Montreal Canadiens Role Profiles: Cole Caufield

As we get into the dog days of summer and until training camp, thesickpodcast.com will profile Montreal Canadiens players based on their expected role for the 2026-27 NHL season.

Today, we look at the Montreal Canadiens’ top goal scorer Cole Caufield, who hopes to repeat the same feats that he achieved during the 2025-26 regular season. Will Caufield be able to pull off back-to-back 50-goal seasons?

Caufield is coming off an incredible year in which he became the first 50-goal scorer for the Canadiens since Stephane Richer accomplished the feat in the 1989-90 campaign. The 5’7 sniper’s 51 goals in 81 games were good enough for the second most in the NHL behind Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon. While he didn’t end up taking home the Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal scorer, Caufield was able to walk away with the Lady Byng Trophy for the most gentlemanly player who also exemplifies a high standard of play.

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After such a great regular season, the playoffs were harder for the diminutive forward who would often look invisible when he wasn’t able to score during the Montreal Canadiens’ 19-game postseason run. Caufield finished with a respectable 6 goals and 13 points (he had a career high in playoff points) but finished a team worst -10, failing to make a major impact. The majority of his offence came on the man advantage, where he had a lot more space to make plays during the tight-checking hockey. At even strength during the post-season, Caufield finished with only 2 goals and an assist. 

In the end, the whole season went down as a tale of two stories: the excellence that led to Caufield being a 50-goal scorer and the inability to overcome the tight-checking hockey in the playoffs that usually favours bigger players.

As for this upcoming season, Caufield’s role on the team shouldn’t change, but his expectations to perform will be a lot higher than they have ever been before, given what he accomplished in the 2025-26 season. However, the reality is that Caufield likely won’t be able to match the 51 goals that he scored last season, considering just how hard it is to score in the NHL. Since the 2005 NHL lockout, only two players have been able to score 50 goals in consecutive seasons: Dany Heatley (2005-06 & 2006-07) and Alex Ovechkin (two different streaks: 2007-08 to 2009-10 and 2013-14 to 2015-16). With that being said, it is extremely unlikely that Caufield can do it, but it is possible if he can have another perfectly healthy season. Not to mention, there will be two more games in 2026-27, which could help, but the truth is it’s not likely to happen still.

Although the likelihood of Caufield scoring 50+ goals for a second year in a row is very slim, given the history of it happening in the league, he has shown that he is officially among the most elite goal scorers in the world. This means the expectations for him to have a successful season are at a minimum of 40 goals, despite last year being the only time that he also hit that mark thus far. Nonetheless, at 25 years old, he is just entering his prime and should have multiple 40-goal seasons throughout his career. 

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Therefore, the regular season expectations with Caufield being a first-line forward alongside Nick Suzuki and likely Juraj Slafkovsky are that we see the Montreal Canadiens sniper record his second 40+ goal season, but to expect 50 goals again seems like a lofty task even with the 84-game schedule.

Come playoff time, Caufield will be expected to adjust his game better to the tight-checking hockey of the postseason so that he and his linemates will be more prepared to perform. After a 19-game run, Caufield likely learned a lot about what it is like to play playoff hockey as a smaller star player and will be able to have a better plan in the near future.

In case you missed it, here is yesterday’s role expectations article on Mike Matheson.