When the post-mortem is done on the Canadiens’ season, one of the big failings is going to be the inability of the top six to score goals at 5-on-5. A big part of Montreal’s failure there is tied up in the minutes played by Jonathan Drouin.
Through the end of January, the average team was scoring 2.65 GF/60 during top six minutes. Montreal’s top six had scored 2.09 GF/60. That’s a difference of 0.56 GF/60. Multiply that by just over 22 hours of top six 5-on-5 ice time so far and the Canadiens have gotten more than 12 fewer goals out of their top six than the average team at 5-on-5. The top six minutes have been a disaster defensively too, but that’s the sort of thing where you cross your fingers, check capfriendly.com, and hope that a healthy Carey Price can play a big part in sorting out next year. And for seven years thereafter.
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All told, the Canadiens are 23.6 goals worse than the league average when their top six are on the ice. Only one team has been worse — somewhat inexplicably, it’s Pittsburgh. The Penguins have a somewhat more gifted top-six forward group than the Canadiens but they’ve had an awful year, kept afloat by their special teams. The rule of thumb is that a three-goal difference results in a point in the standings — if the Canadiens had average results in top six minutes, they’d be in the hunt for the wildcard despite everything else that’s gone wrong.
Incidentally, the other end of the spectrum is interesting: Tampa is +30.2 goal difference relative to league average in top six minutes. Toronto’s +23.8. Boston’s +22.3. You can put a huge chunk of the gap between Montreal and the division’s elite down to the results in 5-on-5 top six minutes. Those three teams have groups that have gotten it done. Montreal doesn’t. They’re going to the playoffs. Montreal isn’t.
There are a few things happening with the top six. This is a look at how Montreal’s top six have scored with the nine most commonly used forwards in top six minutes on the ice or off the ice. It’s sorted by time in the top six.
For all of the talk about Max Pacioretty’s disastrous season, when he’s been on the ice in top six minutes, the Canadiens have scored like an average top six team. In addition, Paul Byron, Charles Hudon and Artturi Lehkonen have actually seen Montreal’s top six score at a very respectable level when they’re on the ice. It does bear mentioning that they’ve been bit players in the top six relative to Pacioretty — he’s played 646.28 top six minutes at 5-on-5; Byron (337.03), Hudon (251.42) and Lehkonen (215.32) aren’t really top six fixtures like he’s been.
Five players have formed the core of Montreal’s top six — Pacioretty, Drouin, Phillip Danault, Andrew Shaw and Alex Galchenyuk. Outside of Pacioretty, none of them have seen the Canadiens score at a remotely acceptable level for a top six when they’re on the ice.
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Looking at possession numbers, Pacioretty, Danault, Shaw, Hudon, Lehkonen and Brendan Gallagher have all had perfectly respectable seasons.
Unfortunately, the roof has caved in on Drouin, Galchenyuk and Byron.
Drouin is the new presence in Montreal’s top six, so I’m going to look a little more closely at him. There’s no real evidence that he’s a play driver at this point in his career — he’s not someone who seems to make his team better in terms of shot attempts at 5-on-5. What’s a little more concerning is that for an offensively gifted player, his teams haven’t done particularly well historically at scoring 5-on-5 goals when he’s on the ice, just like they aren’t this year.
First, to state the obvious: Drouin is not a 5-on-5 goal scorer. He entered February as a career 6.4 per cent shooter at 5-on-5, on 298 career shots. That is a terrible shooting percentage for a forward. As a group, forwards have averaged between 8.8 and 9.3 per cent in each season since 2007-08. Icing a guy in your top six who is 30 per cent less likely to score on a given shot than the league average forward is going to be a drag on your offence.
To put Drouin’s struggles into perspective, 137 forwards have become eligible to play in the NHL starting in 2007-08 and taken at least 298 5-on-5 shots in their careers. If we look only at the first 298 shots of their careers, Drouin’s 6.4 per cent shooting percentage puts him 129th in that group, which is pretty awful.
