These fans would be better Leafs fans than they are Habs fans. Habs don't have the offensive talent to play an offensive style of hockey.
Two issues that really need to be emphasized here:
- the Habs are actually bad at defense.
- in a hockey game, there is only one puck. If you are using it to play offense, the other team does not. The best defense is to hold the puck and deny it to your opponents.
Really, there's this misconception that more offense will necessarily lead to poorer defense. But what you're really advocating when you talk about an offensive style" is the notion that the Habs do not have the talent to play a
high-event style, where the two teams trade shots/chances at a furious pace. That really isn't the point. Being high- or low- event is orthogonal to the question of whether you outplay your opponent.
Right now, though, the Habs are not playing an offensive style (they are not high-event in the opposing zone) but they are not playing a defensive style either (they are high-event in their zone). Right now what they are is a club that is poor at both offense and defense and is being carried by goaltending.
Don't mistake "we don't allow a lot of goals" with "we play an effective defensive style". It's not the only way to get there, as the Habs are clearly showing.
So in that sense, it makes sense for Montreal to try to be as low-event as possible, because they are not a good team. High-event styles favor the more powerful side as the larger samples reduce the impact of luck. Montreal can't outplay opponents, so they're down to hoping they get lucky and/or that Price saves them, so it makes sense for them to do what bad teams do, namely try to limit the number of events.
If Montreal could match or outplay teams, then a high-event style would become favorable to them even if their shooting was average, because they do have the advantage of excellent goaltending. But right now, the low-event style is good -- not because they lack finishing ability,
per se, but because they're generally not playing very well.
Whether they have a roster that should result in such poor play is another matter however. I think they ought to be significantly better than they are, and it makes sense to try and fix that problem before deciding whether a low- or high-event style makes the most sense for them.
And ultimately this is why they don't score: they have a poor possession game, and the opponent spends more time trying to score on them than they do trying to score on the opponent. This isn't a "defensive style", though, this is just poor hockey being papered over by unreal goaltending. If Price was merely excellent rather than superhuman this year, we wouldn't be talking about the Habs' supposed "defensive style".
I'm very much aware he has offensive talent though and the points will come at the NHL level. He's one of those guys that will break out into a solid offensive D when it all clicks, not worried.
