The Bell Center is one of the noisiest buildings in the NHL. Opponents love to play there because it gets absolutely electric. So far this season, however, it seems the Montreal Canadiens do not like to play there. When you compare the team’s record on the road and at home, you realize that Martin St-Louis’ men are much better when they are the visiting side.
The Habs are 7-8-1 at home, while they are 8-3-2 on the road. In other words, they’ve won 62% of their games when playing away from the Bell Centre and just 44% of their tilts in Montreal. Worst still, on the road they’ve allowed 40 goals and scored 42, giving them a plus-2 differential, but at home they have allowed 63 goals (the most in the league) and scored only 49, for a minus-14 differential.
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Those numbers are troubling. Playing at home is meant to give you an advantage, not just because of how electric the building is, but also because you control the matchups with the last change. Is St-Louis struggling to find the right matchups? Or are the players struggling with the man-to-man defensive system? It seems to be a bit of both, but if it’s the defensive system, how can they apply it on the road but not at home?
There is no better proof of the team’s inability to play the system than Nikita Kutcherov’s goal in Tuesday evening’s game. Ivan Demidov, Joe Veleno, Jared Davidson, and Mike Matheson are all standing in a perfect line in front of Jakub Dobes. At the same time, Maxwell Crozier feeds the puck to the Lightning sniper, who is all alone on the wing, as if Tampa was on the man-advantage, but they weren’t. He unleashed a cannon of a shot and, of course, found the back of the net.
Nikita Kucherov gives Tampa a 3-0 lead in the 1st period. pic.twitter.com/HDvA8kRQI4
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) December 10, 2025
St-Louis said last night that what worries him the most is his team’s tendency to give up goals early in periods, and he’s right to be concerned about that, but the man-to-man defensive system should also be right up there on his list of concerns.
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