The Number That Should Worry Every Canadiens Fan This Offseason Is 2.8
Start with the goals-against narrative and you miss the actual problem. Montreal's late-season offensive collapse — from 3.9 goals per game over a 20-game stretch to 2.8 in the final 10 regular-season contests — is a 1.1-goal-per-game drop that arrived precisely when the calendar demanded the opposite. That is not a slump. That is a structural signal. And locking up Ivan Demidov to an eight-year extension, as gratifying as it is for the long-term picture, does not make that number disappear.
The paradox of this Montreal roster is that the box score looks genuinely exciting until you read it in sequence. Nick Suzuki finished at 54 points over 49 games, posting 1.1 points per game as the team's leading scorer. Cole Caufield hit 23 goals and 47 points. Lane Hutson, in his rookie campaign, put up 49 points from the blue line — a legitimate first-pairing performance. Demidov added 42 points in 50 games at 15.1 minutes of ice time per night, which is a restricted deployment for a player the organization just committed to for the better part of a decade. On paper, the core is real. The problem is what happened when games started mattering more.
The 7-3 record in the final 10 games of the regular season reads as momentum. The 2.8 goals per game during that same window reads as warning. Those two facts coexist, and the second one is harder to explain away. Winning seven of ten while scoring at a rate that would rank among the league's bottom feeders suggests Montreal was leaning heavily on goaltending and defensive structure to close out the regular season — not the offense that was supposed to be the franchise's identity. That kind of win profile does not typically survive playoff hockey, where the margins tighten and opponents game-plan specifically to neutralize top lines.
The depth chart amplifies the concern. Behind Suzuki at center, production falls off sharply. The defensive corps presents an even starker gap: Hutson's production share dwarfs Mike Matheson's at second on the depth chart, with Matheson logging 24.3 minutes per game on 24 points — a workload that outpaces his output by a significant margin. The team's own roster analysis flags this as a moderate need, noting Matheson is operating at roughly 25% of league-median starter production for his position. That gap is not a rounding error; it is a structural vulnerability that opposing power plays will locate in April.
The Kirby Dach signing — one year at $3.6 million — adds a piece to the forward depth puzzle, though it does not fundamentally alter the offensive architecture. My read is that the front office understands the scoring depth problem but is betting on internal development — Demidov's ice time expanding, Juraj Slafkovsky building on his 40-point season — to close the gap organically. That is a reasonable bet for a team with a 48-34 season already in the bank. It is a riskier one when the evidence from last season suggests the core group fades under sustained high-leverage pressure rather than rising to meet it.
The Demidov extension is the right move for the right reasons. So was moving Brendan Gallagher to Vancouver after 14 seasons — a genuinely difficult call that signals the organization is serious about the rebuild's direction rather than sentimental about its history. But organizational confidence and on-ice execution are different currencies. The number that will define whether this team is actually ready to compete deep into next spring is not the 48 wins or the eight-year commitment. It is whether that 2.8 goals-per-game floor gets raised before the schedule that just dropped puts Montreal back in a building where the other team's crowd is louder than theirs. The youth core is locked in. Now it has to prove it can perform when locked in means something.