MONTREAL — Cole Caufield became the first Montreal Canadiens player to score 50 goals in a season in 36 years on Thursday.
Caufield is only the seventh player in Canadiens history to reach 50 goals in one season, and the first since Stéphane Richer scored 51 in 1989-90
His goal at 6:30 of the second period against the Tampa Bay Lightning gave the Canadiens a 1-0 lead. And it was fittingly set up by captain Nick Suzuki on the rush, as he dished to Caufield on the right wing and his quick wrist shot beat Andrei Vasilevskiy inside the far post, sending the Bell Centre into a frenzy. Caufield had gone three games without goal, and the pressure was starting to mount.
His 50th this season was the 168th of his career in Caufield’s 365th career game. It came a bit less than one month shy of five years after his first goal, scored on May 2, 2021.
Except that the player Caufield was back then, playing his fourth career game in an empty Bell Centre due to COVID-19 restrictions, is vastly different from the player he is today.
And the differences are not limited to his scoring ability, which has also evolved.
“I think I’m just a better overall player,” Caufield said Thursday night after scoring his 48th and 49th goals of the season against the New York Rangers, including the game-winner late in the third period. “There’s a lot more to the game, and I think linemates and teammates and coaches help you with that. It’s just kind of figuring it out. I think there’s still a lot more room to grow in my game. I think progressing every year, with the team and collective staff that we have, it’s pretty easy to find yourself working every day.
“I think it’s just an addiction to find ways to get better, and for me right now I still feel like there’s more out there. Just trying to stay hungry and do what we can to win. It’s definitely a good feeling to be producing, but at the end of the day I think I’ve grown a lot as a player overall and I’m just going to try to continue to do that.”
The biggest reason for that growth is Caufield himself, to be clear. That “addiction” to improve speaks volumes as to how Caufield has committed himself to being more than a goal scorer.
But it is also tied to the arrival of Martin St. Louis as his head coach 40 games into his career on Feb. 9, 2022. Caufield had a goal and eight points in 30 games that season when St. Louis was hired. He had 22 goals and 35 points in 38 games from that point onward.
Caufield looked up to St. Louis as a kid, a similarly undersized forward who proved doubters wrong, and says he still sometimes has trouble believing he has St. Louis as his coach.
But the relationship has been transformational for Caufield. From the moment St. Louis arrived, he insisted he would never make Caufield a better goal scorer, but he could help him become a better hockey player by focusing on his game off the puck, and that would organically lead to him scoring more goals.
And that is exactly what has happened.
“I would say the last two weeks, Cole’s not just been a goal scorer,” St. Louis said after practice in Newark last Friday. “I know he’s scoring goals, but he’s playing the game. And to me, when you play the game like that, as talented as he is, I think you increase the percentages of getting those goals. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but that’s what he’s done recently, to me. He’s playing a complete game.”
The evolution has not only come off the puck. The location of Caufield’s goals has also evolved. He is no longer primarily a perimeter shooter; he gets to the hard areas of the ice and has scored seven goals this season from the inner slot, the area right around the opposing crease, according to NHL Edge data. That equals the amount of goals he scored from that area of the ice in his last three seasons combined, though one of those seasons was cut short by injury.
And the evolution comes from that “addiction” to improve, which Caufield was talking about, something that is fed regularly by his coach.
“He has a passion, and without that passion, it’s hard to improve,” St. Louis said. “Sometimes that passion can rise and fall, and that’s why you have to be careful as a coach to teach, to push them, while still trying not to kill their passion. Because when it starts to feel like a job sometimes, they’re not as passionate.”
Caufield’s passion remains, and it won’t stop now that he’s reached 50 goals. There is a Rocket Richard Trophy up for grabs, with him neck and neck with Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon, and Caufield has every intention to try and win it.
“You’d be crazy not to know what’s going on around the league if you care,” Caufield said last Thursday night. “So, still hungry, and we still have a couple games to go.”
