The Montreal Canadiens' rebuild entered a new stage this season, and the results are already impressive, especially offensively.
During Wednesday night’s game, Montreal Canadiens’ rookie Ivan Demidov picked up a goal and an assist, bringing his point total to 51 on the season and making him the fifth 50-point scorer on the team this season after Nick Suzuki, Lane Hutson, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovsky. The Habs have already scored 226 goals this season, with 18 games left to play. Last season, they scored 243 goals in 82 games. Considering they score an average of 3.53 goals per game this season, they could hit the 289 goals mark this year, a 47 goals improvement on last campaign.
Last season, the Tampa Bay Lightning led in goal scoring with 292 lamplighters; they were the only team to surpass the 290-goal mark. Granted, this year’s leaders, the Colorado Avalanche, are on course to score 311 goals, and the Edmonton Oilers are on course for 290. Even if the scoring is on the way up in the league, the Canadiens’ bounce from 17th place last season to 4th place this time around is nothing short of remarkable. It’s a direct consequence of the constant injection of talent in the last few years. The arrival of the Caufield, Slafkovsky, Hutson, and Demidov over the last five years is bearing fruit, and it will continue to do so for years to come as the group continues to improve and more young talent enters the lineup to replace declining veterans.
If Noah Dobson keeps up his current scoring pace, he should put up 54 points on the season, making it six 50-point scorers on the roster. Last year, they had four. The same as the year before. In 2022-2023, they only had one: Nick Suzuki. Granted, there were a lot of injuries in that season, and had they played full seasons, Kirby Dach, Caufield, and Mike Matheson would have hit 50, but the fact remains, they didn’t. In 2021-22, Suzuki was once again the only one, and there were none in the Covid-shortened 2020-21 campaign.
When’s the last time the Canadiens had five 50-point scorers? It was in 2018-19 when Max Domi, Tomas Tatar, Philip Danault, Jonathan Drouin and Brendan Gallagher accomplished the feat. When did they last have at least six? That was back in 2007-08 when Alex Kovalev, Tomas Plekanec, Mark Streit, Andre Markov, Saku Koivu, Andrei Kostitsyn and Chris Higgins got there. That was Carey Price’s rookie season. That campaign was abnormal for the 21st-century Canadiens.
Enjoy the return of the high-scoring Canadiens Habs’ fans, you’ve waited long enough, and a few generations have not even lived their glorious years. Fear not, though, Kent Hughes has set his sights on bringing them back, and so far, he’s doing a great job of it.
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