The Montreal Canadiens secured their playoff spot relatively early this season after needing a win in the final game in 2024-25 to punch their ticket. They separated themselves from the wild-card pack during an eight-game winning streak, and were tied for top spot in the Atlantic Division as late as April 12.
Despite going into the post-season playing on the road as a divisional third seed, the Canadiens ended up sixth overall in the league standings. Five of the top nine clubs were from the Atlantic, turning it into the most competitive division after the Central Division had been granted that title for much of the season.
The 106 points tell a story of a team that took a significant step from a season ago when they finished with 91. We’ll dive deeper into their play to see where they rank in other areas as they prepare for their opening playoff game on Sunday.
7th
Hits
A team with two of its top three players being the 5’8″ Cole Caufield and 5’9″ Lane Hutson isn’t one you think about when envisioning a physical brand of hockey. Montreal’s current roster is the sixth-shortest and ninth-lightest in the NHL, fourth and third in those categories among the 16 playoffs. Yet hits were a common occurrence in Canadiens games, as they finished seventh in the NHL with 1,810, an average of 22 per game.
The club Montreal will face earned a reputation as a mean team this year, starting in the pre-season with some brawl-filled games versus a Florida Panthers team that they (and most others around the league) thought was the franchise they needed to prove themselves against. By the end of the season they had racked up 1,207 penalty minutes, the only team in quadruple digits this season, but not a great deal more hits at 1,642.
By the last couple of games between the Habs and Lightning, Tampa Bay had turned its ire to Montreal, one of the two teams they were most likely to play when the post-season began. Those were physical games as well, at least after the whistles, and Montreal outscored and outhit its opponent in each.
6th
Faceoff winning percentage since Phillip Danault’s arrival
As the league was about to pause for the holidays, Montreal was 49.3% in the faceoff circle as a team, losing a few more draws than they won and chasing the game more than they would have liked. On December 19, Phillip Danault was acquired from the Los Angeles Kings, and debuted for his second tenure with the Canadiens four days later. Following his addition to the roster, the Canadiens finished the season with a 52.3% efficiency.
Danault must have helped everyone else improve their work at the dots as well because most players saw their percentages increase over the remainder of the season. Nick Suzuki rose from a sub-50% win rate to 51.8%, and as good as Danault was at 56.2%, Jake Evans was even better at 57.7% over his final 34 games.
Martin St-Louis recognizes that he has two players who can be expected to win the majority of their draws and has loaded both Danault and Evans onto the same line, giving his shutdown trio both a left- and right-shot option.
That line has another ace up its sleeve. Josh Anderson took 33 faceoffs in 2025-26 and won 23 of them, a 69.7% win rate, the highest percentage on the team. It was no fluke; Anderson won 59.2% of his 49 faceoffs last year as well. It’s another element Anderson brings to the line if needed, in addition to shadowing Nikita Kucherov for the best-of-seven opening-round season.
5th
Net penalty differential (drawn versus taken) since December 27
We complained a lot about the officiating this year (and we all still remember those stolen two points in Edmonton), but after the Christmas break, the Canadiens sent their power play onto the ice 15 more times than they deployed the penalty kill. Considering that the power play was in the top five in the league for much of that time, Montreal was able to take advantage of the edge in calls.
Over that same stretch, the Lightning had the second-lowest mark at -22. The officials weren’t allowing them to get away with the post-whistle shenanigans they liked to instigate, and for the first time since they won the Stanley Cup in 2021 they didn’t get the majority of power plays during their season.
Those numbers bore out in the four games between the teams this season, with Montreal receiving 18 power plays to Tampa Bay’s 12. Will that trend hold when the playoffs begin?
4th
Second-period goals
For the first few seasons of Martin St-Louis’s tenure as coach, second periods were a big concern for Montreal, usually outplayed and outscored in each of his first three-and-a-third seasons. Things changed this year when the Canadiens ended with seven more goals than they allowed in the middle 20 minutes.
Their 98 second-period goals ranked fourth in the NHL, behind the 100 posted by all of Tampa Bay, the Edmonton Oilers, and Dallas Stars. When you add in overtime goals, only Dallas scored more (109-108) in periods played with the long change this year.
That improvement bodes well for any game that goes beyond 60 minutes this post-season. The Canadiens don’t need to have two opposing players removed from the ice to find success when their bench is 100 feet away.
