Introduction
After a season when he scored a then-career-high 26 goals in just 46 games, expectations were sky-high for Cole Caufield last year. He was able to stay relatively healthy, playing all 82 games, but scored “only” 28 goals, setting a new career high but still managing to fall below expectations.
That says a lot about what is expected from Caufield. The easy question is ‘what happened?’ The easy answer was that the puck just wasn’t going in. He unleashed 239 shots on goal just at even strength, resulting in only 19 goals. His shooting percentage of 7.95% is by far the lowest in such situations in his career. Perhaps his 2022-23 percentage of 16.52% was an outlier, but he was well above league average in 2021-22 (12.77%) and his small sample of his rookie season (14.81%).
How low was Caufield’s shooting percentage in context? Among 236 NHL forwards to score at least 10 even-strength goals last season, his percentage ranked 233rd. It’s not like his shot became one of the worst in the league, he was just cold as cold could be.
At a certain point, it looked like the chances of Caufield even besting 26 goals were slim. The best news for him and for the Canadiens was that he scored eight goals in the final nine games of the season, and was a point-per-game player for Team USA at the World Championship.
It was alluded to before, but for the diminutive forward to have an 82-game season under his belt, it put away doubts that he would be able to complete a full NHL season following shoulder surgery the year prior.
Voting
For much of the panel, Caufield kicks off, at minimum, a clear top three. The gap between #1 and Caufield at #3 is half of the gap between Caufield at #3 and Kirby Dach at #4. Only one voter had Caufield off of the podium, and while the majority had him at exactly #3, three voters had him higher, with two putting him at the top spot.
While there was a pretty clear consensus among the voting panel, most of the community agreed there was a clear top three but there are some outlier votes throughout the top 10.
Top 25 Under 25 History
| 2023: #2 | 2022: #2 | 2021: #2 | 2020: #3 | 2019: #7 |
It’s easy to say that his drop from #2 to #3 despite the graduation of Nick Suzuki is a bad sign. I can’t speak to everyone on the voting panel, but I think it’s actually a good thing. My view of Caufield hasn’t really changed. I still think he’s capable of being one of the top goal-scorers in the entire league. The fact that the Canadiens have two other players under the age of 25 who many would rather not lose speaks volumes to where Montreal is as an organization.
History of #3
| Year | #3 |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Kirby Dach |
| 2022 | Juraj Slafkovský |
| 2021 | Alexander Romanov |
| 2020 | Cole Caufield |
| 2019 | Jonathan Drouin |
| 2018 | Artturi Lehkonen |
| 2017 | Artturi Lehkonen |
| 2016 | Mikhail Sergachev |
| 2015 | Nathan Beaulieu |
| 2014 | Nathan Beaulieu |
| 2013 | Max Pacioretty |
| 2012 | Alex Galchenyuk |
| 2011 | Max Pacioretty |
| 2010 | Lars Eller |
Strengths
There are two goals that stick out when I think about Cole Caufield, and neither of them are from last season. The first one was in the 2021 playoff run against Vegas. He took a pass, chipped the puck past the defender to create a breakaway, and beat the goaltender.
It’s a goal that made you realize that he was more than simply a shooter. His all-around offensive game has improved so much that even though he wasn’t scoring goals, he was contributing at a high level on the best offensive first line the Canadiens have had in a long time. On top of a career high in goals, he almost doubled his career high in assists at the NHL level, putting up 65 total points. He was also a -4, up from -10 a year earlier despite playing in 36 more games.
The other goal I think about was one many people wouldn’t remember. It was a game in the 2022-23 season against Philadelphia. With 1.9 seconds remaining, Caufield took a cross-ice pass from Nick Suzuki, which ended up almost between his legs, and beat the goaltender to tie the game. I don’t think many players would have scored on that pass, but Caufield did.
