Extraordinarily bad defence sinks Sharks and Habs

The Montreal Canadiens and San Jose Sharks may be thousands of kilometres apart geographically, but there are a striking number of similarities between the two franchises.

A decade ago, you would say the common denominator between the two organizations were raucous fans and a deadly home-ice advantage – trying to win a game at the Bell Centre or SAP Center was usually quite the uphill battle. Nowadays, it’s about both teams trying to navigate their way out of incredibly deep rebuilds, and the challenges they are experiencing along the way.

Both franchises were hoping last season would be the effective nadir of the rebuild cycle. Montreal has finished dead last in the Atlantic Division for three years straight, collecting heaps of premium picks in the process. San Jose, meanwhile, has not finished higher than sixth in the Pacific Division over the past five years, and just landed new face-of-the-franchise Macklin Celebrini with the first-overall pick this summer.

Rebuilds, on average, take years. We see edge cases of teams — typically with incredible draft fortune, or extraordinary cap flexibility that allows them to add players of consequence via trade — accelerating those timelines, but that’s not the norm. So, it’s reasonable that the front offices in Montreal and San Jose have asked their fans for some patience through this process, though it’s still on them to deliver.

Over the first month of the season, there have been elements across both teams that make you encouraged for the future. Canadiens sniper Cole Caufield is leading the NHL with 10 goals already, while veteran Mikael Granlund is scoring above a point-per-game clip and providing some incredible insulation for the Sharks at the top of the lineup.

But the defences are bad. Extraordinarily bad.

The true issue that ties these two teams together is that, despite whatever you might like about the on-ice product or their vision to build these lineups long-term, the defensive play across both teams is shockingly poor right now. It’s a hellacious combination of young players, frequently playing outside of structure in front of goaltenders under siege of heavy shot volumes on a nightly basis.

It’s a mathematical reality. Just compare each team’s defensive measures relative to the rest of the league.

It's not just that they are bleeding goals against – it’s that we would be expecting them to, relative to the shot profile they have faced, which is a deadly combination of high shot volumes from dangerous scoring areas. Consider just the even strength defensive profile for both teams, a sea of shots from inside of the circles and the low-slot area (via HockeyViz:

One of the interesting questions is how much goaltending performance may be compounding the issue. The Canadiens are platooning Sam Montembeault (who has actually had some Team Canada buzz) and 25-year-old Cayden Primeau; the Sharks have a very journeyman platoon in Mackenzie Blackwood and Vitek Vanecek.

Despite the ridiculous shot profiles faced, this group of goalies has actually played okay, relative to expectations. Evolving Hockey’s Goals Saved Above Expectations model, for example, has all four around break-even — not erasing goals like you’d want to see behind heaps of young players, but also not single handedly blowing up games.

Compare both to the Colorado Avalanche, a team that’s conceded goals at a similar rate but shouldn’t be, based on their expected goaltending rates. Their story is much more about goaltending, because Alex Georgiev has been that dreadful:

If the respective coaching staffs were to postmortem the first month of the season, I think you would hear unanimous refrain that the biggest area of opportunity is off-puck play, and the need to find religion in defensive structure.

Developing defensive prowess takes time, but far too often in Canadiens and Sharks games you are finding heaps of young, undisciplined mistakes — out-of-position moments creating rush and counter-attacking opportunities for the opposition, weak play along the boards when fighting for loose pucks, an inability to protect the net mouth and keep forward to the perimeter. It’s a grab bag of issues, and you see them nightly. 

For Martin St. Louis and Ryan Warsofsky, it must be a core focus the rest of this season. These teams can be competitive if they reduce their defensive mistakes. That’s easier said than done, but one thing is for certain: these rebuilds won’t end until Montreal and San Jose can play on both ends of the ice.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference