A first in nearly 30 years could happen in Montreal
On September 10th, the Montreal Canadiens are a better team than they were exactly seven days ago, 24 hours before Christian Dvorak arrived. Honestly, with the additions of Mike Hoffman, D-Vo, Cedric Paquette and Mathieu Perreault, the Habs are slightly better offensively than they were in 2021. As Guillaume Latendresse said on 98.5, the Habs now have three natural goalscorers: Cole Caufield, Tyler Toffoli and Mike Hoffman.
"It's been a long time since the Montreal Canadiens have had so many goalscorers, but this is an interesting picture. Cole Caufield is a straight shooter in the National Hockey League. Tyler Toffoli and Mike Hoffman are capable of scoring goals. They are real scorers... Real scorers, the CH has three of them." - Guillaume Latendresse
Seriously, how long has it been since the Habs have had so many natural scorers in their ranks? I went back almost 30 years and the Tricolore never had three natural scorers in their lineup since the 1992-1993 season...
Going back two years, Max Domi, Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar have scored 25 or more goals, but none of them qualify as "natural scorers". In the 2015-16 season, Alex Galchenyuk and Max Pacioretty both scored 30 goals. In 2014-2015, the CH had four 20+ goal scorers, including one who was over 30 (Max Pacioretty).
If you go further, you have Brian Gionta and Mike Cammalleri, who came close to 30 goals in 2009-2010... Richard Zednik scored 31 in 2002-2003, but he wasn't a natural scorer. There was also the Michael Ryder era, who was the only one to score 30 goals in a campaign. And the Kovalev era? The Artist dazzled us, he gave us a show and he marked his passage with a burning iron. But he was alone...
In short, the last time at least three players scored 30 goals or more was in the 1992-1993 season, when Brian Bellows (40 goals), Vincent Damphousse (39 goals), Kirk Muller (37 goals) and Stephan Lebeau (31 goals) won. We are talking about almost 30 years ago... WOW!
All in all, with Caufield, Toffoli and Hoffman, the Montreal Canadiens have three natural goalscorers and all three could break the 30-goal mark. Christian Dvorak could perhaps get closer, he was recognized as an "ace" scorer in juniors. Exciting, this future 2021-2022 season is!
