Stanley Cup favorites: Montreal Canadiens

This is part two of my series on the teams I view as the Stanley Cup favorites. You can read part one on the Pittsburgh Penguins here.

Montreal

After last year when the Canadiens finished dead last in the Eastern conference I did not expect them to rebound this quickly. But have they ever! In this sprint of a season the Candiens have been invigorated by rookies Brendan Gallagher and Alex Galchenyuk, the resurgence of a healthy Andrei Markov, and most of all the emergence of a trio of young stars entering their prime Carey Price, Max Pacioretty, and P. K. Subban.

Montreal has rebounded from being a below average scoring team last year (19^th overall) to ranking 5^th in goals scored. This has been driven by the power play. Montreal is ranked 4^th in power play percentage (21.89%) but has scored a league leading 37 PPGs due to the fact that they’ve also drawn the most penalties in the league. And Montreal is drawing all of these penalties because it usually has the puck. The Canadiens Fenwick Close number ranks 4^th in the league at 53.57%. The team’s PDO (combined shooting and save percentage) is a little high (1013), good for 9^th in the league. Their luck may have started to turn, as they gave up 12 goals in the past two games. But the strong puck possession numbers suggest their place among the Eastern conference elite is not a fluke.

The NHL playoffs are always unpredictable, and anything can happen, especially in the first round. But with its power play supplying the offense and a decent chance that Price gets hot, Montreal could have a recipe for a deep playoff run coming almost 20 years since Les Habitants last raised Lord Stanley’s Cup.