Marc Dumont
The Montreal Canadiens will face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the 2026 NHL Playoffs, a repeat of the 2021 Stanley Cup Final.
Of course, much has changed between then and now, particularly for the Habs. They’re the youngest team in the league, and they’ll be facing a much older Lightning lineup, one overflowing with playoff experience.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the important statistics that will play a big part in deciding the victor of this first-round series. We’ll start with the 5v5 numbers before moving onto special teams in a following analysis piece.
Canadiens And Lightning At 5v5
To get a better idea of which team is expected to carry the momentum, we can take a closer look at three particular team-driven statistics.
The first is shot share, which is simply the percentage of shots a team controls in a certain period of time. It’s often represented as ‘Corsi For %’, or ‘CF%’. I prefer using the term shot share, since it’s straightforward.
For example: if there are 10 shots in a period, and one team controlled eight of them, they would have an 80% shot share. If there were 100 shots in a game, and a team generated 40 of them, their shot share would be 40%.
As you can see in the chart below, the Lightning did a fantastic job controlling the shots throughout the season, finishing with the third-highest shot share in the NHL. The Canadiens are at the other end of the spectrum, having controlled just 48.6% of the shots, good for 23rd in the league.
Expected goal share takes a few factors into account, including shot quality, shot location, and shot types. A deflected shot will have better odds of scoring than an unblocked shot from the point, therefore it will carry a higher expected goal value.
The Canadiens control the same percentage of expected goals as their shot share, not to mention the same ranking of 23rd in the league. The Lightning do a much better job in this respect, and find themselves among the top-5 teams in the NHL when it comes to their expected goal share.
As for the high-danger shot share, once again the Lightning find themselves leaps and bounds above the Canadiens. The lack of high-danger scoring chances has been an ongoing issue for the Habs since the rebuild began roughly five years ago.
Goaltending And Shooting
The Lightning goaltenders do a better job than their Canadiens counterparts, though it should be noted that the numbers include the results produced by Samuel Montembeault, a netminder who is unlikely to feature as a starter versus Tampa Bay.
Regardless, it’s clear that the Lightning have the goaltending advantage at 5v5, particularly when it comes to stopping high-danger shots.
As for the shooting efficiency, you’ll note the Canadiens actually managed to finish ahead of the Lightning, as they were the team with the highest shooting percentage at 5v5 in the entire league. I’d suggest this isn’t necessarily a good sign, because a low volume, high-efficiency team risks going cold in a short series, especially if some of the team’s best snipers can’t find their rhythm.
That being said, at the very least, you can argue that Habs have slightly better accuracy, though the Lightning are first in the NHL when it comes to their high-danger shooting percentage, which mitigates much of the advantage the Canadiens have in the shooting department.
Goals
The final numbers we’ll evaluate are simple, and offer a little solace to Habs fans who are hoping to see an upset, with an emphasis on ‘little’.
Both the Canadiens and the Lightning are great at scoring goals, while the latter are better at preventing pucks from ending up in their net.
Montreal Canadiens Brass Tacks
Admittedly, the numbers do not paint an encouraging picture for the Canadiens. For all intents and purposes, they are the underdogs, and by a rather wide margin, too.
Jon Cooper is likely to lawyer his way through a speech that somehow paints the Canadiens as the favourites, but make no mistake, there’s very little in the numbers to suggest the Lightning should be considered anything but massive favourites to win the first round series.
It’s also important to remember hockey is not played on a spreadsheet, and the Canadiens have a funny way of making the numbers seem irrelevant once the final whistle blows.
The playoffs are a different kind of animal, where passion can trump logic.
Besides, there are other stats that paint a different picture of the upcoming match up.
If we filter the results to the four games in which the Canadiens and Bolts faced off, the numbers are more encouraging. Each team won two game, with the Habs emerging victorious in the final two meetings of the season.
Canadiens vs. Lightning Head To Head (5v5)
As you can see, the Montreal Canadiens actually held a fairly significant advantage in shot share in the four games versus the Lightning. In fact, Tampa Bay controlling only 47.2% of the shots was among the worst results of any opponents in a season series vs. Montreal.
On the flip side of the coin, as per usual, the Canadiens failed miserably when it came to controlling high-danger shots.
Interestingly, the Lightning received better goaltending, and better shooting, including saves and goals on high-danger shots.
Simply put, they capitalized on their chances with a much higher frequency than the Habs, while being outshot by a team that struggled to generate many shots throughout the season. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Montreal Canadiens will outshoot the Lightning in every game, but it’s definitely a situation worth keeping in mind as we await puck drop in Game One of the first-round series.
All Montreal Canadiens statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted, via Natural Stat Trick.