3rd
Team save percentage (Dobeš/Fowler tandem)
Samuel Montembeault’s struggles have been well-documented, coming into this year after two seasons among the league’s best goaltenders in goals saved above expected and finishing as the third goaltender on the roster who doesn’t even dress as the backup. That spot has been taken by Jacob Fowler, who looked good after getting his first NHL call-up on December 9, and has been a permanent member of the team since his second stint began on March 11.
Fowler was very good in his 17 starts (ending up just six behind Montembeault in that department), and Jakub Dobeš was one of the NHL’s most effective goaltenders in the second half of the season, named the league’s first star for the week of March 23-29 when he allowed a total of four goals across three victories.
If you remove Montembeault’s numbers from the equation, adding Dobeš’s .901 save percentage to the .908 that Fowler finished with in his first season in the NHL, that .903 effectiveness would rank third in the NHL in terms of team save percentage, behind the Jennings Trophy-winning tandem of Scott Wedgewood and MacKenzie Blackwood in Colorado and the goaltending complement of a Minnesota Wild team that ranked fourth-best in goals against this year.
| Team | Team Sv% |
|---|---|
| Colorado Avalanche | .909 |
| Minnesota Wild | .904 |
| Canadiens (Dobeš/Fowler) | .903 |
| Buffalo Sabres | .900 |
| Boston Bruins | .899 |
Dobeš and Fowler combined to earn 82 points in their 59 starts, projecting to 114 points if they shared all 82 starts, a number that would have seen them finish first in the Eastern Conference. Even Montembeault was able to post a winning record in 2025-26, proof that the Canadiens can win games without their goaltender being at his best. But in a post-season that is missing 11 of the top 16 clubs by team save percentage, having a quality goaltender (or two) at hand might be a difference-maker.
2nd
Road record
Perhaps one of those games in which Montembeault handed away a win, the frustrating season-series sweeps at the hands of the San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks, or that suspicious officiating versus the Oilers was a blessing in disguise. A dropped two points that the Canadiens should have had somewhere along the way locked them into starting their opening-round series on the road, and that’s where Montreal has played best. Their road record of 24-9-8 was second in the league, tied with the Dallas Stars, responsible for 56 of their 106 points.
If there are no upsets in any of the series the Canadiens aren’t involved in, the Habs are slated to be the lower seed in every round as their path goes through four of the top five teams in the NHL.
Even if the Habs weren’t a better road team than they were at home, where they still claimed 50 points in 41 games, starting on the road might not be a bad thing. Success to start each series for them would be winning one of the opening two games in the opponent’s arena, so there is room for a young team — the youngest ever to make the post-season, even younger than last year’s record-setting team — to make a few errors and still set itself up to take the series.
1st
Penalty kill since start of critical five-game road trip
At the trade deadline, Montreal ranked 27th in the NHL on the penalty kill, able to survive just 76.5% of their man disadvantage situations. Expected to add a veteran defenceman to the fold, Kent Hughes instead spent his time leading up to the 3:00 cutoff looking for a more long-term addition to his core than a rental on the blue line. Analysts believed it was a mistake to not address the defence, and that difficulty killing penalties was cited as one of the biggest reasons.
With no outside help coming, the Canadiens had to find internal solutions to the one aspect of their game that was threatening to spoil their season. Still stuck in the bottom six near the end of the month of March, they needed to change things for the five-game road trip that featured good power plays from the likes of the Nashville Predators, Hurricanes, Lightning, and New York Rangers.
The Habs’ penalty kill allowed one goal on that trip, and surrendered just two from March 28 to the end of the season, a span of 11 games that carried an efficiency of 92.9% and raised the penalty kill nine positions to end the season 18th overall.
It probably isn’t a coincidence that playing Lane Hutson more in those minutes during Alexandre Carrier’s injury absence led to better results. Hutson ended the season as Montreal’s top defenceman in plus/minus at +36, and was on the ice for a total of three power-play goals against in his PK minutes, with the lowest rate of high-danger chances against of any defenceman on the roster. It’s likely that Carrier will return to that role now that he’s healthy enough to return, but the team will have the data on Hutson’s short-handed time to keep him as an option.
The Canadiens have put effort into taking the quarterback at the point away, finding success versus both Matthew Schaefer of the New York Islanders and Darren Raddysh of the Lightning by having a forward play them tightly high in the zone. Raddysh collected 26 of his 70 points on the power play this season, so limiting his powerful shot, as they did in the two games late in the season, will give a big boost to the Canadiens’ chances of advancing past the team that denied them a 25th Stanley Cup in 2021.
