Why unlocking Caufield's shot is key to improving Canadiens' power play

ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s a statistic that’s impossible to ignore through 31 games of this Montreal Canadiens season, and it has to change if Cole Caufield is going to start scoring at or near his expected clip.

To see such an elite shooter stuck on eight goals and just one at five-on-four through more than a third of the season is rare, if not astounding. And it’s just as remarkable that the Canadiens have managed 17 goals at five-on-four without more of them coming off Caufield’s whippy one-piece stick.

Caufield is simply not getting as many opportunities as he did a year ago, when he scored five goals in 46 games at five-on-four. His shot volume per game in this situation is marginally down and he’s putting fewer of the shots he gets through on net. Caufield and the four guys he’s stepping on the ice with must find a solution.

The Canadiens can’t control how other teams choose to cover Caufield on the penalty kill, but they can do a better job of forcing their opponents to deviate from their plans.

The Canadiens are actively working on that.

The first third of Wednesday’s practice at Xcel Energy Center was dedicated to the five-on-four, and this team will have a lot more to do on top of that — and outside the video room — to solve this riddle.

It’s a complex one, posited power-play quarterback Mike Matheson after practice.

“The way teams are killing now, it’s less of that push down (collapsing) mentality,” he explained. “It’s much more of the fronting diamond formation.”

If you’re not sure what he meant, picture the lefthanded Matheson in possession of the puck at the point, facing a diamond formation of penalty killers, with one opponent facing him and trying to angle him to his right. As Matheson shifts, the righthanded Caufield, who’s on his left, has to come up to the high ice to present a passing option for him while the next penalty killer will rotate up to remain in Caufield’s shooting lane.

It’s an effective strategy, especially against teams looking for a lethal one-timer — like Caufield possesses — as their top option.

“Fronting diamonds were, I think, invented because of the (Alex) Ovechkins and (Steven) Stamkoses, who were just sitting in the same spot taking one-timers over the last 15 years,” Matheson said. “That kind of old-school thing — I don’t know if I should call it old-school, but it is — where you’re just going to fake a shot at the point and tee up the one-timer is kind of in the past now. It’s just the way teams kill now. The weapons are shifting.”

The Canadiens know. Not only because they face this fronting diamond nearly every game, but also because they employ it themselves on the penalty kill.

In doing so, they appear more willing to concede goal-line plays to neutralize one-timer threats, and they should be.

Two weeks ago, when I asked Jake Allen what makes a power play most dangerous, he said, without hesitation, “It’s the one-timer shooters and a team’s ability to open up seams for them.”

Last week, when I asked Caufield how the Canadiens might go about doing that more often, he gave the same predictable answer Matheson gave on Wednesday.

“I think the more that you are able to show that you have other weapons to worry about,” Matheson said, “the more they have to respect those other things and leave Cole alone.”

It’s why the defenceman has been attempting to shoot the puck more at five-on-four than anyone outside of Caufield on Montreal’s top unit so far this season.

Nick Suzuki and Sean Monahan aren’t far behind Matheson’s 38 attempts with 33 apiece, showing the Canadiens are trying to open up more of the down-low plays that appear more available to them with Caufield covered.

Now the Canadiens have to find a way to get Juraj Slafkovsky to start adopting more of a shooting mentality to force the penalty kill over to his position, where he’s opposite Caufield.

As for Caufield, there’s more he can do to become a scoring threat regardless of all that.

“Maybe I should just tee it up anyways when a guy is in front of me,” he said to me half-jokingly in the Canadiens’ dressing room back in Brossard on Dec. 12.

But he was also being half-serious, knowing a penalty killer might hesitate to fully cover a lane after he’s already stood in it and taken a bullet to the foot.

Matheson said that’s definitely one thing Caufield should consider doing.

“Nothing worse than being the killer in that position,” he said, and he would know from frequently having to be in that position at the other end of the ice for the Canadiens.

There’s also more Caufield can do to open himself up, and it’s no different than what anyone else has to do on Montreal’s power play, which has been clicking at just 14.6 per cent over the last month.

Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis was talking about exactly that after Wednesday’s practice.

