While many predicted another season of misery, the Canadian managed to maintain a near-.500 record midway through the season. All this while being the second most injured team according to the trade site NHL injury, viz. Without all these injuries, would the Canadian be in the playoffs? We asked our robots to answer this question.
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According to NHL Injury Viz, only the San Jose Sharks have had more players miss games due to injury this season. For the Habs, the losses were significant, starting with Kirby Dach, who tore his anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee after just two games, requiring surgery. He will not return this season.
In addition to Dach, Alex Newhook, Tanner Pearson, Christian Dvorak (season ended), Rafaël Harvey-Pinard and David Savard missed games due to injuries.
We therefore asked the company SportLogiq to create projections to find out how many more goals CH would have scored if all of these key players had stayed healthy.
How many more wins?
We will try to summarize everything as simply as possible for you. Note that our predictions were made as of January 10th, when CH had played a total of 39 games.
At this point, the Canadian had scored 107 goals. According to SportLogiq, with a full and healthy roster, that number could have risen to 119-127 using advanced expected goals statistics, data calculated by taking into account high-quality scoring chances and shots from players.
In the optimal scenario, we are therefore talking about 12 to 20 additional goals, of which a total of up to 9 are through the roof.
Obviously, this is hypothetical and relatively conservative data that does not take into account all external factors. However, it helps to get an idea of the impact the absence of injured players has had so far this year.
Well, all the expected goals are all well and good, but it's impossible to predict in which games they would have come. Two more goals during the poor performance on January 4th, a 6-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, and the game would still end in a loss for CH.
We therefore decided to take a conservative approach: The Habs lost six games in overtime or in a shootout. We can therefore imagine that the Canadian could have achieved two or three more wins.
In series?
In this hypothetical scenario, which does not take into account injured players from other NHL teams, the Habs would have had a record of 19-17-3 with two more wins on Jan. 10, making them 20-17-3. 2, with three, different from 17-17-5 in reality.
In the first scenario, that of two more wins, the Canadian would have 41 points and would be in the same place in the table, i.e. fifth in the Atlantic Division, three points from the Red Wings and four from a place in the playoffs.
With three more wins and 43 ranking points, the Habs would end up in the same spot, behind the Wings.
Finally, let's be a little optimistic. Let's admit that with 20 more goals, CH had won three games, which they lost in overtime, and two more in regular time.
Their record of 22-15-2 would give them 46 points and they would be in the playoffs since the first team was drafted.
Not impossible, but unlikely
If the Canadian hopes to make the playoffs, he will need to finish with at least 92 points. To achieve this, Martin St-Louis' team will need to maintain a winning percentage of 0.634, while they finished with a winning percentage of 0.488 in the first half of the season.
At least 92 points are required
Since the introduction of the new playoff format in 2013–2014, no team has made the playoffs in the East with fewer than 92 ranking points. And only once was this result enough to qualify for the playoffs, last year with the Florida Panthers. Otherwise, the series scored between 93 and 100 points in the other seven seasons (we exclude the two COVID years).
If we compare ourselves…
The Senators, considered one of the NHL's teams of the future and whose rebuild was thought by many to have been better orchestrated than in Montreal, were unable to stay afloat at the start of the season. Brady Tkachuk's team is in last place in the East. However, they still have more games to play than all the teams in the association. This shows that a complete reconstruction is not automatically a guarantee of success.