Montreal Canadiens Analysis: Comparing Year-To-Year Scoring

Now that the Montreal Canadiens have played 30 percent of their scheduled games, we have a healthy sample size to pull from when analyzing the play from various individuals.

Those of you that follow my coverage know that I like to combine predictive and descriptive stats. In other words, I am well aware that predictive stats are important, as they tend to paint a clearer picture of what to expect in the future, but eventually, you need to see results, such is life for professional athletes. It’s a reality that cannot be ignored.

It’s also key to include game footage to back up any type of conclusion based purely on numbers. Hockey is a complex sport that involves an endless stream of variables, making the context in which the numbers were produced a crucial part of any type of analysis. Once you figure out the ‘what’, you need to take a look at footage to understand the ‘why’.

That being said, forgive my hypocrisy if I take a much more blunt approach to this article and ignore my own rules.

We’re simply going to compare individual production from year-to-year to get a general idea of how some players are progressing. This means the statistics we will use are restricted to the first 24 games of the year in both seasons.

Montreal Canadiens Forward Production at 5v5 (points per 60)

The Canadiens are enjoying a slight uptick in 5v5 production, going from 2.29 goals per 60 at 5v5 last year to 2.47 in 2024-25. That may not seem like much, but they went from a bottom-five team in goals per 60 to a mid-pack team, which is quite the improvement.

There was a fair amount of turnover, with Tanner Pearson, Jesse Ylonen, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Sean Monahan, Michael Pezzetta, and Sean Monahan removed from our comparison, as they are either no longer on the team, or have not played enough to be included in this article. Joel Armia and Kirby Dach are not in play either, as they missed too many games to start the 2023-24 season to take part in the comparison.

The metric we will use today is points per 60 (5v5).

The biggest drop in production belongs to Alex Newhook, who was leading the team in points per 60 (5v5) at this point last season. He is the only player other than Dvorak who has seen his scoring rate decline. The player who has improved the most is none other than Josh Anderson, though it must be said the bar was rather low in his case.

I’d argue Suzuki improving his scoring rate by such a margin when he was already one of the most productive players in the lineup is the most impressive result. The same can be said for Caufield who has done most of his damage by scoring goals.

It’s also worth noting Juraj Salfkovsky took a big step forward, as he’s the only other skater who is in the 2+ points per 60 club in 2024-25. He needs to take more shots, but the reports of Slafkovsky’s collapse have been greatly exaggerated.

Montreal Canadiens Defenceman Production at 5v5

So, if the forwards are generally producing more than last year, the issue must be among defencemen.

Again, we’re dealing with a ton of turnover, but from the four players who were in place to start the last two seasons, only Matheson has improved his 5v5 production.

Of course, this ignores the fact that Lane Hutson (1.07 pts/60) and Jayden Struble (1.25 pts/60) currently lead all defenceman in 5v5 scoring, yet another reason why this should be considered quick and dirty analysis, at best.

Montreal Canadiens Brass Tacks

At this point last season, both Barron and Johnathan Kovacevic had scored four 5v5 goals, which led to the Canadiens being among the top NHL teams in blue line production.

In total, Canadiens defencemen had scored 14 times at 5v5, compared to just seven this year.

The production has been halved, mitigating much of the steady improvements from forwards.

A lot of this has to do with the head coach, Martin St-Louis. He implored his defencemen to jump into the play as often as possible last year, whereas he’s preached a little more caution this season. Both Guhle and Matheson are shooting with much less frequency, while Hutson only ranks ahead of Savard when it comes to generating shots from the backend.

Despite the change, I’d argue this season is a much healthier situation, as you don’t want to count on elevated shooting percentages from defencemen to keep you afloat.

With the risk of being labelled a reductionist, forwards are meant to score, and defencemen are meant to, well, defend. That’s not to say the Canadiens are better off receiving less production from the blue line, but the situation last year was far from sustainable.

All Montreal Canadiens statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted. Via Natural Stat Trick.