Hi. My name is Max. I am an intern data analyst for a professional hockey team in Europe. I don’t think I know everything and that I will tell the whole story and I don’t think analytics do (even if they can give us a lot of informations). The goal of my introduction is basically to turn you off. To complete the intro, I will say that if you are a Habs fan that likes positivism, you should probably stop reading at the end of the sentence. I really hate positivism and my goal is to make clicks through articles where I paint the Canadiens as a bad team. The goal of the article will be to put the light on a few of the things that went under the radar (in my opinion) since Martin St-Louis took over the coaching duties. Of course, the sample size is small (25 or 26 games), but I feel it’s enough to show some of the first early trends that I see so far. Be ready to not like what I will write about. I am not a hater. But, if we hear mostly good things from the MSL era, what might fly under the radar might not share the same utopic vibes.
Caufield, Suzuki and Romanov’s struggles
Maybe I am following the wrong people on social medias, but I feel that I have not heard anything bad about Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki and Alex Romanov since the beginning of the Martin St-Louis era. Before everyone throws me tomatoes, I feel that Cole Caufield deserves a lot of credit for taking advantage of the coaching change to build on that new boost of confidence. Him and Suzuki have significantly improved their point production (see below) and they are carrying the team’s offense while offering an entertaining show to watch.
You will tell me “You are praising them a lot… but where are you going with this… it smells fishy” and I will tell you that you are right. Just like for any other player, producing a lot of points is not synonym of flawless performances. Actually, points can be a veil that shifts our attention away from what actually happens (just like currency is a veil shifting attention away from bigger issues in economics ; my globalization teacher would be proud of me for using his course in a hockey article). For Romanov, the veil is actually one of my favourite stat…
… but we will come back to him later. Let’s focus on Caufield and Suzuki first. What is @woumaxx so shy of telling us? Here it is. Remember that I will talk about 5v5 (because they have done pretty good on PP). As much as they have both improved offensively (a little bit), they both became horrible defensively and they are a big part of the reason why the Canadiens are getting outchanced on a nightly basis. Their improvement offensively is not significant enough to compensate for disastrous they are defensively.
After doing my job of watching tapes because analytics is not only making graphs in Excel. Here are some findings I can make of the Random_guy — Suzuki — Caufield line :
The defensemen are usually responsible for the zone exits while Caufield and Random_guy wait for the puck somewhere close to the line indicating the separation between the two halves of the ice. Which means.. that when the breakout pass doesn’t work or breakout play dies before the expected zone entry by MTL, the Canadiens usually get caught allowing an odd-man rush chance.
I don’t know a lot about systems so a coach or a tactician could correct me here, but it seems like the Canadiens are playing a man-to-man game defensively where they are applying big pressure on the carrier of the puck from what I understand.
Caufield is pretty involved defensively. Usually, his line communicates a lot defensively when they are stuck in the defensive zone so that each player has a man to cover. The only problem is that the execution is not there yet. As much as they seem to try, they are a little bit slow to correct their mistakes.
… and since they play against the opposing teams top players most of the times, they usually pay for their mistakes.
I have noticed that Cole Caufield cheats a little bit. He will often start to skate to be open for a pass (breakaway) when his team doesn’t necessarily have good control of the puck yet. Usually, it gives chaotic hockey where Cole Caufield gets a nice odd-man rush scoring chance followed by an odd-man scoring chance against the Canadiens (where they didn’t completely had time to settle defensively).
From the tapes, I have re-watched, it gives some really entertaining hockey when Suzuki-Caufield are on the ice… where you know as a fan that you will feel an amazing 2 minutes of hockey because there will be (generally odd-man) scoring chances at an insane rate but you don’t know what team will have the edge during those 2 minutes. Here is a tape of the game against the Devils that illustrates pretty well what I am saying. MTL starts with a scoring chances, fails to convert, 2 players get caught in the offensive zone on the rush chance against (which creates confusion defensively and MTL always leaves a man open), then MTL gets a good rush chance, NJD recovers the puck and enters in MTL’s territory easily.
That last play where Bratt enters the zone will set up my next point about Alexander Romanov. Could also talk about his bad pinch a few seconds later.
Since the top line is getting smoked at 5v5, it should not be a surprise that the top pair has similar on ice results (since they are more likely to be on the ice together. With Captain Weber disappearing retiring, General Petry injured and the Big Ben playing big minutes under the sun of Sunrise, it was the perfect opportunity to see how the Tsar could do in a BIG role. Spoiler alert : as much as “Romanov played over 20 minutes” sounds really nice, it turns out that on the ice, it’s not super nice.
