2023 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #2 Cole Caufield

Introduction

The 2023-24 season played out in two parts for the Montreal Canadiens. Act One was a long soliloquy by Cole Caufield, who seemed to be the only player able to find any success in a dismal beginning to the team’s campaign. If he didn’t score a goal, the team probably didn’t either.

He had 26 goals by January 19 on a team that produced just 147 to that point, the fourth-lowest total in the league. With injuries to some veterans and uninspiring performances from others, the team never found any traction, and even slim hopes of a post-season appearance were dashed very early on.

With two nods as our player of the month (in October and December) and on a 46-goal pace, a shoulder injury that he had suffered through for a few games finally forced him from the lineup, ending his season two months early and leading to surgery in the off-season. There had been few good stories to cling to during the season, and the loss of Caufield was a draining blow to those who were staying engaged just to follow his drive for 40, or even 50, goals.

All reports claim that the surgery went well. He’s put in a good summer of rehab, and he should be back to his usual self when training camp rolls around.

Voting

It wasn’t one of the largest gaps between tiers of the countdown, but there was still a clear separation between Caufield, whom the majority of panellists had at number two, and Kirby Dach, who had a voting average of almost four in third place. The consensus number two in 2021, Caufield received one first-place vote last year, and now two placements in the top spot this summer.

T25U25 History

Starting out at seventh and then rising to number three, this is his third year at number two. With Nick Suzuki’s time in this series now at an end, even though there are a first, third, and fifth overall pick close behind him in the list, the 15th selection from the 2019 NHL Draft is positioned to take the starring role in his penultimate appearance in 2024.

History of #2

Strengths

When you think about Cole Caufield, when opposing players think about Cole Caufield, when Cole Caufield thinks about Cole Caufield, the image is of the elite shot he can unleash. It’s more powerful than what the overwhelming majority of hockey players can muster. He gets all 2,784 of his ounces behind the puck, whether into a one-time slapshot on the power play or a more calculated snapshot with more than momentary possession.

Though teams know exactly what’s going to happen when Caufield has the puck and try their hardest to prevent that from happening, and could exclusively focus their attention on him last year with little threat from any other source, the winger still produced a great volume of shots on target last season. He had 14 games with five shots or more, and scored in all but three of those matches.

Players who don’t play a physical game and are of Caufield’s stature are often automatically categorized as perimeter players, but that’s not the case for him. He doesn’t lurk around the periphery of the zone relying on the speed of his shot to score goals, but goes into the home-plate area to leave goaltenders little chance of reacting when the puck is sent their way. He scored five goals at five-on-five from the quadrant of the left circle closest to the net, and actually scored more times from the edge of the crease.

At this time last year you could have argued that the shot, while really good, was his only real skill. That was not the case last year as he became more involved in creating offensive opportunities rather than just waiting for his teammates to make them materialize.

The biggest change was the first bar in the comparisons between 2021-22 and last season: offence generated from cycling and forechecking. He didn’t do that via the crashing and banging along the boards that typifies forechecking in hockey, but with a patient approach, watching those battles from a few feet away, and waiting for a glimpse of the puck to grab it. Already having an inside lane to the net with that tactic, it became very effective for him and the team when he made it work.

Weaknesses

Now he needs to apply those same retrieval strategies on the defensive side, where the same methods should lead to success. He still isn’t comfortable with where he should be playing on defence, whether trying to prevent passes and shots from the point or containing forwards along the boards, and he flits between those two options erratically and ineffectively.

It’s an issue endemic to the entire team outside of those who came in with previous defensive prowess like Dach and Christian Dvorak, so the coaching staff needs to be just as accountable for the shortcomings as Caufield himself, but both parties will need to make the commitment to improving. The pros of him playing on his off-wing for offensive chances versus the cons of forcing him to defend on the left side of the defensive zone, where he either needs to move up the wall on his backhand or spin blindly to the middle to move the puck, is something the coaching staff will need to weigh to get the best overall performance from their gifted forward.

Ironically, despite being much more hands-on in the creation of offensive opportunities, that didn’t lead to many assists last season; his total dropped from 20 in his rookie year to 10. One way to open up even more space for himself is to show that he can also set his teammates up. His passing skills, when he does use them, are good enough to provide that element for the team.

Projection

Act Two of the Canadiens’ season followed an intermission for the bye week in February. Down the one player who was finding the net, the coaches had to figure out some other way to score goals, and the answer was increased involvement from the defencemen.

Montreal had just 12 goals of production from the back end in the 51 games before the All-Star Break. In the final 31 games from February 11 to the end of the season, they had 21, led by Mike Matheson’s seven. From fourth-worst in goals scored at the time of Caufield’s departure, Montreal ended up 15th-best with 97 goals after the pause.

In total, Caufield and Matheson were in the lineup at the same time for just 12 games last year. We haven’t seen much of the interplay between the newest number-one defenceman and one of the top goal-scorers in the league. Nor have we seen Caufield play in the new system with activating defencemen.

The blue line should bring that same approach to the new season, with all players healthy and with the five rookies who made the roster back after a summer to work on some of the weaknesses exposed in their first campaigns. Brendan Gallagher returned to form as the season progressed,  Josh Anderson made a major breakthrough in finding consistency on a game-to-game basis, and Rafaël Harvey-Pinard had an exceptional showing with his two-way play in his lengthy audition. Those three players are the most likely candidates to serve as the third forward on Caufield’s line.

Forget 50 goals – Caufield was nearly scoring at that pace while doing most of the work himself. If the team around him looks like the one that finished last season, displays a better approach to winning the puck in its own zone, and the best players are put on the ice for power-play chances, 60 goals could be in the offing in 2023-24.

The Athletic‘s Arpon Basu joins Patrik Bexell and Anton Rasegård to discuss Caufield

2023 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #3 Kirby Dach

In his second year in the organization, Dach jumps into the top three.

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