The biggest problem with the Montreal Canadiens’ offense this season has been an overall inability to convert on shots on net.  The Habs average 31.7 shots per game, good for a tie for 7thin the league with the Philadelphia Flyers and Tampa Bay Lightning. 

The team shooting rate is only 8.17%, among the worst in the league (better than only the Ottawa Senators with8.03%, Florida Panthers with 7.68% and New Jersey Devils with 7.27%). 

The good news is that team shooting tends to be transient, with little carryover from year to year while team shooting tends to be a more permanent phenomena (for more on that look at the excellent work being done at behindthenethockey.ca). Since the NHL the lockout, Montreal has scored at 9.77%, 9.86%, 10.77%, 9.83% and 8.95%, which suggests that this year is an aberration. If the Canadiens ice a similar lineup next year they should be a relatively good offensive club. 

Note that overall shooting percentage has gone down league wide this year but not nearly to the extent it has affected Montreal.

This poor  team shooting percentage would explain why so many Habs have undershot their typical offensive boxcar numbers. To examine this phenomenon I have used the total shots of each player and their career shooting percentage to look at what each Canadien would have produced, if this had been a typical conversion year for each player, and what kind of total offensive year the Canadiens as a whole would have had. 

A player’s shooting percentage tends to fluctuate around their career average, unless they undergo a major change in their playing style, so this could be taken as an indicator of about how much each player would have scored if they had average "puck luck."

Note that a flaw in this study is that it does not distinguish between power play and even strength shooting which tend to vary (it is easier to convert a shot into a goal on the power play).

Expected goals is the term I have elected to use for shots*career shooting percentage. Results are prorated to an 82 game season.

Career goals to shots ratio is used instead of career shooting percentage is used for ease of calculation. It is the same as career shooting percentage divided by 100. Rookies and other young players do not have much of a track record to compare to, so their career average might widely differ from their true talent. Fortunately, except for P.K. Subban, their totals are not a large portion of the results, and his are not unusual for an offensive defensemen of his caliber.

Using this method we come up with a total expected goals of 226.865 compared to a real value of 207, and an expected goals per game ratio of 2.84 compared to 2.59.  Here are the total differences between expected and actual goals for the entire team.

The difference between the actual and expected performance can be explained by the results of the top six shot producing forwards which correspond to the expected top two lines going into the season (Tomas Plekanec, Mike Cammaleri, Andrei Kostitsyn, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta and Benoit Pouliot) witha total differential of -27.531 compared with the team’s -19.865.

With the new totals the Habs would have three players on pace for the vicinity of 30 goals and 5 above 20, which would be typical of a good offensive team without a dominant goal scoring forward. Gomez remains a poor goal scorer but is not quite as pathetic as this year and would likely have a higher assist total from increased linemate production, especially Gionta’s -5.9.

The biggest overproduction compared to career shooting percentage is from Max Pacioretty, Mathieu Darche and Jeff Halpern who all have an overproduction of above 4 goals this season.  However Pacioretty had a very low career shooting percentage for an offensive forward due to low production in his two previous NHL seasons. His 12.5% this year is about average for an offensive forward and it is likely that he will be able to maintain it in his future career, thus his results should not be seen as particularly lucky.

Stats are from NHL.com after game 80 of the 2010-2011 season.