The Canadiens’ start has been a strange mix of promising hockey and frustrating endings. Montreal hasn’t looked outclassed, and it certainly hasn’t lacked for chances. The problem is that so many of those good moments have vanished in the details, leaving the club seventh in the Atlantic Division.
Over the last four games, the Canadiens have piled up shot after shot and still come away with too little to show for it. Against the Nashville Predators on Oct.
8, Montreal fired 33 shots on target in a 5-2 loss. Cole Caufield led the way with six shots, Juraj Slafkovsky had four, and neither managed to score.
Caufield finished minus-1 and Slafkovsky minus-2, with two empty-net goals making the final line look even rougher.
The next game, against the Detroit Red Wings on Oct. 10, was less about misses and more about goals that never counted. Montreal put 30 shots on net in a 1-0 shootout win, but three Canadiens goals were disallowed, including one in overtime.
None of the calls should have stood, but the larger point was clear: the puck was around Detroit’s net plenty often enough to make this one interesting. Caufield had six shots again and still didn’t score a goal that counted.
Then came Buffalo on Oct. 13, when Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen took over. He stopped 35 of 38 shots and delivered a series of highlight-reel saves in a game that Montreal might have won if not for a key block with seconds left in regulation. The Canadiens created enough to force the issue, but Luukkonen slammed the door.
The trend continued in Washington on Oct. 14, even in a 5-4 loss that saw Montreal score four goals in regulation on 30 shots. Charlie Lindgren answered with some huge stops, including a remarkable rebound save on a Chris Kreider chance in the middle frame.
The shot total kept climbing. The results did not.
All told, Montreal put 131 shots on net across those four games and scored nine times, which works out to a 6.87 percent shooting efficiency. That number gets a little better when you include the five-goal outing against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Oct. 3, bringing the overall rate to 10.5 percent.
Even that would still rank no better than 23rd in the NHL. Last season, the Canadiens finished second at 12.9 percent.
One of the more encouraging signs for Montreal is that the offense is not coming only from the usual names. Josh Anderson has been one of the club’s most productive players this month, with six points - four goals and two assists - and he has also been denied by goaltenders several times in these games. Zachary Bolduc has continued to force his way into the conversation, sitting fifth on the team in scoring with five points, including three goals and two assists, and a plus-2 rating.
That production matters because some of Montreal’s other pieces are either quiet or limited. Ivan Demidov has been dealing with an injury since Oct.
- Slafkovsky has one goal and a minus-2 rating.
Caufield has three goals, one assist and a minus-1, solid enough, but not the kind of punch that changes the mood of a game every night.
The goalie situation has become another layer of the discussion. Samuel Montembeault is injured, Jakub Dobes has taken criticism, and Jacob Fowler is drawing plenty of attention.
Dobes’ numbers through four games - a 4.63 goals-against average and an .841 save percentage - are not pretty, and he should have stopped Alex Tuch on that second-period shorthanded chance. At the same time, this has not been a story about the goaltenders alone.
Montreal keeps getting beaten from distance. Nashville scored twice that way, Buffalo three times, and Washington’s winner came in similar fashion.
Those chances are often the product of deflections or screens, which leaves a goalie trying to make a read he can barely see. That’s on the team as a whole, not just the last line of defense.
The encouraging part for Montreal is that this does not feel far off. The numbers are workable.
The eye test is mostly decent. Fowler looks good.
Nick Suzuki looks good. Even with that, the Canadiens are still stuck because the margins keep tilting the wrong way.
Only two of their seven games have been decided by more than one goal, and in both of those cases the separation came through empty-net goals. That’s how thin the line has been for this team so far. The Canadiens are close enough to see what a better record could look like - but not close enough yet to make the fine details work in their favor.
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