It took a year-and-a-half, but Juraj Slafkovský is the toast of Montreal. The 19-year-old sophomore has 21 points in his last 27 games after starting the season with seven in his first 27. Slafkovský’s ascent is not just the product of his own efforts, but also reflects the team’s desire to create an environment where the Slovak can succeed alongside the other pillars of the organization’s future, Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki. From trying to shelter their top prospect, the Canadiens are now able and willing to build around him, especially on the power play.
For most of the first third of the season, the Canadiens’ first power-play unit featured Suzuki, Caufield, Mike Matheson, Sean Monahan, and Josh Anderson. The quintet had started off well, but headed into a November 30 tilt against the Florida Panthers on an 0-for-17 stretch. In an effort to shake things up, Martin St-Louis inserted Alex Newhook in place of Anderson — a plan that lasted two-and-a-half periods before the Newfoundlander was sidelined for 10 weeks with a high-ankle sprain.
Rather than go back to Anderson, St-Louis promoted Brendan Gallagher into the vacancy for Montreal’s next game against the Detroit Red Wings. Although the top unit did manage to tally a goal in a 5-4 overtime defeat, St-Louis opted to shake things up even further. For the Habs’ next game, Slafkovský played on the top line and the top power-play unit. Appropriately enough, that next game was against the Seattle Kraken.
The difference was immediate. After ending the Anderson/Gallagher tenure 1-for-28 across nine games, the Canadiens, driven by the new Suzuki-Caufield-Matheson-Monahan-Slafkovský first unit, would light the lamp six times in their next 27 man advantages. At this point, Slafkovský himself wasn’t driving this improvement. Instead, the power-play scheme largely flowed through Matheson (at the point) and Monahan (in the slot). Caufield and Suzuki would interplay on the half-wall, while Slafkovský mostly served as a decoy to give Matheson and Monahan more space.
For example, in the sequence leading up to Mike Matheson’s power-play goal against the Boston Bruins on January 20, Slafkovský drifts to the goal line to set up the backdoor play as the puck goes down low to Suzuki. He stays there even as the puck is briefly cycled back to Caufield on the half-wall. As a result, Danton Heinen (43 BOS) plays off Monahan’s hip to defend against the possibility of Slafkovský drifting back out to the hash marks. The result is that Matheson has half the zone to himself, and Heinen can’t challenge the shot quickly enough when Monahan flips him the puck.
Indeed, instead of one-timers, the Slovak winger’s direct offence during this phase mostly came from rebounds and goalmouth scrambles. But this time was enough to wean Slafkovský into the system, as well as prove that the system could be sustained even after Monahan’s inevitable departure.
Since the trade that sent the veteran to the Winnipeg Jets, Slafkovský is no longer heading down low and is now primarily a one-timer threat. Instead, it’s Newhook who serves as a decoy and moves to the net front to clean up rebounds. This is possible partly because Slafkovský is now familiar with the unit, and partly because the system is designed to seamlessly transition between the slot player and the off-wing player as the triggerman.
The Canadiens’ first unit plays as two components: a three-player unit of puck-handlers and a two-player unit of shooters. All three of the puck handlers — Suzuki, Caufield, and Matheson — can set-up one-timers. All three are also shooting threats. Playing Caufield on the goal line even adds an extra dimension because teams have to respect his shot from what would be a non-shooting position for other players. The shooters, meanwhile, try to create passing lanes and look for space, and it is their job to maximize the man advantage — one defender cannot cover both shooters unless the shooters do not space themselves out properly. But it also means that the secondary shooter has to defer to the primary one, as Slafkovský did to Monahan.
For example, Slafkovský’s power-play tally against the Washington Capitals on February 6 was aided by the Canadiens lining up three players along a straight axis on the other side of the net. As Matheson sends the puck to Suzuki at the half-wall, slot-man Tanner Pearson sets up camp on the left hash mark, ostensibly to serve as a screen or tip option for a Matheson point shot. As Matheson fakes a shot on the return feed from Suzuki, Caufield emerges from behind the net on the left side as well. Four Canadiens are on the left half of the ice, meaning that Nic Dowd (26 WSH) and John Carlson (74 WSH) can’t cheat toward Slafkovský without leaving Pearson and Caufield wide-open for a Matheson pass.
Slafkovský helps his own cause by quietly drifting into a better position. When Matheson fakes the shot, the winger is at the top of the right circle. When the pass is released, he’s almost on the right faceoff dot despite not taking a stride or making a major movement during the interval. When he releases the shot, there are no Washington players within 15 feet of him, and the goaltender is firmly stuck in the blue paint. It’s almost Alexander Ovechkin-esque.
St-Louis isn’t reinventing the wheel here. This is the same philosophy used by the Tampa Bay Lightning and Washington Capitals during their heydays. Multiple puck-handlers who could also shoot — Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nicklas Backstrom, and Carlson — complemented by shooter pairs with an obvious primary and secondary designation such as Ovechkin and T.J. Oshie or Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point.
However, the Canadiens, for the first time in a long time, have enough multifaceted weapons to execute something along these lines. Matheson’s offensive chops are undeniable, but he isn’t the one-dimensional shooting threat that Shea Weber was. Through Caufield and Slafkovský, the Habs have two one-timer threats on the ice at the same time. In Caufield and Suzuki, the Canadiens have two players who are just as likely to pick a corner as they are a passing lane. And in Slafkovský, they have a one-timer threat who can also crash the net and seal the boards.
It’s a system that would have taken much longer to develop without Monahan. The slot-man’s role in the system is to move the defensive box, a perfect role for a player with Monahan’s hockey IQ. Through subtle shifts in position, the former Hab could make himself an open target, force defenders to respond and thereby create additional passing lanes, or give other players more time and space by drawing defenders to himself. Making Monahan the primary focus was also the right decision during the early days of the unit; it’s much easier to make a slot pass than a royal road one.
Today, Monahan’s replacement poses an immediate question, and it remains to be seen if Newhook can take up the mantle. However, even without the slot-man, the system can still function because the other four players have developed a rapport with one another. This is important for the rest of the season because, with all due respect to Newhook, the system hasn’t been built with him in mind — it’s been built for next year and the return of Kirby Dach.
Ultimately, systems are only as good as the people within them, and the more skilled those people become, the more options one can have when designing a system. The Canadiens’ tactical journey with their power-play mimics, intersects, and overlaps with their journey with their top prospect, and as a result, it’s a journey with one eye on the present and one on the future.
Heatmaps are courtesy of HockeyViz. Data is sourced from Natural Stat Trick.
