seemed to vanish as soon as he put on the Tricolor. He was downright terrible in the regular season, notching a 44.94 xGF%, a full 4.96% lower than the next worst among Habs defensemen, the aforementioned Xavier Ouellet; Merrill’s actual GF% was way worse though, at 13.33%, worst on the team. In the Playoffs, Merrill shared the worst xGF% and GF% among the defensive corps with Alexander Romanov. My expectations for Merrill were likely set too high, which does impact the grade I’m giving him, but he was the player who disappointed me the most this season.

A. I quite like Erik Gustafsson. Considering the expectations that normally accompany trade deadline acquisitions that only cost a 7th round draft pick, it was going to be tough for Gustafsson to flame out. The Swede was advertised as a good offensive defenseman that was a literal defensive black hole. While we were gifted some patented Gustafsson offensive zone lapses leading to breakaway goals both in the regular season and the playoffs (on the powerplay no less), Gustaffson’s impact was undoubtedly a very positive one. Luke Richardson did a tremendous job in ensuring that Gustafsson got easy even-strength minutes, which led to Gustafsson’s metrics in the playoffs outshining those of all of his teammates. Gustafsson led the team with 64.60 xGF% (exactly 8% better than second-placed Lehkonen), 62.91 CF% and was second to Jake Evans with 70 GF%. In Gustafsson’s 126 playoff 5v5 minutes, the Habs scored 7 goals and surrendered 3, a goals-against tally mirroring the expected result; not bad for a defensive black hole. Gustafsson also played good powerplay minutes. I’d like to see the Habs keep him on the cheap as a useful seventh defenseman who can infuse some life into the powerplay when need be.. . . ERIK GUSTAFSSON

. . BRETT KULAK. B. Kulak was tremendous in the bubble last year, to the point that I raved about his performances against Pittsburgh in an article. Despite the acquisition and subsequent signing of Joel Edmundson to take Kulak’s spot in the top-4, I expected Kulak to either force his way back onto a pairing with Jeff Petry or to be a really solid third pair defenseman with great results in transition. Kulak did play some minutes with Petry in the regular season when Ben Chiarot was out with a fractured wrist, but he mainly played with Alex Romanov on the third pair, a duo that put up some really good 5v5 results in 309 minutes: 55.94 CF%, 53.51 xGF% (both of which were better than the Edmundson-Petry and Chiarot-Weber pairings) and 61.11 GF% which was just slightly less than Edmundson-Petry. The playoffs were the exact opposite. Of course the top-4 were used almost exclusively, but the 10 minutes of Romanov-Kulak were ugly: 25 GF%, 4.06 xGF%. Independently, Kulak also struggled in the playoffs with 33.33 GF% and 41.87 xGF%. Basically, Kulak was great in the regular season and struggled mightily in the playoffs despite his positive value in transition.

B -. I won’t repeat all the advanced metrics for Romanov as he played most of his minutes with Kulak. From an impact perspective, he shone in the regular season and had a tougher time in the playoffs, despite his important goal. The reason his grade is lower than Kulak’s is not because of his performance but, rather, because of the high expectations in the young Russian defenseman, something largely inflicted upon him by the Habs’ front office staff and Marc Bergevin, in particular. Some believed Romanov would find himself on the team’s top pairing by the season’s end, he did not; instead, he was a (somewhat unfairly) healthy scratch through most of the postseason. Don’t get me wrong, I like Romanov a lot. I appreciate his defensive play, physicality and especially his skating, a strength not many Habs defensemen share. I see him as a really solid #3 defenseman down the road, I just think he was hyped up a bit much and potentially rushed a slight bit. Still, Romanov can count this as a successful first year in the NHL and he will almost certainly be an important fixture on the Habs blueline next season and for the decade that follows.. . . ALEXANDER ROMANOV