It has been 24 years since a Canadiens striker finished a game with a differential of -5. Christian Dvorak and Mike Hoffman both achieved the sad feat on Thursday against the New York Islanders.
We will not reduce these two players to this one game. This poor performance was nevertheless revealing of certain shortcomings in these two skaters who joined the training during the summer.
The cases of Dvorak and Hoffman must of course be taken separately, since their missions, and the expectations which flow from them, are very different.
Dvorak’s mandate is ambitious: to generate offense and perform five-on-five defensive missions, in addition to playing on both advantage and shortage. Roughly speaking, it is, apart from the power play, to fill the void left by the departure of Phillip Danault.
Offensively, his 5 points in 12 games equals a production of 34 points over a full season of 82 games. That’s below his stride from his last two seasons in Arizona – 45 points per 82 games – but given the current general state of CH in attack, it’s not the end of the world.
In defense it gets complicated. And funny. Whether we like the differential statistic or not, nobody expected to see Christian Dvorak’s name last among the Canadian skaters (-10). In the entire league, only four players had done worse than him before Friday night’s games.
There is no mystery about the role he is given. He is by far the Montreal center who has been involved in the most faceoffs in five-on-five defensive territory, with 65. That’s 14 more than Nick Suzuki and 41 more than Jake Evans. .
Yet the numbers demonstrate an inability to limit the opponent’s quality scoring chances. He leads the Canadian with 31 chances allowed while on the ice, tied with his right winger Josh Anderson. The line they formed with Mike Hoffman for two periods on Thursday gave the Islanders 7.
For 10 games, he had formed with Anderson and Jonathan Drouin the most stable trio in CH this season. This unit lost the battle for shots on target (52-65) and that for goals (4-8). She nevertheless won the one in quality scoring chances (21-17), but the source, obviously, dried up along the way: 19-10 in the first six games on the calendar, 2-7 over the next four.
Against the Islanders, some situations he found himself in are puzzling. On the goal of Oliver Wahlstrom, who went 2-0 in the second half, he was in the group of five CH players who had abandoned the top of their zone. “We were five against two, there was no reason why the third player [Wahlstrom] ends up with the puck, ”analyzed Dominique Ducharme on Friday. On the next goal, Brock Nelson’s second of the game, Dvorak seemed to be looking, in vain, for a player to cover in the enclave.
Defender Ben Chiarot stressed that Dvorak was in a “period of adjustment” and that we would “see him get better as the year progresses”.
In the same way, Dominique Ducharme, Friday, underlined that, for any newcomer, “it takes a certain number of matches to be 100% comfortable in what we do”. The coach, however, refused to point the finger at Dvorak more than another player. “We are looking for consistency from everyone,” he insisted.
However, Ducharme stressed that the American had had an “excellent game” in Tuesday’s victory against the Red Wings. Against the Islanders, “it was more difficult”.
Dvorak was driving the third line on Tuesday with Joel Armia and Artturi Lehkonen. And he found these wingers Thursday in the third period when his coach changed his lines.
Will he find his bearings more with more responsible wingers defensively? The answer will come over the next few matches. And the health of Jonathan Drouin, whose presence at the center of the second trio frees Dvorak from certain responsibilities.
Hoffman and the old sins
Mike Hoffman falls into a whole different category.
On paper, he does what is asked of him: to score goals. He already has four in nine games, a top for the Habs. This is a more than honest harvest for a player who had missed all of training camp due to an injury.
However, the attacker reconnects, slowly but surely, with his old sins.
Good news: It has nothing to do with his past reputation for being a disengaged player. “All I see [de lui], it is positive, assured Ducharme. He’s a team guy who really cares about our success. ”
Very good. But the five-on-five shortcomings that have stuck with him over the past few years seem to be resurfacing.
The breakout occurred during the recent trip to the west coast. In his first five games, Hoffman was on the ice for three CH goals and none from the opponent, and he was slightly in deficit in terms of quality scoring chances (6-8). For four meetings, the trend is clearly the opposite. For goals: 0-5. For odds of scoring: 7-18.
And no, the intensity is not always there. In the first period, against the Islanders, he never started when Zach Parise walked around him at the opposing blue line.
Ultimately, he believes the statistics make his trio’s record “worse than it was”. “I don’t think we had such a bad game,” he said on Friday. We spent some time in the offensive zone, we controlled the puck. But every time we made a mistake, the puck ended up in our goal. ”
“We watched it all [vendredi] morning, and we are moving forward, ”he added.
Next game: this Saturday, at the Bell Center, against the Vegas Golden Knights.