The legacy Atlantic Division powerhouses are struggling, and opportunity has come knocking for the rebuilding teams to prove they’re a new and competitive force.

At the top of that group may well be the Montreal Canadiens, owing heavily to a lethal first line that’s dominating the competition.

With one month in the books, the Canadiens are well-positioned to return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the hope is this year they can do it without relying on a wild-card berth.

Montreal is off to a 9-3-0 start and carrying a +8 goal differential in the process. Last year, the team relied heavily on goaltending outperformance from Sam Montembeault (90.1 per cent stop rate; 31 goals saved versus expected). This year’s squad hasn’t nearly had the same goaltending goodness, but they have offset that through their top line of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovsky.

In many respects it’s exactly what coaches around the league are looking for: players who can play with incredible pace and through complementary skill sets. Suzuki and Slafkovsky serve as the playmakers; Caufield is the sniper. Their chemistry looks like a group that’s played together for a decade, and their ability to both sustain offensive-zone pressure and attack through tempo in transition has put NHL defences on their heels.

The scoring alone should give an indication how electric they have been:

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But this line’s dominance goes well beyond the counting numbers. Consider how this line grades out relative to some of the other dominant units around the league. It’s important to recognize not just that their performance has been one-sided, but that even compared to some of the other best lines in the NHL, their numbers stand out.

(It goes without saying high-calibre lines are rarely broken up, so this visualization will have a natural elitist skew.)

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Outside of the juggernauts in Colorado and Utah (who are off to white-hot starts of their own), this group compares well to everyone. The trio is converting more than 11 per cent of their shots, a lofty number that may see some headwinds over a longer period.

But there is a counterpoint: this group is playing with the puck so much that they are rarely ever spending time in the defensive zone. It’s hard to give up goals when the opponent rarely has the puck, and this line is perhaps the best example of that. Scoring chances are impossible to come by for the opposition right now because of how hard they have to work to win the puck back; if you look at the shot profile Montreal goaltenders are facing with this line on the ice, it’s effectively a ghost town in the defensive zone (via HockeyViz):

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We see surges from lines and pairings routinely in October, and there’s always healthy debate about how sustainable outperformance like this is. But most, if not all of the arguments are in favour of this trio doing it well into the winter months and beyond. Their skill sets are almost perfectly complementary in nature, they have a sniper in Caufield who has shown he can find the net on a much more regular basis than his peers, they have a playmaker in Suzuki who has become an assist factory for years in Montreal, their average age is under 24 years old, and the Atlantic Division simply isn’t as competitive as it has been in years past.

The Canadiens are not a perfect team; the goaltending has regressed sharply year-over-year and Montreal has been outscored with their top line off the ice (17 goals for; 19 goals against, -2).

To become a serious contender, head coach Martin St. Louis knows he’ll need more further down the lineup. But Montreal’s top line is carrying them into contention, and, for now, that’s music to Canadiens fans’ ears.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, HockeyViz

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