Don’t count on Martin St-Louis to celebrate the success of the Montreal Canadiens on special teams at the start of the season.
The Habs head coach was very eloquent on this subject after Tuesday’s morning practice: he won’t draw any big conclusions until his team plays more games.
“We played six games… six games out of 82,” recalled the pilot, who was in good spirits. That’s 7% of the season. If you compare with the NFL, I’m sure the guys aren’t guided by the data after a game! Maybe after three or four…”
Journalist Anthony Martineau then clarified his thoughts by asking St-Louis to focus more on the performance of its troops on special units.
But St-Louis absolutely wanted to finish the reflection he had started. It must be understood that, the day before, he had been stung by the question of a journalist who brought to his attention the lackluster performances of his club at five against five under the magnifying glass of advanced statistics.
“You talk to me about “data”, I don’t really look at “data”! I’m going to look more at the “data” when we have played 15 or 20 matches. There it is [concret]. But that’s not a big enough sample. [actuellement] so that it leads me to be happy. We will continue to do the things we are talking about and we will assess with a larger sample if we are really on the right track.”
The Canadiens are currently 13th in the NHL for power play efficiency, at 21.7%, and second for penalty kill efficiency, at 90.9%.
“We are more aggressive in certain situations [en infériorité numérique]recognized veteran David Savard. We established clear rules on how we wanted to play. There is more communication and fewer gray areas.”
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