The Montreal Canadiens have chosen an odd and ill-advised moment to test out a new, advanced, and almost transcendental hockey analytics notion. Either that, or the Carolina Hurricanes are putting together the first five-game sweep in history.
Either way, we're getting something we've never seen before, and we're only going to get one more chance, Friday night in Raleigh, to see it. That is, unless the Canadiens manage to perfect their new signature move: scoring without shooting. It's only worked once so far, and that by accident, but head coach Martin St. Louis has fallen in love with the concept and has watched his lads lose their last three games in pursuit of it. Indeed, it can be said that the idea, which was sparked by their Game 7 win over Tampa Bay in the first round, has been their great white whale ever since. And never mind that they are now down eradication-to-one in the Eastern Conference Final … they are like a dog without a bone, and they will not be deterred from their goal of avoiding shooting.
Wednesday night they were blitzed 4-0, and the highlights were established early when they waited eight minutes to take their first shot on a goal, a tip attempt from their repeated Game 7 hero Alex Newhook. By they time they took their third shot, Carolina with their world-weary and traditional method had scored three times, and after an aberrant second period in which Montreal took a normal amount of shots (10) and got nothing for it, they went back to the plan and put no shots on goal over the first 17 minutes of the third period. Carolina didn't score either in that entire stretch, but as soon as Nick Suzuki went rogue and ripped a 30-footer at narcoleptic Carolina goalie Frederik Andersen, the Hurricanes became angry at the Canadiens' effrontery and first hit the Montreal crossbar (Nik Ehlers) then scored seconds later (Andrei Svechnikov) for the completely gratuitous fourth goal. It's almost as if the two teams had agreed ahead of time that Montreal would stop trying to score, and when Suzuki broke the pact, the Canes used their old-fashioned methods to punish the Habs for backing away from their innovative spirit.
If this was just one game, fine. Weird stuff happens all the time. Just ask the Colorado Avalanche, or American democracy. But the 18 shots the Canadiens took in Game 4 (three at the end just for poops and cackles) was not the first time Montreal has tried this. They took 13 shots, including one each in the third period and overtime, in Game 3, and only 12 in their overtime loss in Game 2. Even in their anomalous 6-2 win in Game 1, they took only nine shots in the last two periods, although in fairness they were protecting a 4-1 lead. Since that second period began, in which they re-road-tested their shotless hockey theory, Carolina has put 122 shots on Montreal's poor bastard/goalie Jakub Dobes while taking only 49. Their last three games have set an NHL record for fewest shots in any three-game stretch since the league started counting shots on goal—in 1956, when the puck was made of hay.
In fact, this truly started in that Tampa game in which they won 2-1, despite taking only nine shots (the sixth fewest in the sport's history), including none in a 26-minute, 55-second stretch between the late first and early third periods. That game gave the good people of Francophone Canada reason to believe that this team was not only special but kissed by genius, a feeling they doubled down on when they beat Buffalo in the second round. All those good vibes convinced St. Louis that they were on to something, so they have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and now quintupled down on their faith. Presumably in this world their perfect game is one in which they take no shots, and the only goal is scored when the opponent missed a pass from behind the Montreal net with sufficient force to go down the ice and beat the other goalie's five-hole.
So far, though, the strategy, analytically appealing though it might be, has been exposed as flawed. It certainly hasn't done well with their test audiences in the Bell Centre, where the fans have alternated between booing their heroes and screaming "Tirer au but!"
Now it could be that this Carolina team is just a superior defensive team, checking furiously and owning all three thirds of the rink; to hear observers rave about Shayne Gostisbehere, K'Andre Miller and Jaccob Slavin more often than Ehlers, Logan Stankoven, Taylor Hall, and Sebastian Aho, the under-initiated would suspect that the Canes are the best checking team of the modern age. That can't be, of course, although we are perfectly prepared to abandon this notion if they do the same thing to the equally check-proficient Vegas Golden Knights in the least interesting final in recent memory. No, we prefer to think that the Canadiens are ahead of their time by trying to create offense by not creating offense.
What we have learned from this is that there is no such thing as a bad idea as long as it is tested earlier in the season—like training camp. This seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment decision by the Canadiens based on their Tampa win, and its efficacy has waned with repeated attempts. Maybe it just needs more R&D. That can be either research & development, or rejection & dismissal.
