How can the Canadiens generate chances against the Hurricanes?

The Montreal Canadiens are still very much in their Eastern Conference Final series against the Carolina Hurricanes, but are facing an uphill task when it comes to generating high-quality scoring chances. 

After struggling to produce any offense in Game 3 on home ice, the focus turns to Game 4 and the rest of the series, as they look to take advantage of less-than-stellar form from Frederik Andersen in between the pipes for the Hurricanes. 

On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, film coach and analyst Steve Peters joined co-hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to break down how Montreal may be able to produce more chances. 

Tyler Yaremchuk: What does Montreal need to do in Game 4? We made a big deal yesterday of the fact that, like, Montreal just can’t get shots on net, they can’t get this offense going. What do the Canadiens need to do to finally start generating against this Carolina team?

Steve Peters: The one thing about Montreal is that there is a concern about their shots on goal. They’ve had under 20 shots on goal five times in these playoffs, but they know how to score when they get the opportunities. Of those five games where they’ve only been able to generate 20 shots or fewer, they only lost one of those games in regulation, and I know overtime losses don’t count the same as they do games in the regular season, but it shows how close they are, even when they’re dominated in the shots. 

Now, Carolina is a shot-volume team. A lot of those shots are coming from the outside that aren’t so difficult, but the problem for Montreal is that Jakub Dobes has got to be their best player. They’ve got to withstand the Hurricanes as it is, and they’ve got to capitalize when they get opportunities, because they’re just so few and far between against a team that just doesn’t give them up.

How are they going to get pucks up? One, they have to capitalize on every mistake that Carolina makes. If Carolina turns the puck over, Montreal has to get to the net hard because Carolina is aggressive and leaves holes behind. That aggressive play leaves holes behind. Montreal has to capitalize, and they’ve got to get the puck up the ice quickly. When they did this, when you have one pass that beats three or four checkers, and you can get up the ice quickly, you can generate offense against the Carolina Hurricanes, and that’s what Montreal does. 

Montreal plays fast; they’re quicker on pucks when they can win these foot races. Again, we talk about Carolina chasing pucks. When you chase pucks, you leave openings. When you leave openings, you give opportunities. So, Montreal has to do that by moving the puck quicker than Carolina can move up the ice. So, continually, they have to get that puck up the ice, they have to keep it along the walls, nothing through the middle of the ice in your own zone. Then, you have to hope that Carolina makes an aggressive mistake through the neutral zone, which they have done over and over again by being overly aggressive, leaving holes up the middle of the ice.

It all starts with getting that puck up the ice quickly with your best players and avoiding those turnovers along the wall, because they’ve got to generate more offense. You cannot win continually against a team like this unless you can get these kinds of battles at the net front. And lastly, your best players have to be your best players.

You can catch the full Canadiens shot-generation breakdown and the rest of Wednesday’s show here…