Habs Drop 8 of Last 9 Games

With the 4-1 loss to the Nashville Predators on Monday night, the Montreal Canadiens have lost eight of their last nine games. These dreadful nine matches have consisted of five home games at the Bell Centre, and four games on the road in Raleigh (Carolina), Detroit, Dallas, and Nashville. Montreal’s only win comes in a home Saturday night game against the division rivals out of Ottawa, in a 3-1 victory.

The large gap in the Atlantic Division standings is clearly severely shortened. Quite possibly the most frustrating part about this slump is that the lack of goals do not represent the lack of chances. In fact, there have been too many chances. While the Habs are being outscored 30-14 over the past nine games, they have been outshooting their opponents 304-210 in that same time frame. Yes, you read that right. The Habs have 94 more shots on goal than their opponents in their last nine games and have one single win to show for it.

In the past nine games, on six occasions the Habs have taken between 33-45 shots on target, and five times they have limited their opponents to 23 or less shots. This is getting ridiculous. The Habs just cannot find the bounces and deflections on one side of the rink, but then the opponent, no matter who it is, takes it down the ice after all the circling in their own zone and finds the back of the net.

Where have the goal scorers been during this slump? Interestingly enough, the goals are coming from many that aren’t expected to produce as much as others. Max Pacioretty has 2 goals in his last 12 games, Tomas Plekanec has gone 20 consecutive games without a goal (Last goal: November 7th, 2015 vs. Boston), and P.K. Subban’s lone goal of the 2015-16 campaign came on October 24th, 2015. But let’s focus on the players who actually have contributed on the scoresheet in the last nine games.

The only players above with multiple goals, are players either called up from the Habs’ American Hockey League affiliate St. John’s IceCaps, or generally bottom 6 type players.

Will this slump end soon? Only time will tell. Tuesday night the Habs will go into Minnesota to take on the Wild for their last game before Christmas. Starting up again on December 26th, the Canadiens will head to Washington nearing the middle of their 8-game road trip that highlights the Winter Classic on New Year’s Day 2016 against the Boston Bruins.