Montreal Canadiens: Top Five Habs Goal Scorers In 2023
The Montreal Canadiens, like everyone, closed the book on 2023 and look forward to an improved version of themselves in 2024. Before they head to Dallas to take on the Stars in their first game of the new year, we are looking back at some of their highlights from the past 12 months.
The calendar year of 2023 was not the greatest in franchise history, but we are shedding some light on the greatest players on the team over the previous year.
Here, we are going to look back at the top five goal scorers for the Canadiens in the year 2023. Now remember, the team was not all that great, going 31-42-8 in their 81 games over the past year which is the fifth worst record in the NHL over the past 12 months. They scored 230 goals which was the sixth least in that time.
So, let's take a look back at the Canadiens top five goal scorers in 2023.
5. Mike Matheson - 13
The first word that pops to mind when you think of MIke Matheson is not, sniper, but he does get pucks to the net on the power play and is never shy to jump into the rush to join the attack.
He was mostly healthy in 2023, though he started his first season with the Canadiens on injured reserve, and played a total of 74 of the team's 81 games in the calendar year. He quickly jumped onto the team's top defense pairing and was one of the ice time leaders averaging 24:53 per game. That put him 8th in average ice time among all NHLers in 2023.
Matheson doesn't have the booming slapshot of Sheldon Souray, but he loves to join the attack and often finds himself deep in the offensive zone with the puck. His 13 goals in the past 12 months rank 16th among blue liners in the league, and fifth among Montreal Canadiens players.
4. Rafael Harvey-Pinard - 14 Goals
Rafael Harvey-Pinard was not a player I expected to see on this list. He did get hot late in the 2022-23 season after being called up, but struggled to begin the current season and has been injured for a significant period of time as well.
The 24 year old left winger played just 13 games this season but has not scored a goal. He had 14 goals with the Canadiens last season, all of them coming after the calendar flipped to 2023. It was an impressive run from the youngster to fill the net late last season, but a nine week hot streak from a prospect put him fourth on this list for the whole year which says a lot about the Canadiens goal scoring woes.
3. Cole Caufield - 15 Goals
Cole Caufield should be saying a lot about the Canadiens goal scoring woes but it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for the young sniper. He had ten goals in 36 games in the 2023 portion of the 2023-24 season which is well short of the pace we would expect from him.
He was also injured for much of the second half of last season, meaning he only played 45 games in the year 2023. Still, he put 15 pucks in the net during that year and only two other Canadiens were able to score more.
Hopefully 2024 sees Caufield filling nets with more frequency than just 15 as it took goals in consecutive games to close out 2023 to put him ahead of Harvey-Pinard for the year.
2. Josh Anderson - 18 Goals
Josh Anderson is a streaky scorer to say the least. We saw the extreme ends of that in 2023 as he had a bit of a hot stretch late in the 2022-23 season and also an incredibly cold streak early in the 2023-24 campaign.
All in all, he ended up playing 70 games in 2023 and scored 18 times. He does have six of them this season after starting the year with zero goals in the month of October and November. There are only seven hockey playing months on the calendar and this guy was shutout for two of them, while also missing 11 games during a different part of the year.
That is not an endorsment of the Canadiens goal scoring abilities. A streaky scorer like Anderson should be a complementary piece overall, and not the team's second best goal scorer over a full year.
1. Nick Suzuki - 22 Goals
Nick Suzuki is Mr. Everything for the Canadiens. He is the captain, the first line center, the leading point scorer in the calendar year and also the team's top goal scorer in 2023 as well.
Part of that is due to health. While he played every one of the team's 81 games, Caufield was held to 45 though he had the best goals per game on the year. Suzuki did have a great 2023, scoring 22 times to lead all Montreal Canadiens players and also developing his defensive game to become a better all-around player.
This output placed Suzuki in a tie for 91st overall in the NHL in 2023 in goals scored, which isn't ideal for a team's leading goal scorer. Here's hoping for a big breakout from Juraj Slafkovsky and a return to dominance from Cole Caufield so we have someone inside the top 90 in goals scored in 2024.