The Montreal Canadiens are in last place in the NHL standings this morning, so it hasn’t been a very successful season to date.
They have gone 1-0-1 in the past two games and it is as hot as they have been all season. Seriously. They still have not won two games in a row.
A lot of the blame for their 8-25-6 record has been pinned on a lack of offence and for good reason.
The team has scored 86 goals this season in 39 games which has them at 2.20 goals per game. While their offence has been bad, a quick look at goaltender Samuel Montembeault’s numbers shows how porous the defensive structure of this team has been recently as well.
With Carey Price not having played a game yet this season and Jake Allen being injured a week ago and apparently out for a total of eight weeks, we are going to see a lot of Montembeault this season.
And if Montembeault’s workload in January is any indication, he is going to see a lot of rubber this season.
The Canadiens lost their most recent game, 4-3 in overtime in Las Vegas. Montembeault turned aside 49 shots in the game. It was only one more save than he made in the Canadiens Tuesday night win over the Dallas Stars. Montembeault faced a total of 104 shots in those two games and somehow helped the team get three out of four points.
Those were his two busiest games of the season, but they weren’t a far venture from what Montembeault has become used to seeing in the Habs crease. He did only see 31 shots in an overtime loss to the Chicago Blackhawks last week, but he played just over two periods in his appearance against the Bruins last week and still faced 34 shots. On January 1st, Montembeault played his former team in Florida and they fired 48 shots at him.
In total, Montembeault has played 305 minutes in his last six appearances, coming on in relief twice in that time, and he has seen 223 shots. That is an average of 44 shots against per 60 minutes of game time.
Montembeault has played quite well in that time. He has stopped 205 of those shots which gives him a .919 save percentage this month. So, he is stopping 92% of the shots fired his way, but he has still allowed at least three goals in each appearance aside from his 19 minutes of mop up duty against the Arizona Coyotes.
Even though he has a solid save percentage of .919 this month, his goals against average in January is an ugly 3.53. So, even though he is stopping pucks at an above average rate, he is still allowing three and a half goals per night.
It really just highlights how poor the team has been defensively, where Montembeualt is stopping pucks at such a high rate but still allowing three or four per night to get by him.
The Canadiens lack of scoring has been an obvious problem all season, but they are currently playing just as bad in their own end as they are in the offensive zone.