Twelve forwards have shot 7.0 per cent or worse on their first 298 5-on-5 shots since 2007-08 and taken at least 100 shots afterwards. There’s some good news here for Drouin and the Canadiens.
This group averaged 8.8 per cent at 5-on-5 after being awful to start their careers. Not everyone managed to start finishing but enough guys did that it seems fair to think Drouin will start to finish at 5-on-5. He might have to make some changes to his game to get there but it’s probably not time to write him off his potential to score goals at 5-on-5 yet.
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Drouin’s not the only forward who can’t score when Drouin’s on the ice. It seems to be afflicting the rest of the Canadiens forwards as well. This happened last year — Tampa’s top six had a hard time scoring when Drouin was on the ice, scoring just 1.83 GF/60 with him on the ice and 2.64 GF/60 with him on the bench.
Galchenyuk, who has a history as a finisher, is shooting just 4.9 per cent at 5-on-5 with Drouin on the ice. He’s shot 8.6 per cent away from Drouin. Lehkonen is at 6.1 per cent with Drouin and hadn’t scored at 5-on-5 without him, although that changed over the weekend. Pacioretty has shot 3.4 per cent with Drouin on the ice and 6.0 per cent away from Drouin.
There’s a bit of a pattern emerging. While it’s certainly possible that Drouin’s been unfortunate at 5-on-5 to this point in his career, Drouin and the Canadiens probably need to drill into his game over the summer and see whether or not there’s something about how he plays that results in a lot of low percentage shots. There’s no evidence to this point in his career that he can survive in a top six role like someone like Mikael Backlund, making up for mediocre finishing with overwhelming possession ability. He needs to generate goals when he’s on the ice. He hasn’t for two years.
As a result, Montreal is in an incredibly difficult position. They’re quite reasonably looking at moving on from Pacioretty, given his age, contract status and where the Canadiens are at. The problem with that is even in a bad year, he still looks like a 5-on-5 driver for Montreal and one who turns possession into goals. Drouin isn’t that yet and in Pacioretty’s absence, Montreal’s top six looks like a wasteland at 5-on-5.
This isn’t to say Drouin has been a complete disaster. If you’re looking for positives in Montreal’s season, one of them has been that Claude Julien seems to have stitched together the first high end power play unit that the Canadiens have had in a while. Drouin is at the heart of it; curiously, Shea Weber isn’t. Weber’s injury prompted the Canadiens to slide Jeff Petry onto PP1. Petry doesn’t have Weber’s shot, nor does his reputation command that he’s at the heart of the power play in the same way that Weber’s does.
There’s been a lot of personnel shuffling on Montreal’s PP1 but you could fairly describe it like so: Drouin and Pacioretty in a 4F1D. Through the end of January, Montreal had played 241.15 minutes of 5-on-4 time. Of that, 55.58 minutes had been PP1 minutes with Weber on the ice. In those minutes, Montreal scored 5.4 GF/60 on 63.7 SF/60. 46.6 minutes had been PP1 minutes with Petry on the ice. Montreal scored 10.3 GF/60 on 68.2 SF/60 in that time.
There’s a little more to it than that though. Weber’s a Famous Power Play Shooter and when he’s on the ice, he attempts a lot of shots. When he’s on the ice in PP1 minutes, 31.9 per cent of the shot attempts have been attempted by him. With Petry, that number’s just 20.8 per cent.
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If you’re an NHL coach, and you’re offered a PP1 that produces 9+ GF/60 at the start of the season, you grab it with both hands and hold on tight. It was predictable that Drouin and Weber would be an awkward fit but Montreal seems to have found something now that works, which isn’t all that surprising, given Drouin’s history of power play wizardry.
So it’s not all bad for Montreal and Drouin. He’s been as advertised on the power play. He hasn’t been a solution at 5-on-5 though and, if he and the Canadiens can’t figure it out, he’s a limited player for the salary they’re paying him. The seemingly imminent (and, in my view, defensible) Pacioretty trade is only going to exacerbate this issue.
(Top photo credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports)