A new approach to analyzing the Montreal Canadiens’ penalty kill

Following the departure of key defensive players David Savard, Joel Armia, and Christian Dvorak during the 2025 off-season, the Montreal Canadiens looked to be trying to implement a new penalty-killing system last year. Results, diplomatically speaking, were mixed (with Eyes On The Prize’s own Matt Drake being very outspoken about this subject on the Bottom Six Minutes podcast during the season). In order to take the next steps, to get home ice advantage in a tougher Atlantic Division and a better shot at the Stanley Cup, it is the penalty kill that needs to improve the most.

What the Canadiens tried to implement last season felt familiar to what Rögle BK attempted during Adam Engström’s two seasons of development with the club. I reached out to Max Bohlin, Rögle’s defensive coach and main developer of Engström at the SHL level. Bohlin first introduced the system when he joined Rögle’s senior squad, and we first spoke about what he did during the 2024-25 campaign. With the Canadiens looking to use a similar system, the time was right for a longer discussion.

How to evaluate your penalty kill

Interestingly enough, the system Rögle has been implementing is based off of the Carolina Hurricanes’ tactics, a system that confounded the Canadiens in last year’s Eastern Conference Final. Bohlin began working in his new penalty-kill approach as soon as he was promoted from the U20 coaching staff to the senior SHL squad in 2023-24, and his impact was visible as Rögle reached the SHL Final that year.

He wanted to use different metrics to gauge his penalty kill. Expected goals for on the power play was one of them, but he especially looked to the penalty kill’s goal differential to have a metric that was easy to understand but also spoke about the units in more than one dimension.

“You don’t want to use percentages,” Bohlin explains, “The percentage is ‘goal or not’ and it eliminates short-handed goals from the conversation. Frölunda hasn’t scored a short-handed goal this year, and they’ve let in 22. That means we are three better than them [having scored six despite letting in 25]. We are one better than Skellefteå [who finished first in the regular season]. However, both of those teams technically have a higher PK percentage. Does that really paint the full picture? This is an important thing for media to understand and grasp.

“When you play aggressively, the opponents will cough up more chances to you. We have a player that is ready to go at all times. We have created a lot of breakaways and high-danger chances. This also kills the momentum for the power-play team. They need to reset, they need to slow down the puck. It’s a really important aspect to consider when you evaluate a penalty kill.”

A dip in form for Rögle in 2024-25, both on the penalty kill and in general, was temporary. As last season was coming to a close, the team was at the top of the league in short-handed goal differential, something that the team takes great pride in.

Reaching the top has been a two steps forward, one step back process. On the surface, Bohlin and Montreal seem to find themselves in a traditional 1-2-1 diamond formation quite often. However, Bohlin is quick to point out the differences between the basic structure and what he is building.

“I understand people are picking up on that, but for me the diamond is static and the opponent has full control of the puck. We play a ‘pressure down’ PK, and it seems that Montreal wants to play the same way from what you are describing. The diamond is the starting position, but it makes it easy to pressure in any direction. And we are one of the most aggressive teams in the SHL when it comes to the PK.”

Pros and cons of the setup

The main advantage of such an alignment is that the opponent gets less time to handle the puck, but there are downsides.

“The aim is to play four-on-four as much as possible. That means that you will leave the far side and you do hope that that player doesn’t get the puck,” Bohlin explains. “Sometimes, when the shit hits the fan, we will have an opposing player with an ocean of space and time. We know that, but we see it as risk management. The opponent needs to make a more difficult pass to reach that player, the puck might get pushed out of the zone before that happens, we might freeze the puck. However, if it’s [Alexander] Ovechkin….”

The concept is similar to handball, where a play is set to funnel the shot into a place where the goalie can anticipate it, or volleyball where the blockers leave a specific opening that the rear guards can cover.  Here, the PK opens up one area of the ice, and the goalie knows that this is the only place the shot can come from. “That’s the whole thing with your PK: you want predictability,” says Bohlin. “The goalies should know what kind of shots we want to force the opponents to take. They also know that when the opponent gets a chance it will be a more dangerous one.

“The aim is to avoid time in our zone, and we want to dictate the terms. That is the core goal, the philosophy. Less time and space, more bad passes. Get the puck out of the zone, reset, and make them get a difficult zone entry. To force dump-ins, and with that in mind you do need an active goalie with some stick skills.”

While Bohlin hasn’t coached in the NHL, I ask if this system would work better on a smaller ice surface with better players. Bohlin is careful when he answers: “I’d like to think it would be even better on smaller ice where you already have less time, but the players are also a little bit different over there,” he laughs. “Let’s just say that the skill level is at least one tier higher. Nevertheless, less space should benefit pressuring PKs in general.

