Don’t count on Martin St-Louis to celebrate the Montreal Canadiens’ special teams success early in the season.

The Habs head coach was very eloquent on the subject after Tuesday’s morning practice: He won’t draw any major conclusions until his team plays more games.

“We played six games…six out of 82,” recalled the pilot, who was in a good mood. That’s 7% of the season. If you compare it to the NFL, I’m sure the guys aren’t paying attention to the data after a game! Maybe after three or four…”

Journalist Anthony Martineau then explained his thoughts by calling on St-Louis to focus more on the performance of his special forces troops.

But St-Louis was determined to finish the deliberation he had begun. It must be clear that the day before he had been annoyed by a question from a journalist who, under the magnifying glass of advanced statistics, had drawn his attention to his club’s poor five-on-five performances.

“You talk to me about “data”, I don’t really look at “data”! I’ll take a closer look at the “data” after we’ve played 15 or 20 games. There it is [concret]. But that’s not a large enough sample. [actuellement] so that it makes me happy. We will continue to do the things we talk about and assess with a larger sample whether we are really on the right track.”

The Canadiens currently rank 13th in the NHL in power play efficiency at 21.7% and second in penalty kill efficiency at 90.9%.

“We are more aggressive in certain situations [en infériorité numérique]recognized veteran David Savard. We set clear rules about how we wanted to play. There is more communication and fewer gray areas.”

In collaboration with our partners