How the Canadiens can get their goal differential to a competitive level

The Montreal Canadiens ability to reach their goal of being in the playoff mix this season will depend on several factors.

But if you had to boil it down to one thing, it would be improving their goal differential.

Or more accurately, eliminating it.

The Canadiens scored 49 fewer goals than they allowed last season (not counting the goals given out for shootout wins and losses), and though goal differential is just about the most basic stat you can find in hockey, it is consistently a great predictor of playoff chances.

Advertisement Since 2013-14, discounting the two wonky COVID-19-impacted seasons in 2019-20 and 2020-21, there have been 144 teams who have made the playoffs in the nine other seasons.

Of those, only seven made it with a negative goal differential, and two of those came last season, meaning there were five over the previous eight seasons combined.

Over that same span, there have been 14 teams who missed the playoffs with a positive goal differential, an average of about one and a half per season.

So generally, if you can put up a positive goal differential, you should be able to make the playoffs.

And if you can just about break even, you should be able to attain the Canadiens stated goal of being in the mix.

For the Canadiens, that means eliminating that 49-goal deficit from last season.

If that seems like a lot of goals to make either disappear through increased scoring or appear through better defence, its because it is.

But if you break it down into smaller bite-size pieces, it starts to become more achievable.

Can they do it? Its a very difficult question to answer in early September, but if they do, it will be because these factors bounced in the Canadiens favour.

Individually, they seem achievable, but basically all of these will need to hit to some degree for them to make it back to even, which is a bit more daunting.

Suppressing chances Lets start on the defensive side of things, and an area that was actually a (rare) positive for the Canadiens in their own end last season.

At five-on-five, the Canadiens were right in the middle of the pack in the league in terms of goals allowed per 60 minutes of ice time last season.

They allowed 2.51 goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five, the exact same rate as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Minnesota Wild , tied for 15th in the league, per Natural Stat Trick.

Advertisement But that doesnt tell the whole story.

The Canadiens, by just about any metric besides goals, were a terrible defensive team at five-on-five last season.

Only four teams allowed more high-danger scoring chances than the Canadiens last season.

Only two allowed more expected goals per 60 minutes.

But only three benefited more from their goaltending at five-on-five than the Canadiens.

On the one hand, this is good news for the Canadiens; they have great goaltending at five-on-five.

On the other hand, expecting this to continue from year to year is setting yourself up to fail.

No position is more volatile than goaltending; performance can swing wildly from one year to the next.

Sam Montembeault has had great goals saved above expected numbers for two years in a row now, and Cayden Primeau put up excellent numbers in that regard once he saw more action after Jake Allen was traded away to New Jersey.

Theres no reason to believe that cant continue, but the Canadiens shouldnt be so reliant on it.

And when they kept talking about how many one-goal games they were in last year, the truth is their goaltending was the biggest reason for that.

But when general manager Kent Hughes talked about organic growth last season, this is where we could see it, probably more so than at the offensive end.

The Canadiens have had a very green defence corps for two years now, but players like Kaiden Guhle and Arber Xhekaj should now have the experience to make more of a difference on the defensive end.

But if the Canadiens manage to get similar goaltending impacts next season and cut their rate of expected goals against to, say, somewhere closer to league average, then the reduction of real goals against would be very significant.

To illustrate that, lets say the Canadiens go from 30th in the league in expected goals against per 60 minutes to 20th in the league.

Still not great, just not nearly as awful.

Last season, the 20th-place team in that stat allowed 2.63 expected goals against per 60 minutes.

If the Canadiens got the same goaltending impact they got last season, that would translate to 2.25 goals against per 60 minutes, which would have been ninth in the league last season.

Advertisement Lets suppose that scenario comes to pass.

Even if this calculation is grossly imperfect and fraught with unknown variables, this would mean allowing roughly 148 goals at five-on-five instead of the 166 they allowed last season.

Highly optimistic estimate of goals saved: 18 Special teams improvement This one is very straightforward.

The Canadiens finished in the bottom third of the league on both the power play (27th) and the penalty kill (24th).

Improving in both areas would significantly impact their goal differential, and there are reasonable paths to that improvement.

On the penalty kill, the Canadiens allowed the third-most goals in the league playing four-on-five with 59.

Their expected goals against per 60 on the penalty kill was 9.99, worst in the NHL , according to Natural Stat Trick.

Goaltending wasnt perfect Montembeaults .883 save percentage on the penalty kill was tied for 13th in the NHL, while Allen and Primeau were ranked 46th and 47th, respectively but it wasnt the primary issue.

That would be all those chances the Canadiens were bleeding while also playing the third-most short-handed minutes in the NHL.

So, step one would be cutting down on those penalties, something that should be within their grasp, but will be highly dependent on their offences ability to spend more time with the puck in the offensive zone.

Step two would be the improvement of their defensive play all over the ice when down a man, something the addition of Christian Dvorak for a full season should help with.

Among Canadiens forwards who played at least 50 minutes on the penalty kill last season, only Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Joel Armia had a better on-ice goals against per 60 rate than Dvorak.

He provides a lefty-righty faceoff combo with Jake Evans that should result in more clearances off the initial draw and Dvorak is a good disruptor up ice to help prevent opposing teams from setting up off entries.

This is also where the continued maturation of the young defence would help a great deal, and giving Guhle a bigger role on the penalty kill could have a major impact.

Last season, Guhle played just over 100 fewer minutes on the penalty kill than Mike Matheson , but Guhles goals-against rate of 7.55 was far lower than Mathesons rate of 9.59.

There was a similar gap in their expected goals against rates as well.

