As hard as it is to trust a process that involves a lot of losing, it is harder still to determine whether or not the rebuild is actually moving forward or not. That is the burning question as the Montreal Canadiens move toward their third off-season with Kent Hughes in charge. Although the rebuild has not yet completed its dismantling phase, the Canadiens are indeed making incremental progress as they head into the second half of the 2023-24 campaign.
A formal rebuild is uncharted ground for the Canadiens. In fact, 2022 and 2023 marked the first time that the franchise has enjoyed a top-five selection in consecutive drafts since 1970. Naturally, Habs fans are not very familiar with what a rebuild “typically” looks like as it moves toward a finished product. To further complicate things, Montreal lacks the obvious talisman of other rebuilds; it has no Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, or Connor Bedard, the type of player who can single-handedly carry a team to respectability, and the type of player who can personally serve as a reflection of the team’s state.
Looking strictly at the standings, there is not much difference between 2023-24 and 2022-23 at the 49-game mark. The Canadiens currently sit seventh in the Atlantic Division with 48 points and a 20-21-8 record. At this point last season, they sat eighth with 44 points, obtained via a 20-25-4 record. A point of contention for much of the year, this year’s Habs have reached parity with their 2022-23 counterparts when it comes to regulation and overtime wins, with 16 apiece.
It’s a small improvement, but it’s a small improvement backed up by the team’s underlying statistics. After 49 games, the 2023-24 Canadiens are better than the 2022-23 version in all three major facets of the game: five-on-five, the five-on-four power play, and four-on-five penalty kill.
The margins are thin. At five-on-five, actual goals are down (likely because Cole Caufield’s shooting percentage is back to normal), but expected goals are up, reflecting a bit more potency when it comes to chance-generation. On the other side of the puck, while goaltending has been responsible for much of the sizable decrease in actual goals allowed, the team is also doing its part to reduce the overall quality of opposition chances.
Special teams are where the biggest improvements appear, something that is admittedly either a credit to this year’s squad or a testament to just how poor last year’s was. Nonetheless, again, comparing both iterations at the season’s midpoint, this year’s Canadiens are 25% better in shot-generation with the man advantage and over 50% better in terms of actual goals scored. The penalty kill has not experienced such radical leaps, but still manages to be better than last year in every metric other than goals against.
Overall, the picture is rosy, but only just. Still, small improvements do add up. The ~10% increase in expected goals for combined with a ~10% decrease in expected goals against amounts to an overall xG differential of -0.57 xG per 60 minutes, or more than half a goal shaved off last year’s -1.22 value at this point in the season. For reference, the worst teams in the league typically sit at -1, while the best sit at +1. A value of zero usually results in a 90-ish point season.
Perhaps most importantly, the improvement is stemming from the right players. Looking at on-ice five-on-five expected goal differential, there are considerable leaps for the young players who are tasked with forming the team’s future core: Caufield, Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovský, and Kaiden Guhle. Arber Xhekaj, despite a prolonged stint in Laval with the Rocket, has much better underlying numbers this year (albeit in a smaller sample size) compared to his rookie campaign, while Jordan Harris continues to impress under the radar. Jake Evans and Johnathan Kovacevic have taken steps back, but their workloads have also been much more difficult during the first half of this campaign versus the first half of the previous one.
The most impressive thing might be that all of this is happening while the Habs are under the weight of a greater injury burden. While 2023-24 ultimately may not surpass 2022-23 for man-games lost to injury, it must be noted that the majority of absences last season took place in the second half, and that the Canadiens were relatively — the operative word — healthy in 2022. Removing Carey Price, Paul Byron, and Chris Wideman from the equation, the 2022-23 Habs lost 165 man-games to injury by game 49 of the campaign. The 2023-24 team are up to 195, with the biggest blow being the loss of Kirby Dach.
However, we’re only halfway there, and this year’s team will hope that they will be doing more than living on a prayer. Last year, Caufield, Slafkovský, Guhle, and Sean Monahan were all sidelined for the entire second half of the season. By the end of the campaign, the Habs were unrecognizable, fielding a first line of Jonathan Drouin, Suzuki, and Joel Armia alongside a top pairing of Kovacevic and Frederic Allard in game 82 versus the Boston Bruins. Unsurprisingly, the team struggled, finishing the season 11-20-2, although their underlying numbers actually improved as the season progressed.
Given the circumstances, last year’s team should ideally not serve as the barometer for this year’s team when evaluating the second half. Rather, the team’s overall health and how the general manager navigates the trade deadline will determine how best to judge the team’s performance.
One potential scenario is that Hughes manages to move most of the veterans on the team (i.e. Jake Allen and David Savard, but possibly even Christian Dvorak, Tanner Pearson, and Joel Armia). This severely depletes the team’s depth, and rather than rush prospects with higher ceilings into difficult positions, the team fills the spots with waiver adds and AHL veterans. Here, the team would be expected to struggle as a whole, and the focus should be on whether individual players can maintain their level of play to close out the campaign.
Alternatively, only Allen is moved, and there is minimal impact on the skaters’ roster. The onus then would be on the team to maintain its poise and continue to show incremental improvement on a day-by-day basis.
Finally, Hughes and Martin St-Louis may turn their attention to their higher-ceiling prospects such as Logan Mailloux and Joshua Roy, bringing them up for longer stints at the NHL level in preparation for next year and beyond. This is more likely to occur if the roster remains mostly intact at the trade deadline as the veterans would provide more shelter, and it is less likely to occur if the Laval Rocket are actively engaged in a playoff bid at the time. In this situation, the performance of the team as a whole is no longer as important, and the major priority should be to create situations to support the debutants with the aim of creating long-term chemistry.
All in all, the Canadiens are getting better. It may be by little steps rather than leaps and bounds, but there are no signs that the organization has illusions that the rebuild is complete. The team is still transitioning past its previous iteration, and the books are barely written on any of Hughes’s draft selections. As long as this progress is there, Montreal is best served by staying the course. However, they will ultimately be judged not only on how well they can hold the ship steady, but how quickly they can identify rocks on the horizon and pivot accordingly.
