Coming off a late surge to reach the playoffs last spring, the Montreal Canadiens entered this season looking to take a step forward with their young core.
Through five games, the Canadiens are off to a strong start, and they attempt to earn a fifth straight win Saturday night when they host the offensively challenged New York Rangers.
Montreal has won three straight one-goal games and scored a total of 16 goals since opening with a 5-2 loss at Toronto. After earning wins over the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks during their three-game road trip, the Canadiens opened their home schedule with comeback overtime wins over the Seattle Kraken and Nashville Predators.
Cole Caufield has scored in each of the past three games and is up to five goals after improving his total from 28 goals in 2023-24 to 37 last season. He scored the game-winning goal in overtime to beat Seattle after the Canadiens rallied in the final three minutes of regulation. He also scored with three seconds left in overtime against Nashville, after burying the tying goal with 20 seconds remaining in regulation.
Montreal has scored three times within the final three minutes of regulation during its past three games and has yet to see the likes of Nick Suzuki, Brendan Gallagher, Josh Anderson or Patrik Laine score.
“We’re winning games, we’re doing a lot of good things, but there’s still a lot of improvements we could make,” Gallagher said. “(We) have to be hungry to make those adjustments. It’s still early in the season, nobody is where they want to be at, but I think we’re moving in a good direction.”
“Still have things to work on,” defenseman Kaiden Guhle added. “Still things to tweak, but the results have been good, so just can’t get comfortable with that. Got to keep staying hungry.”
The Rangers would like to be in a position to identify areas for improvement after securing wins, but their issue is finishing around the net, especially during a three-game losing streak that follows their 10-goal blowout road wins over the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins.
New York scored once in its past three games against the Washington Capitals, Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs. The Rangers totaled 94 shots on goal in their past three games while attempting 203 shots, but their only goal was a tip-in of a Braden Schneider shot by Juuso Parssinen 4:51 into the third period in Thursday’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Maple Leafs.
“I think we’re generating a lot of really quality chances,” Schneider said. “And I think once we get a few, I think we’re going to start to really feel confident about putting it home.”
New York took its third straight loss when Auston Matthews scored on a 2-on-1 against Igor Shesterkin in the opening minute of overtime after Mika Zibanejad fell to the ice while fanning on a shot.
Struggling to find offense, the Rangers wound up making some tweaks to their forward lines with Will Cuylle ending the game on the right wing with Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin, who have combined for one goal on 37 shots on net this season.
“We’re getting good looks,” said defenseman Adam Fox, whose three goals lead the Rangers. “I think everyone could kind of feel that, but we’ve definitely got to finish on those chances, too. It’s not just a game of expected goals. You’ve got to actually finish it.”
