Quick Hits: Montreal vs. Tampa Bay
Which regular season trends carried over to the playoffs?
I wanted to touch on a few bullet points from the Montreal-Tampa Bay series even if it’s a couple weeks old. It ended on kind of a weird note with Montreal winning a game where they only registered 10 shots on goal with the game-winner coming on a crazy pinball style shot. Jon Cooper chalked the loss up to bad luck and it’s easy to empathize with him as a Hurricanes fan, as they’ve had no shortage of playoff games where they hold their opponents without a shot for 15+ minutes and still find a way to lose.
It’s always a game of centimeters in the playoffs, especially in a 2v3 matchup where the margins were already thin to begin with. It was the type of game you’re happy with in Game 1 or in the regular season because you probably win 11 of them if you replay it 12 times. This series was actually a good summation of that when you look at the flow of each game.
On the whole, Tampa had the better of the scoring chances and dangerous plays, but the Habs were able to dictate pockets of the game and tilt the scales in their favor to put Tampa in a 2-1 hole early.
While Tampa owned the neutral zone, there were only a couple games where they blew Montreal out of the water when it came to creating chances off the rush. Games 2, 6 & 7 were their best performances, everywhere else the Habs were able to limit or at least match the Bolts in transition offense. This is with Tampa having a massive advantage in controlled entries too. It wasn’t a series long thing, because the Lightning took the hammer to them in a couple games, but Montrel had some matchups where they kept things 50/50, kept themselves from getting killed off the rush and tilted the scales in their favor with their forecheck.
What was interesting to me is that it sort of mirroed the profile of their top defenseman, Lane Hutson.
Someone pointed out Hutson’s poor entry defense stats on Twitter a few months ago & that’s only true when it comes to preventing controlled entries. He’s just above the league average at preventing scoring chances when teams enter the zone against him, which is impressive considering most of the time he’s either giving them a big gap or getting beat at the line. A few Montreal observers pointed out that most of it stems from his aggression in the offensive zone, as he’s always having to play catchup after an offensive zone turnover or attacking forwards at an angle to kill the play along the wall.
There’s a few defensemen I can think of who profiled like this. Dan Hamhuis was a master at killing plays in his own zone in his prime, so was Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Justin Faulk was also notorious for giving forwards a huge cushion when he was with the Hurricanes. Hutson goes about his business a little differently as a more, dynamic offensive-focused player, so he’s a little more unique here. That and you typically don’t see a second-year defenseman excel at killing plays when allowing this many controlled entries. This trend for Hutson carried over into the Tampa series, as well.
The Lightning entered the offensive zone against Hutson 52 times, 75% of those were controlled entries, tied for the highest among Habs defensemen, but only five led to a scoring chance. Hutson’s 10% Chance off Entry rate was the lowest among Habs regular defensemen (not counting Noah Dobson’s small sample). Only Darren Raddysh posted a lower rate in the entire series. Again, this mirrored Hutson’s regular season trend. He will give you the line, but keep the puck away from the net.
Here’s one of the few times the Lightning did get a chance against Hutson.
This is why the rush play was a little inconsistent for the Lightning. You can see Hutson make an aggressive play at the line trying to throw Jake Guentzel off. He misses and Demidov’s not there to pickup the trailer. Kapanen also can’t get a stick on the shot, so it ends up being a dangerous chance with a rebound while Hutson’s out of the play until he can retrieve the loose puck.
The breakout from Tampa allowed them to get an advantageous situation entering the zone & they could expose some of Hutson’s aggressive tendencies on the entry. Montreal’s forecheck came to life later in the game and it wasn’t as easy for Tampa to go coast-to-coast on them. This allowed Hutson to get more one-on-one matchups at the line.
This is more of a broken play off the entry with Cirelli getting the loose puck at the line & Hutson having a good angle on him. He does a good job of keeping upwith Cirelli a couple of times and acting as a nuisance skating him around the zone. Tampa tries to go low-to-high to get something to the net with Montreal’s forwards giving the points a lot of room. They get a good shot through with traffic but the Habs make a good switch once the defenseman Moser activates. You can see the defenseman Kaiden Guhle (21) challenge Brandon Hagel up high a little more and force a rushed play to the net, which gets diffused and Montreal’s got a chance on the counter-attack with Hutson up in the play. They don’t connect on it, but the opporutnity was there from how the Habs adjusted their defensive zone play & forced Tampa to beat them with low-percentage plays. Hagel was the most dangerous player in this series & once he got the puck, more pressure was applied on him even if he was 70 feet away from the net.
When he’s out with the top line, the forwards also did a good job of covering for him.
I clipped this shift because it sums up the whole Lane Hutson experience (in a Game 7 to boot). He’s dancing around the offensive zone trying to create, but it gets broken up and he immediately turns to get back into a defensive posture. Tampa enters the zone 2v1 but Hutson’s in a good spot so the Lightning have to go east-west and Slafkovsky is there to break up the play easily.
Game 7 had a lot of these moments even with the Lightning doubling up the Habs in scoring chances. The opportunities were there to make a play, but there was always a layer or two of defenders to make the chance a fraction more difficult. There a few chances I can think off the top of my head, but this one stuck out to me because it was probably the best look Kucherov’s line got at 5v5.
This is a power-vs-power matchup and Tampa gets another rush opportunity against Hutson. This time he plays it more aggressive, almost at the red line, against Kucherov to break up the play early. Tampa then resets after Montreal can’t advance the play and they try to load up the right side to get Moser open for a back-door play. They get the look they want, but Moser misses the net. Dobson was also there to challenge the shot and there wasn’t much of a chance for Hagel to get a tap-in unless they executed this play quicker. Either way, it took a lot of precision for Tampa to generate this play and this was one of only three chances the Kucherov line had a 5v5 in this game.
Expecting Montreal to win every game like that is unrealsitc because it requires perfect defending & a lot of luck, but they only needed to do it for one night and sometimes that’s how it goes in the playoffs.
Odds & Ends
Hagel was the best player in this series, the engine for Tampa Bay’s offense and he looked unstoppable until Game 7. He’s had quite the glow-up the past couple of seasons and while some of that is riding shotgun with Kucherov, his all-around skillset has come a long way since they traded for him. This was kind of the perfect series for him to shine because he’s a quick, straight-line player who can rack up a lot of zone entries & he can play that Kucherov-lite role where he’s making plays from the perimeter while also excelling in the net-front role when the situation calls for it.
Montreal’s 5v5 offense was somewhat by-committee. The Suzuki line didn’t have a huge series at 5v5 (the power play is another story), but the middle-six really picked up the slack. Zach Bolduc led the team in chance contributions with 13 while Alex Newhook, Jake Evans and Josh Anderson were the other players who hit double digits in chance production. Evans, Texier & Bolduc also provided most of their rush offense, which gave them a counter-threat and an answer to Tampa Bay having a rush threat on each line.
You know how some players enter “The Zone” against certian teams? I’m starting to think that’s the case with Alex Texier and the Lightning. It doesn’t matter how much roster turnover there’s been or that the Columbus sweep was seven years ago.
I want to give Tampa some love for getting the Syracuse forward pipeline back on track after a couple of down years. Dominic James is a damn good player and I was super impressed with Gage Goncalves this series. He’s had such a good glow-up this year from being kind of a one-dimensional, pass-first player in his rookie season. He’s contributing in more areas now and showing more versatility as an offensive threat.
Demidov had a rough series overall, but a great performance in Game 6 where looked lethal as a playmaker from behind the net. He had a strong regular season and while it hasn’t come together just yet, he looks like one of those guys who could explode for a game or two to tilt a series for the Habs.