The shot is still the calling card. It’s what makes him special. His ability to get it off in all situations, from all angles, is what gets him into the top three of this list. The question was always whether it would translate to the NHL, and it has. What makes his low shooting percentage look like outrageous bad luck and not a sign of things to come is that the shot didn’t go anywhere.
What helps him succeed despite his small stature of 5’8″ is that he is an expert at finding space for himself. He constantly gets lost in the offensive zone, allowing himself to get the shot off. He’s also not afraid to go to the net or into the corners to win puck battles. He has really become an all-around player and his value is not reliant solely on how many goals he scores.
Weaknesses
It feels like this section gets smaller every year. His size and play away from the puck were always under scrutiny. It’s a major reason he fell in the 2019 NHL Draft, where the Canadiens were more than happy to take him at 15th overall.
His two years at the University of Wisconsin after being drafted were focused on him becoming an all-around player, and that has translated to making him a very good NHLer. There will always be questions about what Caufield can or can’t do, but his game has evolved in a very positive way since he was drafted.
As he develops into the Canadiens top line, it will be interesting to see how much more he evolves. You won’t expect him to kill any penalties or lay big hits, but he can hold his own. The team is surrounding him with players who allow him to just do what he’s good at. He struggled in a more cycle-oriented system, but the Canadiens have switched away from many of their players’ weaknesses in this area.
Projection
The line of Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovský, and Caufield was the bright spot of the Canadiens’ 2023-24 season. Their play, even when Caufield was not scoring, was must-see TV after they were put together.
News came out on Tuesday night that he will change his number from 22 to 13 in honour of Johnny Gaudreau, who Caufield says is the player he looked up to. It’s easy to see why. Gaudreau paved the way for the current generation of smaller wingers. Caufield got to play with Gaudreau at the last World Championship.
It is the second year of Caufield’s eight-year contract extension, and expectations will be high once again. With the addition of Patrik Laine, the Canadiens now won’t only rely on Caufield to be the shooter, which should help him, especially on the power play. Suzuki’s shooting on the man advantage already took some pressure off, but with all three of them potentially on the ice at the same time, there just won’t enough opposing bodies to take all shots away.
It will also help Caufield at even strength. Alex Newhook and Joshua Roy tried their hardest to give the Canadiens a second line after the injury to Kirby Dach, but they weren’t able to do it all themselves. No matter how the Canadiens build their top six, or even their top nine, defences won’t be able to key exclusively on the top trio. It might also be an opportunity to get Caufield more offensive opportunities in some situations and get him off the toughest assignments he’ll get on Suzuki’s line.
There aren’t going to be as many people calling for Caufield to win the Rocket Richard trophy as there were last year, when he was a bit of a common dark-horse pick. I think it’s pretty easy to peg the shooting percentage as a key factor that will lead to Caufield finally hitting the 30-goal mark, and the potential is always there for him to be one of the best goal-scorers in the entire league.
The difference between Caufield going from 28 to closer to 40 goals will be a functioning power play for an entire season. Montreal started to turn things around in that department last year, and that along with an all-time bad shooting performance not repeating should go a long way toward changing the perception around Caufield.
Timestamps:
1:00 – Catching up with Andrew Berkshire
3:00 – Big improvement in defence, about baseline. Puck luck, lingering effects of the shoulder injury and doing everything right.
6:00 – Scoring in this era.
6:30 – Slafkovský’s impact getting on the first line, good for Caufield?
8:45 – Building a Bruins team.
10:30 – Hughes and Gorton vs Bergevin, the difference in building a team.
12:30 – Moving players around, or is Caufield-Suzuki-Slafkovský the first line?
14:30 – Caufield at Worlds.
15:45 – Goalscoring isn’t a problem.
17:30 – How should the power play be set up?
19:00 – Commercial Break
19:15 – Expectations for next year and beyond?
21:30 – How much can he improve his defence, would it be worth it?
23:15 -Martin St-Louis as coach for Caufield, and giving Caufield the leeway.
