What the Canadiens tried to implement last season felt familiar to what Rögle BK attempted during Adam Engström’s two seasons of development with the club. I reached out to Max Bohlin, Rögle’s defensive coach and main developer of Engström at the SHL level. Bohlin first introduced the system when he joined Rögle’s senior squad, and we first spoke about what he did during the 2024-25 campaign. With the Canadiens looking to use a similar system, the time was right for a longer discussion.
How to evaluate your penalty kill
Interestingly enough, the system Rögle has been implementing is based off of the Carolina Hurricanes’ tactics, a system that confounded the Canadiens in last year’s Eastern Conference Final. Bohlin began working in his new penalty-kill approach as soon as he was promoted from the U20 coaching staff to the senior SHL squad in 2023-24, and his impact was visible as Rögle reached the SHL Final that year.
He wanted to use different metrics to gauge his penalty kill. Expected goals for on the power play was one of them, but he especially looked to the penalty kill’s goal differential to have a metric that was easy to understand but also spoke about the units in more than one dimension.
“You don’t want to use percentages,” Bohlin explains, “The percentage is ‘goal or not’ and it eliminates short-handed goals from the conversation. Frölunda hasn’t scored a short-handed goal this year, and they’ve let in 22. That means we are three better than them [having scored six despite letting in 25]. We are one better than Skellefteå [who finished first in the regular season]. However, both of those teams technically have a higher PK percentage. Does that really paint the full picture? This is an important thing for media to understand and grasp.
“When you play aggressively, the opponents will cough up more chances to you. We have a player that is ready to go at all times. We have created a lot of breakaways and high-danger chances. This also kills the momentum for the power-play team. They need to reset, they need to slow down the puck. It’s a really important aspect to consider when you evaluate a penalty kill.”
SeasonPK% (Rank)PK Goals Against (Rank)PK Goals For (Rank)PK Goal Differential (Rank)2021-2276.07 (8th)28 (4th)3 (9th)-25 (4th)2022-2377.69 (11th)29 (8th)5 (2nd)-24 (5th)2023-2481.03 (4th)23 (4th)4 (2nd)-19 (4th)2024-2578.40 (5th)27 (5th)2 (8th)-25 (5th)2025-26 80.92 (4th)25 (3th)6 (2nd)-19 (1st)Table 1. Rögle’s penalty-kill stats from the past four seasons. Bohlin joined Rögle’s senior coaching team for the 2024 season.
A dip in form for Rögle in 2024-25, both on the penalty kill and in general, was temporary. As last season was coming to a close, the team was at the top of the league in short-handed goal differential, something that the team takes great pride in.
Reaching the top has been a two steps forward, one step back process. On the surface, Bohlin and Montreal seem to find themselves in a traditional 1-2-1 diamond formation quite often. However, Bohlin is quick to point out the differences between the basic structure and what he is building.
“I understand people are picking up on that, but for me the diamond is static and the opponent has full control of the puck. We play a ‘pressure down’ PK, and it seems that Montreal wants to pl
–