“There are a lot of different factors though. Stamina; you need to be able to do this, it’s taxing. Synchronization; you need to be synced as a unit in where to apply the right amount of pressure. This is my third year with the senior squad, and this is the first year we are really getting the behaviour right. We are getting these results because we have worked on it for a long time. Look at Skellefteå and Frölunda. The three of us play the same system, but they haven’t had the same turnover of personnel. There is no surprise that my best PK players are the ones that have been here for three years. These are the details we have been working on for three years, and now it is automatic.”

He further explains the effects of personnel rotating in and out of a system that requires years to perfect. “If you lose a player like Adam Engström, the player that comes in might have played in another system and needs time to adjust on the penalty kill, especially when we drive such hard pressure. On the other hand, some players are better equipped than others to handle these transitions. We signed Calvin de Haan this year [2025-26], who has played in Carolina. His transition onto Rögle’s PK has been a lot easier than for other players. I just had to tell him, ‘you know Carolina’s version, we play similar but these are the differences.’”

Implications for Montreal

It seems that Montreal changed its penalty-killing tactics during the season. It did seem like they were more aggressive at the start and used a traditional ‘pressure down’ system all over the ice. However, one has to think that there was an adjustment to the system due to a few of the goals before Christmas and the fact that Samuel Montembeault didn’t have the same secure play as the team was used to, with his save percentage dropping from .902 the previous year to .872.

Montreal had more active pressure once the puck dropped below the goal line, and went back to the diamond formation once the puck went out to the blue line again. Bohlin says the diamond formation is “a reset,” something you do to get into position again. My follow-up question comes back to another system that has been under scrutiny, the hybrid defence that Montreal uses during the normal five-on-five play. As Bohlin and I have discussed the hybrid defence before, I feel the answer is relevant. “I think it works the same way. The reset is needed and if that isn’t timed right things might fall apart.”

Looking at Montreal’s penalty kill throughout Martin St-Louis’s tenure, it does seem to improve with regard to some of the metrics Rögle uses to evaluate its man disadvantage.

Looking at the percentages alone, you could say the penalty kill is back where it was in the early stages of St-Louis’s tenure, but there are other things that stand out. There were a lot fewer goals being scored against the four-man units, even if it wasn’t as good as the 2024-25 season, and the goal differential is still a lot lower compared with the early days. This despite goaltending being a major concern at the start of the year. It also shows that Montreal takes fewer penalties now compared to five years ago.

The number of penalties that Montreal has conceded has dropped the last two years, which is also when Montreal has started to climb up the league rankings in efficiency. You wont take as many penalties when you aren’t hemmed in your own zone.

One of the biggest factors for the penalty kill’s success? Kaiden Guhle. The defenceman didn’t play a full season in 2024-25, and last year he was on the ice for just 39 regular-season games. He has been a cornerstone of the penalty kill throughout his career, but wasn’t able to help build on a successful run the previous season. His presence was even more necessary last year considering the loss of Savard.

I reached out to then Laval Rocket assistant coach (now in the head role) Daniel Jacob to hear if Laval played with a similar system. “We ran the exact same diamond concept/structure until after Christmas, but since I found that we were not efficient and spent too much time defending, reacting, and allowing too much movement, we changed it. We kept the same guidelines — stops, starts, and straight lines, no flush — but added constant pressure that allows our guys to press, dictate, and limit movement.”

Conclusion

Even if these metrics point to Montreal’s penalty kill taking a step back last season, they shows that it is trending in the right direction. Comparing the numbers from the time that Martin St-Louis took the head-coaching job to now, there is clear progress. The number of penalties is going down, as is the goal differential, and the success rate is going up.

The teams with low goal differentials in the NHL in 2025-26 included the Buffalo Sabres (-31), New York Islanders (-32), Carolina Hurricanes (-33), and Toronto Maple Leafs (-37). Those are all potential matchups in a playoff run, so it’s important to keep that progress going.

It is also good that Laval adopted the same system in order to make players have an easier transition to the big club. They went back to the ‘old’ system around Christmas, a time that the Canadiens also changed the system from a more aggressive version.

One must consider Bohlin’s words that it takes time to implement new tactics and make them second nature. Montreal is in a prime position to do so with many young players in both Montreal and Laval. It is a three-year project, and in a sport where gains are measured in fractions of a percentage it might be with some short-term pain for a longer period of success.

It is important to realize that the penalty kill hinges on a lot of different factors, and implementing a system will take time and needs the use of the same players, or players from clubs that have had a similar system. Carolina is a good example of this, a team that has had low turnover and that has strengthened its active penalty kill over time.

Maybe, as Bohlin states, the simple metric of penalty-kill percentage should be considered dated. It is a stat that is easily accessible, and like plus/minus it is a term that many are familiar with. With goal differential being a stat on the NHL website, maybe it’s time to use that instead to get a more complete understanding of the penalty kill as a whole.

In the end I will come back to the fact that the system was a failure last season, but it is easy to see what they are trying to do with it. The system is taking time to implement, and it is putting more pressure on what has become a young goalie tandem. If they can stick with it, the rewards may come in the future, as they did for Carolina which rode one of the top penalty kills all the way to the Stanley Cup.