Sometimes the best strategy is retreat, and so it is that after huddling with Canadiens management, Carey Price is taking a knee with regards to the NHL all-star game.
It’s the right decision for both player and club, given the netminder’s nagging injuries and the cross-continental travel required.
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Still, the episode prompts a question: if the Jan. 26 showcase is meant to highlight the most distinguished contribution to every NHL team in the first half (this is the idealized version of the game, rather than the marketing exercise it has become), who would best represent the 2018-19 Canadiens?
There’s a strong case to be made for Jeff Petry, who is tied for ninth among all defencemen in scoring and held the blue line together with duct tape and bubblegum through Shea Weber’s injury absence. Or perhaps for Max Domi, who leads the team in scoring.
But what if Montreal’s first-half MVP wasn’t a player at all? Let’s consider the evidence.
Coaches don’t score goals or win key faceoffs, but that’s not to say they can’t have a measurable influence on the game. And Claude Julien’s impact on the Canadiens this season, both in terms of player usage and tactics, has been unmistakable.
True, general manager Marc Bergevin has given him the kind of fleet, combative players he prefers with the likes of Domi, Tomas Tatar and Joel Armia arriving in the summer. But Julien deserves credit for overhauling the club’s playing style – and more specifically for his willingness to adapt more closely to today’s skating-is-king, fluid NHL. Part of it stems from hiring a pair of new assistants in Dominique Ducharme and Luke Richardson whose ideas have, according to the players, injected new life.
More than that, Julien and his staff have achieved something that was unthinkable as recently as September: the Canadiens are fun to watch.
He has also shored up a structural weakness that’s dogged the Canadiens for the better part of a decade, namely the team’s play at 5-on-5. It’s happened thanks to a new game plan based on cleaner breakouts, a more aggressive forecheck and quicker decision-making all over the ice. Our Arpon Basu described the new approach in detail earlier this season.
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It’s become a cliché that the only control coaches can exert on millionaire athletes is playing time, mostly because it’s true. And when it comes to deploying his assets this season, Julien staked out his ground early. He kicked off the season by scratching veterans Karl Alzner, he of the ironman streak, and Tomas Plekanec, he of the 999 career games.
His strategic rotations involving Armia, human Swiss Army knife Paul Byron, and sandpaper merchant Andrew Shaw – who has been badly missed by Domi and Jonathan Drouin since getting injured in Dallas – have tended to pay immediate dividends. That may be because he decided early on his favoured duos, and has largely stuck with them. Since the fourth game of the season Domi has played nearly all his minutes at even strength with Drouin, same for Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar, and for Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Artturi Lehkonen (or Armia, it seems Kotkaniemi is almost always accompanied by another Finn). The fourth-line combinations have also mostly stabilized over the past 20 games with Kenny Agostino and Michael Chaput the main fixtures.
Familiarity, it seems, can foster quick passing and more shots. As Tyler Dellow notes, the Canadiens’ forwards are leading the league in firing pucks at the net.
Anyway, the point is the Therrien blender has been locked in a high cupboard.
The situation has clearly benefited Domi, who rarely played more than a handful of games with the same linemates in Arizona, but has revealed himself to be a legit top-six centre under Julien’s tutelage (unlike Drouin, who struggled mightily at the position until the late stages of last season). Drouin, for his part, said after last Saturday’s loss to Nashville that the coaches’ general approach this season suits his line’s game and has “freed me up a lot more.” It shows. Despite a recent dry patch, both Drouin and Domi have already surpassed their goal totals from a year ago and are on pace for career seasons.
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Because of injury and inconsistency Julien has been forced to tinker a little more frequently with the blue line, which remains the most urgent area for Bergevin to address, but has also given his defencemen licence to exploit the middle of the ice with passing and carries, and clear, specific instructions on what he expects in terms of “killing plays”.
When it became apparent that the Jordie Benn experiment on the top pair wasn’t going to work beyond the short term, he switched gears and auditioned Victor Mete, Mike Reilly (when Petry was filling in for Weber) and then Brett Kulak.
After Mete was sent to the AHL with a specific mandate from Julien and Richardson – improving his battle level in the corners and staying tight to opposing skaters – he was swiftly returned to Weber’s side. Kulak was shifted to the third pair with Benn, which has mostly worked splendidly.
Julien has been more tolerant of Mete’s mistakes than he might have been in the past. Mete had a rough third period in a recent game against Tampa Bay, he was notably out-muscled by Adam Erne on the tying goal and also on the ice for Erne’s late winner, but it didn’t result in a benching or a different assignment in the following game against Dallas (although Benn did take a few shifts next to Weber in the early going against his former team).
The continued improvement of the 20-year-old Mete and the emergence of the 18-year-old Kotkaniemi, who it turns out is an absolute possession beast, suggest Julien’s reputation for not being able to relate to the youngs is somewhat overblown. Sure, he may have been excessively conservative in managing Kotkaniemi’s minutes against the opposition’s top players over the first 30 or 35 games, but he’s been much less so of late as it’s become clear the kid is coping just fine with the rigours of the NHL schedule.
Kotkaniemi has been popping up between Tatar and Gallagher with greater frequency over the past half-dozen games, particularly when Philip Danault’s penalty-killing load is heavy and Montreal is starting play in the offensive zone. He is also being entrusted with increasingly tricky defensive assignments. In Detroit this week Julien even sent him out to take back-to-back defensive zone draws.