Before everyone start to hate me, allow me to say this : I don’t think there is a single NHL player doing everything correctly. I don't think there is an NHL player doing nothing correctly. So when I will talk about Alexander Romanov, I will probably expose his bad habits, but it does not mean that he is the level of a minor leaguer. Romanov is an NHL defenseman. He has some flaws and some areas of his game he needs to work on to improve his game as a player.
The graph above (thank you so much HockeyViz.com) shows a bunch of really cool informations. What is really cool here is… his D partner and his smoothed 5v5 xG/60 (that basically shows that the team has allowed a lot of xG against when he was on the ice at 5v5 in the last 10 games). The St-Louis effect did him good at first. But after 10 good games, he got to play on the 1st pair and it became really bad…
After watching a lot of Romanov hockey in the hours, here is what I have to say about his game :
Romanov had his best moments with
Habs legendBrett Kulak when they were a lock on the 3rd pair of the Canadiens. Romanov was doing a fine job defensively and Kulak was taking care of the offense. It was a perfect 3rd pair for Montréal.Moving Romanov to the top pair had for positive immediate impact to… increase his averaged time on ice per game…
and to put some light on a few elements of his game he should work on if he wants to be a top-4 D one day.He is not a puck-moving defenseman… and we should forget about him running a Power-Play one day (unless his game significantly improves). In Europe, there is a chance that he gets an offensive role, but in NHL, #27 is a defensive defenseman and he is slowly developing into a modern version of Alexei Emelin.
He has some flashes of elite defenseman once in a while (like amazing breakout passes), but his game remains average overall and nothing really stands out except for his physicality (and you need a little more to be a top-pair defenseman).
He struggles with his decision making. Bad pinches, bad timing for hits (like he goes for the “big hit” instead of playing defense and he gets walked). Here’s an exhibit of what I am talking about.
He has a big shot. But, most of the times, he shoots when there is no screen in front of the net and he mostly shoots from the blue line instead of walking the line and take a shot from closer to the net (for a better scoring chance). On Barron’s goal, #52 walks the line and takes a good screened shot. Romanov rarely makes those type of plays that lead to better scoring chances (juicing the expected goal stats) and is rarely involved offensively. Like I said, he has a big shot, it summarizes his offensive game.
He has a few flashes were he is better than what my analysis suggests, but in my opinion, it is far to be the norm in his case.
“My two cents”
What is the cause behind 14-22’s struggles? I think… and I say I think (because it’s my opinion)… that St-Louis has a defensive system that they are still trying to figure out and it might take time for them (and St-Louis) to learn and execute the defensive plan correctly, but I am pretty sure that they won’t look as bad as they are now defensively once they get more time to master the art of “being really good offensively without necessarily being a liability defensively”. Also, in Edmundson, Savard, Romanov, etc., the Canadiens have a lots of defensemen in the wrong chairs right now, and a lot of them (all those I named) struggle on transitions (with zone exits, neutral zone play). Harris and Schueneman gave me the impressions that they could be the players that might help Caufield and Suzuki (and everyone else) to breakout with more efficiency. Caufield and Suzuki are carrying the Canadiens offense. They are the face of the franchise right now and I feel that there is a lot of positive things that we can notice from those two. Should we split them? Maybe. I think that Ylönen deserves a chance with both of them before we think about splitting them. Is it the best thing to let them (and Romanov) learn a maximum of top-line experience in a lost season? Maybe. I don’t think there is a right answer. It is all about trying things and sticking with what is working. For Romanov, I don’t have much more to say. He plays big minutes, but his pair with Edmundson doesn’t work at all. They bring nothing offensively, but they are also easy to play against defensively. A change of partner is much needed here. I also think that he shouldn’t be playing as much as he does lately. He will be more efficient on a 2nd-ich 3rd pair in my opinion. When you play with Edmundson/Chiarot on top-pair, it’s not necessarily the best context to develop your game, so there’s that. The Canadiens’ roster got significantly worse since the trade deadline because the prospect bank and the draft picks bank got a little bit more stacked so it could also explain why some players were pushed in situation where their flaws get more exposed.
Of course, I am missing a lot of big things of the MSL era, but I made the intentional choice to focus on Caufield-Suzuki-Romanov because I like clicks and it will help me to make a lot of money with all the clicks I will make. Let me know what do you think of what I wrote. I won’t necessarily have time to discuss because it is the end of the semester and I am working on some cool hockey project that I can’t wait to show you once I am done. But leave your comments, death threats, love declarations and have a good day.