Montreal Canadiens: By The Numbers – March

Welcome to yet another installment of “By the Numbers,” a monthly series on A Winning Habit, where we recap the last month of hockey for the Canadiens. Today, we’re taking a look at the month of March, a month that was not particularly kind to the Canadiens. You can find the other articles for each month here:

November

January

February

There is no December recap because it’s hard to stretch an article out of a month that could be summed up in one word, bad. But, going forward, we’ll try and do that anyways. This brings us to today as we stare down what was another tough month for the Canadiens. Coming off an excellent month of February, the Canadiens immediately squandered whatever momentum they might have had, beginning the month on a seven-game losing streak.

Now, at this point in the year, with the playoffs out of the question, it isn’t necessarily about results anyways. It’s been said on this site many times before, but the process matters much more now. If the Habs are playing well, who cares if they lose or not? The unfortunate part about that is that they didn’t play great, and the results dictate that. There were moments here and there, but looking at it from a whole, it wasn’t pretty.

Let’s first talk about goaltending, which has typically been a strength for the Canadiens this season. However, in March, it was… not. We’ve discussed GSAx on this site before, but if you need a refresher, here’s a quick explanation. The Canadiens’ cumulative GSAx for March was -6.26, which means they got below-average goaltending. This is reflected in the 4-10-2 record. Now it isn’t entirely on the goaltenders, but I would say their record more than reflected the level of talent on the ice, something that had at times previously been masked by good goaltending.

The rest of the Canadiens’ numbers are pretty consistent with the rest of the season, with a sub-50 % GF% and xGF%. In other terms, the Habs are often not controlling the play, something to be expected given the quality of the roster. Of course, it doesn’t help that of the 16 games they played in March, 13 of them came against teams heading to the playoffs (Looks like only one of Pittsburgh and Florida will go to the playoffs, but it seems reasonable to call them both playoff teams given they’re jockeying for the final spot).

All season long, the Canadiens have been a team that’s given up a great deal of scoring chances and struggled to create the offense to balance it out. Unfortunately, that didn’t change in March. The Habs scored 3.3 goals per game, their second-highest output for a month this season, but gave up 4.1 goals, matching their season high for a month. Moving forward, Montreal will need to find a way to improve in these areas because the numbers suggest that, while they did have poor goaltending this month, they still performed about as expected as a team.

On the season, the Canadiens are expected to give up 2.97 goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five (5v5 xGA/60). This season, at five-on-five, the Canadiens are giving up 2.97 goals per 60 minutes. They rank 31st in the NHL in xGA/60. Suffice to say it’s not great. They must find a way to improve in this area as the team gets flush with more talent.

Offensively, the Habs are actually scoring more than expected. While they are improving in this area, a lot of the Habs’ offense comes from the perimeter as opposed to the slot. That makes it challenging to score efficiently, and it leads to low xGF numbers. Here is an excellent example of where the Habs’ offensive and defensive room for improvement is. Essentially, the Canadiens need to create offense the way teams do when they play the Habs. And they need to play defense the way teams do versus the Habs. Here are Carolina’s charts. As you can see, the difference is significant.

The month of March was not very kind to the Canadiens, but even when fully healthy, the Habs are probably amongst the weaker teams in the NHL. And we all know the Canadiens are nowhere close to fully healthy. With each month, the results show how far the Canadiens still need to go before they can become the team they want to be. There is plenty to be excited about and plenty of things to work on. The process matters, at this point, more than the results, and it’s progressing each day. It’s just going to take some time.

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