The Canadiens are the luckiest team in the NHL

As you can see, the NHL’s second-ranked team (the Hawks) is at 13.2%. That’s a difference of 1.5 percentage points, which is no mean feat.

It may not sound like much… but if we continue downwards, we see that if we take 1.5 points off the Blackhawks, we’re at 11.7%. That puts us in 10th place.

In other words?

It’s a tight race between second and tenth place, and the Canadiens are alone on their island with such a high percentage of success.

Is there a reason for this? The Canadiens are more opportunistic than average, given that they don’t take many shots on net, but still score often.

We’ve known for a long time that the Habs need to take more shots on net. It’s been documented.

What you need to know is that maintaining such a high percentage is statistically… improbable. I was going to say impossible, but we’ll leave ourselves a small margin of error.

When a club is this lucky at the start of the season, it can’t sustain that.

In the past, teams haven’t managed to finish at 14.7%: the leaders are more often than not in the 12% range (at most) once the regular season is over.

Remember Jake Evans last year: he started out strong because he had a good shooting percentage… but normalcy quickly returned. Anomalies do exist.

If the percentage is set to fall and the Canadiens, who need to win games, want to score at the same rate, the conclusion is clear: Martin St-Louis’s men need to shoot more often, in order to increase their volume.

In this case, the figures confirm the famous eye test: you have to shoot more.

The Canadiens’ players often make too many passes, even when they’re outnumbered. We see Lane Hutson or Ivan Demidov attempting (superb) passes when they have opportunities to shoot.

Some players will have to be selfish and shoot more often, to help the Habs become a real playoff team in the coming months.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. – Wayne Gretzky

It’s also worth remembering that, after starting the season against more… catchable opponents, the Canadiens will have some tough duels on the menu in the coming weeks.

Shooting on goal won’t be a luxury if they’re looking for W’s.

overtime

– Interesting.

– Oh…

– All the better.

– Personnel changes in Toronto.