The Montreal Canadiens haven't score in their last 17 power play opportunities and Martin St-Louis is trying to find answers by shuffling his cards.
Not so long ago, the Montreal Canadiens’ power play was red-hot, scoring consistently. However, since November 4, it’s been unable to put any goals on the board, and the situation reached a breaking point in the 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday, when it failed to score on two five-on-three opportunities.
As a result, Martin St-Louis unveiled new power play units at Sunday Morning’s practice. The biggest surprise, aside from the fact that Kirby Dach is now injured as well, was Ivan Demidov’s absence on the top unit. The first quintet featured Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Zachary Bolduc and Lane Hutson.
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As for the second unit, it included Demidov, Brendan Gallagher, Oliver Kapanen (in the bumper spot), Suzuki (alternating with Caufield) and Noah Dobson. Of course, the fact that Dach, Alex Newhook and Patrik Laine are currently injured makes it more challenging for the coach to field two complete units.
The decision to remove the young Russian from the power play is interesting to say the least, especially since it started clicking when he was promoted to the first unit. It’s not that the youngster stopped being effective all of a sudden, but there’s definitely a need to learn to mix it up. If you use the same play repeatedly, the opponents wise up after a while. Unless, of course, you can execute it so perfectly that nobody can do anything about it, think Alexander Ovechkin one-timer on the power play, for instance. The Canadiens have not reached that level of execution, and it is not surprising that the cross-zone passing lanes have been shut.
It appears the mandate will be to get back to the basics, get some pucks on net, and, when the defence is trying to get on the rebound, passing lanes may well happen again, as Alexandre Carrier told the media after practice.
Whichever way you look at it, though, matters can’t get any worse for the man-advantage that’s 0 for 17. By putting Demidov on the second unit, you are also putting him out of reach of the opponent’s top penalty killers. Will it work? Time will tell, starting with a duel against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night.
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