Habs News: Montreal Canadiens Penalty Kill Struggles, Late Period Goals, Claude Julien Looks For Answers
ROCKET SPORTS MEDIA | LAVAL, QC. — The Canadiens played two games at the Bell Centre this week. It all started with a 4-2 loss against the Sharks on Thursday and Montreal beat the Maple Leafs 5-2 on Saturday.
San Jose has had Montreal’s number for years beating the Canadiens in 12 of the last 13 games between the two teams dating since the start of the 2012-13 season. In that time span, Montreal has been able to score a total of 16 goals. If you do the math on those numbers, the results are ugly. The Sharks have won the last nine games without allowing more than two goals in any of them against the Habs.
Montreal headed out west for three games this week against Western Conference opponents. This means that fans in the east coast will need to sacrifice some sleep as the Canadiens head to Arizona on Wednesday, Vegas on Thursday, and Dallas on Saturday.
Eleven games is a reasonable spot to get an idea of where a team stands. The Canadiens’ 5-4-2 record currently places them exactly where I thought they would be, which is outside of the playoff picture. As a comparison, Montreal held the first wild card spot with a 6-3-2 record 11 games into the 2018-19 season.
The optimistic point of view is that there is still plenty of hockey to be played. The pessimistic view is that Montreal needs to improve on last season’s pace if they want to clinch a playoff spot.
Penalty-kill Struggles
The tables have turned in terms of special teams in the early stages of the season. Last season, the power-play was embarrassing and it was one reason cited as costing Montreal a playoff spot. Through 11 games, the Habs power-play is in the top third of the NHL with a 26.3 percent success rate. Claude Julien can put a checkmark next to this issue and consider it resolved for now.
The next item on Julien’s to-do list is fixing the penalty-kill as it has been a mess since the start of the season. The penalty-kill needs to be a priority by the coach as it currently ranks 30th in the league with a 68.6 success rate. Last season, teams that finished 26th to 31st on the penalty-kill all missed the playoffs.
The penalty-kill unit stood out for the wrong reasons during Thursday’s loss as Evander Kane scored two power-play goals in three Sharks’ opportunities.
“Our penalty-kill was not good enough,” said Julien on Thursday. “Either missing assignments or we’re not clearing pucks or we’re too busy cross-checking guys in front of the net instead of looking for the puck. There’s a lot of things that will be addressed tomorrow. I think it’s time that there’s certain things here that have to be clearly defined and I’ll make sure that happens.”
Friday’s practice was focused on the penalty-kill. It is too early to evaluate any changes as the Canadiens penalty-kill was only tested once against the Maple Leafs on Saturday.
What’s Changed?
Julien mentioned following the San Jose game that it’s more or less the same players as last season on the penalty-kill. In 2018-19, Montreal finished 13th in the league shorthanded with a 80.9 percent success rate.
Let’s compare the penalty-kill units from the end of last season with those used on Saturday:
I chose game 81 of last season, because that was the last meaningful game that Montreal played in 2018-19. The difference between both seasons is that Ben Chiarot replaced Jordie Benn, and Paul Byron moved up to the second unit replacing Joel Armia who’s on the third unit.
Byron hasn’t had a good season up until now. Over the last three years, he had shown that he can be a 20-goal scorer, and he isn’t anywhere close near that pace as he’s looking to score his first goal in 2019-20. On the penalty-kill, we still haven’t seen Byron using his speed to get loose for a breakaway.
I never imagined that I would be writing this, but Benn is the player that the Canadiens are missing. Benn led the team in minutes and blocked shots while the team was shorthanded, therefore his departure has had an impact. Benn joined the Canucks as a free agent over the summer, signing to terms identical to those offered by the Canadiens.
When the coach said that the team was too busy cross-checking players, he was certainly talking about Chiarot as we can see below in the Sharks two power-play goals, Chiarot took himself out of the play, by playing the man instead of the puck.
Late Goals
“That’s the next thing I got to fix,” said Julien following Saturday’s game. “I didn’t like it,” he added. Montreal has allowed a goal during the last minute of a period eight times in the last six games, four times at end of the first period, and twice in each of the second and third periods.
The late first period goal that Toronto scored on Saturday with 16 seconds remaining gave momentum to the Maple Leafs. Montreal was outshooting their opponents 19-5 at that point. Following the goal, Toronto took control and outshot them 15-9 in the second period.
The momentum change from late period goals is something that we frequently see in hockey games. Early period goals have the same impact, which we also saw during the same game when Armia scored seven seconds into the third frame, and the Habs never looked back.
“I know we’ve given up 40 per cent of our goals in the first two or last two minutes,” added the coach, which shows the importance of it.
I tend to give coaches the benefit of the doubt on certain aspects of the game because they have to do their best with the players that are given to them. Coaches usually have a say on the composition of the team, but it’s the general manager that makes the final decisions via contract signings, trades, and other roster moves.
When it comes to the two items that are prioritized by Julien right now, they are both directly related to coaching as they are dependent on the players executing the game plan laid out by the coach and playing a full 60-minute game.
By Chris G., Senior Writer
All Habs Hockey Magazine
Copyright © 2019 Rocket Sports
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