As an aside, Julien made Kotkaniemi his designated sitter for bench minor penalties and situations where an extra player is needed in the box, and against Minnesota on Monday it came within a desperate Jared Spurgeon lunge of resulting in a clean breakaway. That may be a small coaching thing, but it’s still a thing.
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Put it all together, as The Athletic’s Marc Dumont did here (with cool bar charts and everything), and the year-over-year improvement at 5-on-5 is nothing short of astounding.
Just consider where the Canadiens were a year ago, and where they find themselves after 44 games. Yes, in a playoff spot, but also among the cream of the league at 5-on-5. That’s a precondition for contending in future.
It’s a stat that augurs well, given success at 5-on-5 is less subject to wild variation in the playoffs. Also, this is kind of what Julien does.
Of the top-25 possession teams at 5-on-5 since 2002-03, the year the Montreal bench boss entered league, he has coached five. Per the NHL’s official stats the Darryl Sutter-led L.A. Kings figure six times on the list; he and Julien pretty much have the market cornered on Corsi-for percentage.
This year’s Canadiens, for what it’s worth, are 18th on that list, one of four clubs from the current season. It’s been a banner year for puck-possession hockey.
If it feels like Montreal is scoring for fun this year, it’s because they are.
We’ve already highlighted Drouin and Domi, but Tatar is also on pace for a career-best season, Gallagher is on track to score 30 again, Petry is set up to hit a new high-water mark. It should be said each of the aforementioned players has had lengthy goal droughts, yet it’s scarcely mattered.
Against all odds, Montreal has the second-strongest depth scoring in the league behind Tampa. Exhibit A: Jordie Benn’s five-game point streak. It’s the 2018-19 Canadiens, everyone gets to go on at least one heater! Remember, this is a team that chalked up 2.49 goals (29th in the NHL) and 6.46 points for every 60 minutes they played in 2017-18. Those numbers have bumped up to 2.97 and 8.09 this year – comfortably in the top third of NHL teams.
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And more than just the stats is the way the goals have come. For all the snickering about “attitude” this past summer, this team has a pretty good one.
In St. Louis on Wednesday, Julien alluded to needing to do “a good selling job” in training camp to convince his players this could be a fun season. He’s evidently a talented salesman, because there is a sense of self-belief about this team that was largely absent a year ago.
The best evidence might be the number of wins they’ve pulled out despite trailing after two periods (six, which is second in the NHL, and four more than they had all last year).
Gallagher opined this week that the team has been more effective at staying with the game plan while under duress this year (anyone remember all those two-goals-in-40-seconds they gave up in 2017-18?). That the club has bought what Julien is selling suggests the product is, if not good, then at least appealing. Either way, he’ll take it.
It’s translated into improved offence at even-strength (another Julien hallmark).
According to Corsica.hockey’s expected goals model, which takes shot quality and location into consideration, the Canadiens have the sixth-highest differential in expected goals for and against. They were 19th a year ago. Given the number and location of the shots they pepper at opposing nets, their expected goals for total is only marginally behind Toronto, a consensus elite offensive team.
Despite their flaws, the Canadiens are good. Hell, they’ve even started winning in overtime. Julien has seen the light at 3-on-3 and started sending out his speediest, dangliest players (i.e. Drouin, Mete) instead of his top checkers.
No coach is perfect, and Julien isn’t an exception.
The team is weirdly bad at 4-on-4 (they’ve given up 5 goals and scored none in just under 100 minutes), he probably remains a little too fond of grit and energy on the fourth line, and does love him some veteran steadiness. None of that is fatal. There are, however, legitimate problem areas to address.
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While Montreal is producing more scoring chances overall a smaller percentage of them are of the high-danger variety, as defined by NaturalStatTrick.com, relative to last season and the conversion rate has slipped.
More worryingly, the Canadiens power play has officially morphed from tragedy into farce this season. The dogfight for playoff spots over the next two months would be made easier for Montreal if they had more than an anemic 18 power play goals. Had the Canadiens converted at a middle-of-the-pack rate through 44 games, they would have an extra nine or so goals, which translates roughly to three points in the standings. Of the 482 power play units since 2002-03, the 2018-19 Canadiens rank 474th (according to NHL.com).
Maybe the man-advantage just isn’t Julien’s deal. His clubs have only had elite power plays, short-hand for top-5 in the league, three times in 16 seasons. But here’s the thing: it hasn’t been a barrier to success. The Julien-coached 2012-13 Cup finalist Bruins (423rd of 482) and 2010-11 Cup champion Bruins (352nd) can attest to that.
The Canadiens have lost 11 one-goal games this season in regulation and overtime, hurting them in the ROW column. Would sharper shooting at 5-on-4 have helped? Not significantly. In those games the power play converted at an 18.4 per cent rate, or just a hair below the league average.
Given the Canadiens were a more-than-respectable power play team last year, it should be fixable – and improving it would make them an even tougher out. Julien has delegated man-advantage responsibilities to Kirk Muller and Ducharme, but like any manager the ultimate responsibility is his.
That said, let’s zoom back out.
The Canadiens are a dominant team at 5-on-5, which is by far the most common and crucial game situation and the hardest to boss consistently – it’s the sort of thing only good teams tend to do throughout a season. In fact, at the moment the Canadiens are one of the very best 5-on-5 teams of the past 15 years. If that holds up, it will trump whatever detriments flow from a crummy power play.
Sorting out the 5-on-5 problem in half a season is a towering achievement.
It should be recognized as such.
(Photo: Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)