Advertisement On the power play, it is largely a potential change in personnel that could make the difference.

Adding Patrik Laine , Kirby Dach and, perhaps, Lane Hutson to the mix will allow the Canadiens to ice two legitimate units.

But one thing that severely hurt the Canadiens power play last season was the loss of Sean Monahan .

When he was traded to the Winnipeg Jets on Feb.

2, the Canadiens had a power play efficiency of 19.9 percent, 19th in the NHL.

In the 33 games the Canadiens played after Monahan was traded, that efficiency fell to 13.2 percent, 31st in the NHL.

Monahans vision and poise with the puck certainly helped, but he was crucial to the power plays success because he was a left shot.

Dach and Laine being added to the mix addresses the loss of skill, but it does not address having a left shot playing that facilitator role on the goal line on the top unit, an important spot with all the right-shot forwards the Canadiens have available to them.

Perhaps Juraj Slafkovsky could slide into that spot and thrive with the improved playmaking he showcased over the second half of last season, opening the possibility of Nick Suzuki reclaiming his preferred quarterbacking spot on the right circle.

Or perhaps it opens a door for Alex Newhook on the top unit, though he seems best suited for an important role as a puck carrier and distributor on the second unit.

The good news is the infusion of offensive talent allowing for a viable second unit on the power play will make the Canadiens less vulnerable to an off night.

If coach Martin St.

Louis decides to really balance the two units out, he will have the healthy competition every team seeks.

You can definitely make a competition out of it, Suzuki said two weeks ago at his charity golf tournament.

That was how we had it my first couple of years; whatever unit was doing better would usually go out first.

It makes those reps out there really important.

You dont want to be the second unit so you dont get to start the power play.

The number of guys that we have that probably should be on the power play, were definitely going to have two units.

Im looking forward to it.

I think Martys cooking up some ideas, hell have fun with that.

The Canadiens have a left-circle trigger man for both units with Laine and Cole Caufield , a mobile defenceman up top for each unit with Matheson and, potentially, Hutson, a quarterback distributor for each unit in Suzuki and Newhook (or maybe even Dach), and a big-bodied net-front/goal line type player for each unit in Slafkovsky or Dach and either Josh Anderson or Joel Armia.

If the power play doesnt produce this season, it wont be a personnel issue.

Advertisement Very optimistic estimate of goals saved on PK: 8 Somewhat optimistic estimate of goals added on PP: 12 Regression to the mean Over the last 10 years, there have been 49 instances of an NHL player registering 300 shots on goal in a season.

Of those 49 seasons, only two players had a worse shooting percentage than Caufields 8.9 percent last season, and only seven players, including Caufield, connected on less than 10 percent of their shots.

Generally speaking, players who have the skill to get that many pucks on net also have the skill to put it in the net with more regularity than Caufield did last season.

Caufields 8.9 percent success rate is surely an anomaly, one that can be partially explained by him still recovering from the shoulder surgery he underwent the season prior, something he finally acknowledged at the end of the season .

But some of it was also just dumb luck.

A shooter like Caufield, at age 23 and in the prime of his career, does not just plummet from an elite 16.5 percent shooting efficiency to 8.9 percent because he forgot how to shoot the puck.

As we noted here and here , Caufield did adjust by taking more shots closer to the net last season, which is where most of his goals came from.

That was one positive that came out of his difficult season.

But his shooting percentage from the midrange areas of the ice, his bread and butter his whole life, fell from 18.1 percent to just 5 percent last season.

If he hits on just 10 percent of those shots next season and takes the same amount of shots from those areas, he adds eight goals to his total from last season, bringing him to 36.

If the power play is clicking, maybe Caufield could score four or five more than the nine power-play goals he scored last season.

And the development of his game away from the puck made it so Caufield was less of a liability defensively, further helping the goal differential cause.

While the addition of Laine and Dach (and perhaps Hutson) are clear ways the Canadiens added offence this season, the resurgence of Caufield as a goal scorer seems very likely and should be a sure source of more goals.

Slightly optimistic estimate of goals added: 15 Reality check Without even getting into how many goals Laine and Dach will add to the counter in compensation for the goals lost with Monahan, the categories above represent a net difference of 53 goals.

But those are optimistic estimates.

Reality will surely be different.

Advertisement Personally, Im somewhat skeptical of how much the Canadiens can improve defensively at five-on-five and on the penalty kill and a bit more optimistic about the offensive improvements they can make, especially the resurgence of Caufield.

And ultimately, offensive improvements also help the defence because they ensure the puck is in the opposite end of the ice more often.

But the reality is the Canadiens defence will still skew young this season, and there are always growing pains at that position.

What this exercise demonstrates is that a lot will need to go right for the Canadiens to erase that 49-goal deficit in one shot.

But it can be done.

In 2022-23, the Detroit Red Wings had a 38-goal deficit and took their goal differential all the way to a plus-2 last season and were in the playoff race right up to the final game of the season.

The Vancouver Canucks went from minus-26 in 2022-23 to plus-58 last season.

The New Jersey Devils went from minus-57 in 2021-22 to plus-67 in 2022-23.

The 2021-22 Buffalo Sabres were a minus-58 and improved to minus-4 the following season.

It happens.

But the more typical trajectory involves incremental steps, and the Canadiens have the players and coaching staff to follow that path.

If some of these issues can be addressed this season, it will get them going in the right direction.

And in the unlikely event that all of them are addressed, the Canadiens might just find themselves in the playoff mix.

(Top photo of Kirby Dach and Nick Suzuki: David Berding / Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.