Marc Dumont
We continue our series preview ahead of the first-round matchup between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
We know that the team that wins the battle at 5v5 will have healthy chances of emerging victorious from the series. Additionally, the organization that features the best special teams will have a significant advantage when it comes to securing wins.
Beyond those crucial elements, let’s take a look at a few X factors that will impact the series between the Canadiens and the Lightning.
Top Line Players
It’s no secret the Canadiens will live and die by the first line’s ability to generate a sustainable level of offence. The Lightning are well aware of this, which means Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Cole Caufield will likely face Yanni Gourde, Pontus Holmberg, and Zemgus Girgensons, Tampa Bay’s top shutdown line.
While playing together, that line has controlled almost 54.5% of the shots, as well as 55.7% of the expected goals at 5v5. In the admittedly limited sample size versus the Habs of just 30 minutes, they’ve actually controlled over 70% of the shots and 90% of the expected goals.
In a short series, matchups will play a crucial role, and it seems the most important matchup for the Canadiens will involve their elite top line versus Tampa’s excellent shutdown trio. Or perhaps more accurately, finding ways to get their top line away from the Lightning’s best defensive players.
On the flip side of the coin, it may seem like the most obvious advice in hockey history, but the Canadiens would help their odds considerably by keeping a close eye on Nikita Kucherov.
The elite skater finished the year with 130 points, good for second overall in the NHL, trailing just Connor McDavid (138 points). The second-most productive Lightning player was Jake Guentzel, who finished the season with 88 points. This represents a 42-point discrepancy, considerably more than the 13-point gap between the top Canadiens point producer (Suzuki, 101 points) and the penultimate forward (Caufield, 88 points).
It’s much too easy to suggest shutting down Kucherov is the key for the Habs, especially since no team is yet to figure out how to accomplish this lofty goal, but the fact remains the Canadiens will want to monitor Kucherov’s every move throughout the series.
In 42 career games versus the Habs, Kucherov has scored 20 goals and added 29 assists.
Freshman Goaltenders
It’s incredibly rare to see two rookie netminders tasked with defending a net heading into a playoff series. First-year skaters are a little more common, because it’s a lot easier to convince a coach to enter the playoffs with a handful of rookie players than it is with a duo of rookie netminders.
The Canadiens will have to rely on either Jakub Dobes or Jacob Fowler stealing the show, though there still is an outside chance, albeit a low one, that we will see veteran netminder Samuel Montembeault in the mix.
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This could be seen as a clear-cut negative, given Dobes and Fowler’s lack of NHL experience, but the Montreal Canadiens are not your run-of-the-mill club. First-year players taking on important roles isn’t just more common than in other NHL cities, it’s part of the path to success in Montreal.
In the long run, this could end up being the start of a trend in the NHL, where goaltending results entirely usurp experience as the most important factor driving usage in the playoffs.
Rookie Impact
Fowler and Dobes are not the only rookies expected to play their part in the series. Ivan Demidov and Oliver Kapanen are expected to drive the charge on the second line, once again giving credence to the theory that head coach Martin St-Louis does a great job trusting his young players in important roles.
On top of Demidov Kapanen, there’s Adam Engstrom and David Reinbacher on the blue line, two rookies who could end up playing with more frequency if injuries occur, or if Noah Dobson’s thumb injury does not heal before more games are added to the docket.
To give you an idea of how both teams prefer to trust different age groups, Tampa Bay’s top scoring rookie is centre Dominic James, who has scored seven goals and eight assists in 43 games.
Montreal, on the other hand, has the league’s top scoring rookie in Demidov (62 points), not to mention the rookie with the third-most goals in Kapanen (22).
All Montreal Canadiens statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted, via Natural Stat Trick.