“Honestly, can we generate more shots? Do we need to pass? Do we need pretty plays? Can we simplify a little bit,” he asked. “I think you’re able to generate more shots when everybody, the five guys are in between coverage. You have to play in between coverage on the power play. If the guy is eying you, you can’t stay there. You have to move a little to the left, you have to move a little to the right. And the guy who’s in the hole — the bumper they call it, whatever — he’s got to find a way to be in between the four. Because I feel like when everybody’s in between, there’s holes. And now, can we take advantage of that?"

The rest, as Matheson said, comes down to familiarity.

As an example, the Lightning — who are operating at almost exactly double Montreal’s efficiency since Nov. 20 — have had that coveted familiarity built over nearly a decade.

“That Tampa power play is so difficult not just because of Stamkos and (Nikita) Kucherov,” Matheson said of the mighty Lightning unit, “they also have Brayden Point in the middle and Point is top-three in the bumper at getting it and releasing it to drag people into the middle and opens up other options.

“I think that’s what we’re constantly looking at and trying to get better at is knowing that if teams are going to take our A-option away, this is our B-option and C-option. And the more reps we get together, the more naturally that comes.”

The Canadiens want to get Caufield more goals at five-on-four and force teams to focus on options B and C, but Matheson knows they’ll only be able to do it incrementally.

“It takes time,” he said. “If you look at our unit, we had Kirby (Dach) at the beginning of the year. That’s what we were thinking we’d have for the year and then he goes down. Then somebody else comes in. (Alex Newhook) was then in there, and he went down. There’s been a lot of turnover. And then you compare that to Tampa? It’s been almost the same five guys for eight, nine, 10 years.

“I think there’s a big focus on our power play right now, but we have seven years to go before we’ve been together as long as the Lightning.

“You can say, oh, it’s been 31 games, and why isn’t everything clicking? It takes longer than 31 games to really open up option A, B, C and reading what kind of PK you’re against.”

St. Louis and Alex Burrows (who helps him manage Montreal’s power play) will continue to dive deeper into the details to speed up the process.

That’s something St. Louis feels they can do now that the Canadiens have reached a more mature stage of their development in other aspects of play.

But development is still being prioritized over results.

When I had a minute with St. Louis after his availability Wednesday, I asked him if he knew how many teams in the NHL are currently using two defencemen on their top power play unit.

He guessed one, and he wasn’t far off, with Anaheim and Vancouver being the only teams currently doing it (according to DailyFaceoff.com).

This wasn’t just a trivia question; I was asking because I wanted to know what St. Louis’ willingness would be to use both Justin Barron and Mike Matheson on his top power play unit.

I think a lot of people would be curious to see Barron replace Matheson on the top unit just to have a right-handed shooter making the one-timer pass over to Caufield, and I see the logic in that.

As Caufield noted last week about Matheson, “As a lefty, he usually has to be facing me to make that pass.”

Barron wouldn’t. He has the luxury of incorporating just a bit more deception, as he can drag a defender with him before shooting with the flow or reversing the puck back to Caufield, whereas Matheson would have to shoot against the flow or pass more directly to Caufield.

I just thought rather than having Barron replace Matheson, why not use Matheson to the right of Barron and open up a more established one-timer threat than Slafkovsky can offer at this stage of his development?

“But if I do that,” St. Louis said, “I’d have to take Slafkovsky off.”

And he added he had no interest in doing that because the 19-year-old is in a premium position to get quality touches — as he has on the power play since joining the first unit — and that is contributing greatly to the progress St. Louis (and anyone else watching) is seeing from Slafkovsky at the moment.

St. Louis conceded the half-wall might not end up being Slafkovsky’s optimal position on the power play, but said that’s less important to him at the moment than continuing to build up Slafkovsky’s confidence with the puck.

“So development still trumps?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” St. Louis responded.

He added that he also doesn’t have an interest in destabilizing his second unit, which he feels is going well with Barron at the top of it.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see changes as the season moves along, especially if Montreal’s power play doesn’t click more often than it has over the past month.

But St. Louis’ priorities remain in the right place, even with the Canadiens trending upwards in their general play of late.