Previewing every NHL team with 1 chart: Montreal Canadiens

The NHL season is quickly approaching. To speed up the wait until the puck finally drops on the season, I’ll be previewing one team every day. I’ll be going one division at a time and publishing these in the order I think they’ll finish from first to worst. I’m currently going through the Atlantic Division.

Last year’s finish: 3rd in Atlantic Division

Playoffs: Eliminated in conference finals

Predicted finish: 5th in Atlantic Division (no playoffs)

It feels impossible to have a normal conversation about the Montreal Canadiens.

On one hand, Montreal making the conference finals this past spring puts them well ahead of schedule. Nick Suzuki and Lane Hutson became legitimate franchise talents, Cole Caufield scored 50 goals, Juraj Slafkovsky continues to improve and Ivan Demidov finished second in Calder Trophy voting. All of Montreal’s young stars are on extensions that will pay them pennies on the dollar seemingly until the end of time, which is even more important in a post-Leo Carlsson offer sheet world. By pretty much every measure, last season was a huge success, and the Canadiens are set up to contend for years to come.

And yet.

Pretty much everything went in their favor last year. Suzuki, Hutson, Slafkovsky, Caufield and Demidov all stayed healthy. Montreal had the highest five-on-five shooting percentage in the league (11.3 percent). In the playoffs, goaltender Jakub Dobes had to stand on his head in Game 7 to get Montreal past Tampa Bay in the first round despite being outshot 29-9. He had to do it again throughout the Buffalo series, including another Game 7 win where the Habs were outshot 39-25. There are no guarantees of something similar happening this year.

But Montreal will be hoping for that same fortune this year because the Canadiens are bringing back essentially the same team. Aside from shipping Brendan Gallagher to Vancouver, the Canadiens didn’t do anything this summer. Despite last year’s success, Montreal didn’t feel any urgency to improve its roster, for now at least. It makes sense from a long-term perspective, but it will make competing right now harder.

As currently constructed, the Canadiens are not built to contend this season. That was made especially obvious in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. After Montreal blew out a rusty Carolina team in Game 1, the Hurricanes spent the next four games smothering the life out of Montreal in perhaps the most one-sided four playoff games you’ve ever seen. Despite Dobes’ efforts, Carolina knocked out the Canadiens in five games, and Montreal finished the series with the lowest five-on-five expected goals share in a best-of-seven series in the analytics era at 33.2 percent.

Montreal’s big five of Suzuki, Hutson, Caufield, Slafkovsky and Demidov is extremely talented, that much is clear. But the Canadiens have a lot of work to do elsewhere.

With Suzuki on the ice at five on five last year, the Canadiens had an expected goals percentage of 53.4 percent and outscored their opponents 72-40. Without Suzuki, they had 49.2 percent of the expected goals and a minus-9 goal differential.

The on/off splits for Hutson are even more one-sided. With Hutson, the Canadiens had a 55.9 percent expected goals share and a plus-36 goal differential. Without him, the expected goals plummet to 46.9 percent, and they had a minus-13 goal differential. When their top players aren’t on the ice, Montreal really struggles, and that should still be the case this year.

Montreal doesn’t have any good options down the middle behind Suzuki. Oliver Kapanen and Alex Newhook both had decent years production-wise, but they both had obviously unsustainably high on-ice shooting percentages (14.1 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively) at five on five last year that covered up for their (many) play-driving shortcomings. The Canadiens are clearly buying time for top prospect Michael Hage to make it to the NHL, but it’s still a problem for the present. If Montreal’s shooting comes back down to earth, even a little bit, the Canadiens could be in trouble.

That’s what makes the Canadiens so hard to predict. There’s obviously a lot to like here, and Demidov taking another step could probably make up for some issues further down the lineup. It’s hard to look at how talented the top of Montreal’s lineup is and see them missing the playoffs. But the Canadiens just don’t have the same depth that Tampa or Florida (or even Ottawa) have.

On the other hand, the Canadiens have enough stars to take over games and tilt things in their favor more of then they “should,” like in the playoffs last year. Plus, growth from Dobes in his third NHL season (and possibly Jacob Fowler?) could help the Canadiens steal a couple more games here and there. There’s obviously a lot of young talent in Montreal, but the Canadiens just feel like less of a sure thing than other teams in their crowded division.

All advanced stats from Hockey Stats