Habs Goal Projections for 2011-12 Season

Early in the year its very easy to get caught up in the number of goals and points a player has in a very limited sample size of games, with the likes of Phil Kessel scoring like Gretzky and Eric Staal on pace for a 19 goal, 34 point campaign. However this does not mean that we cannot make an assessment of how well a player is performing and how productive they might be expected to be over the course of this season. It merely means that our projections should be based on the stable components of a production and the player's historic abilities.

Here I will attempt to get a good idea of what kind of goalscoring production we may expect from Montreal's players by basing our projection on the most stable component of a player's goalscoring given their current usage and competition, shots per game, while combining it with the element that best reflects his style and historical goalscoring ability, career shooting percentage. However, as the existing scoring results from this year are in the past and thus unchanging, the projections are only for the balance of the season with the player's current goal totals added afterwards.

The Forwards:

This method assumes the player will play all the remaining 66 games of the season, which obviously cannot be the case for 15 forwards. Palushaj and Engqvist are obviously handicapped by the method from never scoring an NHL goal while the shooting percentage of younger players new to the NHL is less reliable. Notably, Max Pacioretty's shooting percentage over the previous 2 seasons of 12.1% may be more reflective of his true talent than an average that includes his first two seasons where he seemed a different player than the current one. Bumping him up to 12.1% fits him well with his catagory of offensive wingers and results in a projected 37 goal season for the 22 year old.

Brian Gionta's shot production abilities are notably behind that of his previous Montreal seasons. This may be a side effect of the absence of his usual center, Gomez, with whom his shot totals leapt above his previous seasons in New Jersey. Its possible that his shot production will be elevated by Gomez's return to the lineup if they are reunited.

The Defensemen:

Subban's shot production is currently 4th in the league but remains goalless in a season long cold streak. Despite this, his goal-totals for the year expect to be quite high on the back of a good career shooting% and his excellent ability to direct shots on net. Rookies Emelin and Diaz have very little track record to go on to determine what to expect and also face the prospect of missing games as a result of players returning from injury. At this point their projections are completely unreliable.  Meanwhile, Subban and Weber's shooting ability is based on essentially one season of NHL play.

Campoli's shot rate is base on a single game and are therefore not worth much of anything. Which is just as well as the time of his return from injury and future usage is completely uncertain at this point. His previous season's rate was 1.1 shots per game, which is probably much more reasonable than the top 40 rate his two shots in a single game state and would cut his projected goals in half.

Conclusions:

While none of the Canadiens look to score like a superstar this year (although both Pacioretty and Subban's shot production are among the games elite for their position) Montreal looks to be a good offensive team if they keep up their current shot pace. Five to six players have a good chance at scoring 20 goals and it is likely that Montreal will have at least 1 30 goal man, which is the kind of goal production from a team's top 6 which you would expect to get on a team with a strong offensive core.