Martin St. Louis believes a good power play is like an orchestra.
It’s five players with different instruments who learn to play together and follow the same beat to create beautiful music — something like Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
Unfortunately, the music that has best accompanied the Canadiens’ power play in recent years is Yakety Sax, the theme song from the old Benny Hill comedy show.
Over the last three seasons — during which the Canadiens have finished 32nd, 28th and 28th in order in the overall NHL standings — they have ranked 31st (13.7 per cent), 29th (16.1 per cent) and 27th (17.5 per cent) on the power play.
Over the last 10 seasons, the Canadiens have the worst power play in the NHL with an overall success rate of 17 per cent. The Edmonton Oilers have the best power play over that span at 23.7 per cent.
During their first four pre-season games this year — during which they had a 2-2 record — the Canadiens were 0-for-20 on the power play before facing the Ottawa Senators Tuesday night at the Bell Centre.
Patrik Laine was going to be a key new instrument on the Canadiens’ power play this season, but he suffered what appeared to be a serious knee injury during Saturday’s 2-1 pre-season loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Canadiens have yet to announce how long Laine will be out of the lineup, but it’s expected to be long-term.
The Canadiens still have rookie defenceman Lane Hutson, who should help, but the loss of Laine is a big one for the power play and the offence in general. The Canadiens ranked 26th in the NHL in offence last season, scoring an average of 2.83 goals per game. Laine has scored 204 goals in the NHL and 70 of them have come on the power play. When Laine scored a career-high 44 goals with the Winnipeg Jets in 2017-18, he had 20 power-play goals.
Jeff Gorton, the Canadiens’ executive vice-president of hockey operations, was a guest Monday on The Sick Podcast — The Eye Test with Pierre McGuire and Jimmy Murphy and was asked how the team might be able to replace Laine.
“Oliver Kapanen right away is a guy that’s come in here and played really well and opened our eyes,” Gorton said about 6-foot-1, 194-pound centre the Canadiens selected in the second round (64th overall) of the 2021 NHL Draft. “We have a situation with him where we have him for camp and then if he doesn’t make our team he’s got to go back to Sweden (and play with Timra IK). So we’ll probably keep him as long as we can to make that decision, try to get him in some of these (pre-season) games that we’re finishing off with here in the next week. He’s still with us.
“We’re down to basically five lines right now,” Gorton added. “He’s one guy. I think Josh Roy is a guy that could find himself in a bigger role, too. But we’ve had some other guys play well. (Joel) Armia has played really well, Gally’s (Brendan Gallagher) come back and played pretty well in camp. So we have some guys. I think one thing we do have is a little bit of depth now and hopefully we can get us through this period.”
The Canadiens haven’t had a potent power play since Guy Carbonneau was head coach.
During Carbonneau’s two full seasons as head coach the Canadiens had the best power play in the NHL. They ranked first during the 2006-07 season with a 22.8 per cent success rate and were first again in 2007-08 at 24.1 per cent. The Canadiens scored 86 power-play goals in 2006-07, led by Sheldon Souray with 19, and had 90 power-play goals in 2007-08, led by Alex Kovalev with 17.
Last season, the Canadiens scored 44 power-play goals, led by Nick Suzuki with 12. The power play lacked movement and was predictable, including the constant drop pass to Suzuki while coming out of their own end.
St. Louis has taken over control of the power play this season after Alex Burrows stepped down from his role as an assistant coach during the off-season for what Burrows and the team said were family reasons. St. Louis was a force on the power play during his Hall of Fame playing career. St. Louis scored 391 goals during his 16-year career, including 101 on the power play. Of his 642 career assists, 216 came on the power play.
“With the powerplay, I think he’s going to do a good job,” Suzuki said about St. Louis at the team’s golf tournament before the start of training camp. “Obviously, he’s had a lot of success as a player doing it … the way he sees things happening on the power play and the way he can take advantage of other teams on the penalty kill. He’s been a big help to me and a lot of other guys would probably say the same thing.”
Now St. Louis is the conductor for the power play — without one of his best instruments.
Time to cue up the Benny Hill music again?