The Canadiens Have A Weird Fetish For Not Shooting The Puck And They’re Making It Everybody’s Problem

The Montreal Canadiens have chosen an odd and ill-advised moment to test out a new, advanced, and almost transcendental hockey analytics notion. Either that, or the Carolina Hurricanes are putting together the first five-game sweep in history. Either way, we're getting something we've never seen before, and we're only going to get one more chance, Friday night in Raleigh, to see it. That is, unless the Canadiens manage to perfect their new signature move: scoring without shooting. It's only worked once so far, and that by accident, but head coach Martin St. Louis has fallen in love with the concept and has watched his lads lose their last three games in pursuit of it. Indeed, it can be said that the idea, which was sparked by their Game 7 win over Tampa Bay in the first round, has been their great white whale ever since. And never mind that they are now down eradication-to-one in the Eastern Conference Final they are like a dog without a bone, and they will not be deterred from their goal of avoiding shooting. Wednesday night they were blitzed 4-0, and the highlights were established early when they waited eight minutes to take their first shot on a goal, a tip attempt from their repeated Game 7 hero Alex Newhook. By they time they took their third shot, Carolina with their world-weary and traditional method had scored three times, and after an aberrant second period in which Montreal took a normal amount of shots (10) and got nothing for it, they went back to the plan and put no shots on goal over the first 17 minutes of the third period. Carolina didn't score either in that entire stretch, but as soon as Nick Suzuki went rogue and ripped a 30-footer at narcoleptic Carolina goalie Frederik Andersen, the Hurricanes became angry at the Canadiens' effrontery and first hit the Montreal crossbar (Nik Ehlers) then scored seconds later (Andrei Svechnikov) for the completely gratuitous fourth goal. It's almost as if the two teams had agreed ahead of time that Montreal would stop trying to score, and when Suzuki broke the pact, the Canes used their old-fashioned methods to punish the Habs for backing away from their innovative spirit.