NHL hammered the Canadiens with severe penalties and Montreal is in chaos
The numbers are out, and Montreal Canadiens fans aren't imagining it. The team has been parked in the box more than anyone else still playing this spring.
A graphic circulating on social media this week, posted by @futurdgduCH, ranks the 2026 playoff field by penalty minutes. The Habs sit first. Not close.
Montreal has racked up 245 PIM through the playoffs. The Buffalo Sabres are second at 215. The Philadelphia Flyers third at 190.
Then look at the gap. The Carolina Hurricanes, Montreal's current opponent, have taken just 131 minutes. The Boston Bruins round out the top five at 123.
That's a 114-minute spread between the Canadiens and the team across the ice from them right now. In a series that just started Thursday night.
Martin St-Louis hasn't publicly hammered the topic, but every coach in the room knows what those numbers mean. More penalty kill shifts. More energy burned. More chances handed to the other side.
St-Louis stares down a discipline gap heading into Game 2
Here's the kicker. Montreal has done all of that and still won eleven playoff games.
The Habs beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven. Then knocked out the Sabres in seven. Two straight Game 7s, both on the road, both finished with shorthanded shifts piling up.
The graphic itself is plain and damning. A simple ranked list, Montreal at the top, Carolina near the bottom, no caption needed.
-
Is it discipline? Is it whistles? Both arguments have legs. What's not debatable is the workload it's put on Montreal's penalty kill all postseason.
The Canadiens finished the regular season 48-24-10 for 106 points, sixth overall. They didn't get here by hooking and slashing their way through the East.
But the playoff version of this team has been a different animal in front of the officials. And Carolina ranked among the lowest PIM teams of the bracket walks in with a structural advantage on special teams.
Game 1 already cost Carolina home-ice control in this series. The Hurricanes will be hunting Montreal's stick infractions hard in Game 2 on Saturday night.
If those PIM stack one more time, the conversation stops being about whistles. It starts being about whether the Canadiens can stop giving them away.
The next 60 minutes tell us which team adjusts first.
|
LIVE
MAY 21, 2026
| ||||
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Juraj Slafkovsky | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Nick Suzuki | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Cole Caufield | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Phillip Danault | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Ivan Demidov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Seth Jarvis | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alexandre Texier | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jake Evans | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Kaiden Guhle | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Alex Newhook | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Josh Anderson | - | - | - | |
| Jackson Blake | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||