Y'know, our team has had trouble scoring for so long that I'm nervous about taking my foot off the pedal, but I think we're ready to shift needs from offence to defence. I'm with you on gearing up for the playoffs, but where you see an offensive problem, I see strength. Habs have four lines of scoring depth. As we've been seeing all season, if Galchenyuk/Pacioretty/Radulov aren't producing, goals can come from Danault, Byron, Lehkonen, or Plekanec now that he's remembered how to score. We're among the top-scoring teams in the league and near the top in every offensive statistic. Even the PP is improved. I've been waiting years to say this with any conviction: Offence is no longer a problem.
My concern is defence, specifically the awful penalty-kill. Habs have given up the most PK goals in the league. There's your single-biggest weakness. If Bergevin can do his trade-deadline magic and add a solid D I believe we're in good shape for the playoffs. Add a rested Markov and a big solid Pateryn, let Weber recharge, and we could have a core of D-men capable of shutting down the best. That's priority #1 in the playoffs.
You know what, I'm going to argue that the horrendous PK isn't actually a defense depth weakness. In my mind, the biggest reason that the PK has cratered is as follows:
1) Price. Seriously, his recent struggles have been well documented. I'm personally thinking its fatigue, especially since he by all accounts has just been moving/reacting slower in net and has been quicker to drop to his knees. But that drop off has been most noticable on the PK. He has a shorthanded save % of .857 this year. It was perfect in the short amount of time last season, .942 the year before, and .907 the year before that. Now, obviously, there is lot of variance, and Price is not solely to blame, but as your goalie goes, so does your PK. Price can and will be better on the PK.
2) Markov. He's arguably Montreal's best PK defenceman and him being out puts pressure on Emelin and Weber that don't have the mobility to effectively deal with the cycle. Him being back will help immensely with that. It also may help the team to try Beaulieu there. He has his brainfarts, but he's been very effective in limited time on the PK this year.
3) Eller. Eller was Montreal's most effective PK forward. Without a doubt. Plekanec isn't on top of his game and Danault isn't at the same level. A lot of Montreals problems on the PK this year start with how they deal with the points and the middle of the ice. Eller was excellent at taking away time and space from PP QBs and blocking lanes. Montreal misses that.
I like Montreal's healthy defensive depth. Upgrading Emelin or Beaulieu would be nice, but guys that are an ACTUAL upgrade (not talking about Oduya, Gudbranson, Franson, Kulikov or any of the other downgrades that people constantly mention on these boards) are going to be incredibly costly, if they're available at all.
Better to solidify the forward group, especially with someone defensively responsible instead. Its definitely more cost effective (especially come the expansion draft), and probably does more to improve the team, since there's more available out there. This team still only has 3 players that other teams NEED to watch at the forward position, and they're currently all on one line. Ideally you spread it out so that someone gets weaker matchups. That's how you win in the National Parity League come playoff time.
