With the first week of the NHL season in the books, it’s time to analyze the Montreal Canadiens first four games in this season’s first Habs report.  The Canadiens started the season collecting the nine of the possible ten points to start the season. The team has looked good as a group for the most part and is among the league’s best teams so far. However there are still a few things that need

Habs Weekly Report: Strong Start Sees Montreal Canadiens Leading the NHL

The Goaltending

A big part to the team’s great start is from the goaltending. While, Carey Price missed the first three games of the season due to a terrible flu, backup Al Montoya stepped up to the occasion.  In the three games to start the season, Montoya posted league bests .962 save percentage and 1.30 goals against average. He has bailed his team out on multiple occasions already this season.  Montoya has shown that he can be reliable on nights that the league’s best goalie doesn’t play, something the team had been lacking in the last few seasons. He won’t continue to play at the pace he started the season at but he will provide good numbers nonetheless.

Carey Price looked like Carey Price in his first NHL game since November 25th 2015, despite being out with the flu for just over a week. In his return, he stopped 27 of the 29 shots he faced in a 5-2 win on Thursday against the Arizona Coyotes. He also beat the Boston Bruins last night.

The Offense

It’s only been five games into the season, but the Montreal Canadiens have gotten plenty of scoring throughout the lineup.  All lines have contributed and five players (Jeff Petry, Alex Galchenyuk, Max Pacioretty, Brendan Gallagher, and Shea Weber) all have a point per game rate or better. The Canadiens also lead the league in goals per game with four. Only two players (Brian Flynn and Mikhail Sergachev) have yet to record a point this season.

The New Faces

While newcomers like Artturi Lehkonen and Alexander Radulov have made a positive impact in the offensive zone. The rookie Lehkonen currently has two goals. While it may not seem like much considering Torrey Mitchell has three goals as a fourth line centre. However, Lehkonen is tied with Pacioretty for second most shots on the team, trailing only Brendan Gallagher.

This isn’t luck on Lehkonen’s part as he much like Gallagher gets into good shooting positions and has good chances. This could be something that continues throughout the season for the rookie and he may even score 20 goals in his rookie season. He has shown that he can be one of the two second line wingers, the Habs were in need of during the off-season.

As for Radulov which was an experiment to find that second line right winger that the team has been lacking for awhile now.  Many experts considered Radulov to be a sniper in the NHL and while he only has one goal to his credit this season, his game is so much more than that of a scorer. For one, he seems to take every shift seriously and has incredible vision which has complemented Lehkonen’s gritty sniper style of play. What Radulov brings to the Canadiens thus far, is a workhorse with tremendous skill. It’s only a matter of time before he starts racking up some points on the score-sheet.

The Defense

While the team’s defense has been good for the most part. It has likely been the team’s least dominant aspect over the first week of the season.

To begin, the defense has gotten caught on multiple occasions in which Montoya or Price has bailed them out. This was especially the case in the team’s second game of the season against the Ottawa Senators in which nothing went their way in the first half of the game.  It seems at times that the Canadiens are sacrificing defense more than ever in the past few years under Michel Therrien in order to get some offense.  Kirk Muller likely has a say for why that is happening.

The good news is that with the goaltending that the Canadiens have behind them, they can afford to do that.

The positive side of the team’s defense is that Shea Weber has looked very solid in his first week as a hab. He currently second on the team behind Alexei Emelin in hits. He has also been a strong presence in front of the net which will prove very crucial later in the season, as he will protect Carey Price.

As for Emelin, he has been solid in his bottom pairing role dishing out checks the way he used to before Milan Lucic took out his knee back in 2013. There is no guarantee that this continues however, it’s great to see just some consistency in Emelin’s game, something that has been absent for awhile now.

The Overall Thought

The Canadiens have started the season off strong as they currently lead the league in goal differential with a +11 rating. This is especially promising considering they lead the NHL due to an abundance of scoring.

Galchenyuk while struggling in the face-off dot, is improving game in and game out at the centre position and will likely only get better as the season continues. On top of that, Galchenyuk is at a point per game pace,  while not playing his best hockey. This means that Habs fans are in for a big season from the team’s number one centre.

There should be no fear of seeing the team collapse the way it did a year ago. The team now has a solid back up in Montoya to avoid the collapse in a worse case scenario. It is also less likely for the worse case to happen due in part of the protection that Weber gives to Price.

The Habs have three games coming up over the next week. Stay tuned for next week’s Habs report.

Main Photo: Montreal’s Brendan Gallagher (R) celebrates his first period goal with teammates Shea Weber (L) and Alex Galchenyuk as the Canadiens take on the Buffalo Sabres in their season opener at the KeyBank Centre in Buffalo, New York, October 13, 2016. / AFP / Geoff Robins