Hockey

Advanced stats: The 1st line was (much) more effective with Juraj Slafkovsky
Marc-Olivier Cook
Advanced stats: The 1st line was (much) more effective with Juraj Slafkovsky
Credit: Getty Images

Over the past few games, we've seen Juraj Slafkovsky play on the Canadiens' second line with Oliver Kapanen and Ivan Demidov.

And frankly, I don't dislike Slaf's performance. He's not producing any points (just one assist in his last seven games), but he's playing better without the puck, and it shows.

Except that Slafkovsky's absence from the top line is also noticeable, especially when you look at the advanced stats.

Marc Dumont and Brian Wilde talked about it on Tony Marinaro's podcast: Suzuki and Caufield's numbers with Slaf are much better than those with Bolduc.

The first line, with Slaf, created more scoring chances, shot more on net… and there were more expected goals too with the big Slovak on the wing.

The line-up of Slafkovsky, Caufield and Suzuki was simply one of the best in the NHL. And the line-up of Bolduc, Caufield and Suzuki – while not bad – is far less dominant…

Brian Wilde took it a step further… saying that Bolduc doesn't necessarily deserve his spot on the first unit right now.

He sees him more as an (excellent) third-line winger on a championship team. We agree: the Habs aren't there yet in their rebuild, but hey.

Bolduc is a bit of a default right now, after all. If the Habs had gone for a true top-6 winger, we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion today… and the Québécois would probably be playing on the team's third line.

That said, the sample size is small and I think we need to give him a few games to see what he's got. It might take him some time to adapt to the captain's and Caufield's style of play… and if he's able to keep up, it could produce an interesting result.

A bit like we saw in the Canadiens' last game against the Mammoth. Bolduc still finished his night's work with three points, including two at even strength…


Overtime

– Wow.

– He's going to be good.

– Oh.

– Of note.

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