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Expect huge year from Max Pacioretty no matter where he plays

Montreal Canadiens v Calgary Flames

CALGARY, AB - DECEMBER 22: Max Pacioretty #67 of the Montreal Canadiens in action against the Calgary Flames during an NHL game at Scotiabank Saddledome on December 22, 2017 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images)

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Each day in the month of August we’ll be examining a different NHL team — from looking back at last season to discussing a player under pressure to focusing on a player coming off a breakthrough year to asking questions about the future. Today we look at the Montreal Canadiens.

As of this posting in the middle of August, Max Pacioretty is still a member of the Montreal Canadiens.

He is still a member of the team after speculation that he could be dealt leading up to the trade deadline at the end of the 2017-18 season.

He is still a member of the team after reports surfaced in mid-July (subscription required) that the team was not going to negotiate a new contract extension with him and would look to trade him as soon as possible.

How long he will actually remain with the Canadiens is anybody’s guess at this point, but given that he only has one year left on his current contract and the team seems to be on a collision course with another disappointing season, it certainly stands to reason that he may not be on the team before the end of the season. Almost certainly not at the start of next season, barring some unforeseen change in the Canadiens’ approach.

No matter where he finishes the upcoming season there is one thing you should expect from Pacioretty, and that is a bounce back year in the goal-scoring department.

Among the many things that went wrong for the Canadiens this past season, a down year from Pacioretty was one of the more damaging developments. After being one of the league’s top goal-scorers over the previous six seasons (when he was a lock for at least 30 goals every year and averaged 35 per 82 games played) Pacioretty suffered through one of his worst seasons as a pro, managing only 17 goals in 64 games.

From a traditional box scores numbers outlook, it was an ugly season, at least by the standard Pacioretty had set for himself.

But it was not as bad as it seemed, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest it will not happen again.
[Canadiens Day: Looking back | Breakthrough | Under Pressure | Three Questions]

Pacioretty’s season went south early in the year when he went through a 22-game stretch starting in mid-November where he scored just a single goal. It was an eye-opening slump because it’s not what we had come to expect from Pacioretty throughout his career, and on a team that was already desperate for offense it stood out even more. The Canadiens needed him to carry the offense, and it was not happening.

It certainly was not for a lack of effort or chances.

During that slump he was still averaging more than 3.10 shots on goal per game and had managed to score on just one of his 69 total shots on goal during the slump, a shooting percentage of just 1.4 percent.

If you want to find little faults in his game during that stretch you could probably certainly do that, but the biggest issue for an All-Star level player during that sort of slump is often times just a lot of bad luck. Every top goal-scorer in the league is prone to that sort of stretch, and it is usually just as simple as the puck isn’t going in the net. As much as nobody ever wants to admit it, sometimes it just happens.

Given Pacioretty’s career shooting percentages (which are usually around 11 percent) you would expect him to score at least seven goals on that same number of shots, and if even just four or five more end up going in the net we’re probably look at his season (and that stretch) in a totally different light.

Even though Pacioretty is entering his age 30 season and has probably already played his best hockey, there was enough in his 2017-18 performance to suggest that he still has some big hockey ahead of him, and there was not much of a change in his actual play or usage. His ice-time was identical to what it was the previous year. His underlying numbers, including his possession numbers and his ability to generate shots, attempts and chances, were still strong and among the best on the team. The biggest drop came from his shooting percentage, and even that was largely due to that 22-game slump in the middle of the year.

At a $4.5 million salary cap Pacioretty is still set to be one of the biggest bargains in the NHL for at least one more season, and for right now the Canadiens are going to be the beneficiary of that.

Where he is playing at the end of the season is still up for speculation, but no matter where it ends up being (Montreal or somewhere else) that team is going to get one of the league’s best goal-scorers.

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.