BROSSARD, Que. – After his Montreal Canadiens were done losing to the Philadelphia Flyers in a shootout Tuesday night, Cole Caufield made the walk around the bowels of the Bell Centre to see his good friend Trevor Zegras, who settled that shootout with a slick goal.

Zegras had one thing he wanted to talk to Caufield about: Ivan Demidov.

“He was just like, ‘Every time he’s got the puck, something’s happening,’” Caufield said Wednesday after practice. “He gets people on their heels, and that’s tough to do in this league. And to do that kind of every shift when he’s got the puck is really special. He’s able to see the ice and make something kind of crazy out of nothing.”

This interaction with Zegras was nothing new for Caufield. Since the start of the season, Demidov has been a major source of questions directed at him, whether that’s from Zegras or any of Caufield’s other friends.

“All my buddies that I talk to just want to know about him; they’re obsessed with him and his game,” he said. “To get to play with a guy like that, he’s already got kind of the wow factor around the league.”

Those conversations are generally pretty short.

“Is he really this good?” Caufield’s buddies ask him.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah, he is.”

Demidov enters games Thursday as the NHL’s rookie scoring leader with 12 points in 13 games, one up on New York Islanders phenom and 2025 No. 1 draft pick Matthew Schaefer. Since Demidov was placed on the top unit in Edmonton on Oct. 23, the Canadiens’ power play is humming along at a 53.9 percent success rate, tops in the NHL over that span. And of the seven goals the Canadiens have scored on 13 power play opportunities in those five games, Demidov has scored one and picked up primary assists on three others.

But it’s not just the production that has Caufield’s buddies asking questions. It’s the way he produces, the way he operates offensively, the way he handles the puck, the way he keeps NHL defenders on their heels.

It comes from Demidov’s ability to take in information with his eyes, process that information in his brain, and physically execute the solution to the problem he has already figured out. All of that happens in an instant.

It is unique, especially coming from a 19-year-old still adapting to the best hockey league in the world on top of a new country and a new language.

“I think for some players it would take more time. There’s just guys that have that elite talent in that department that it takes less time,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “But there’s players that actually get there too. In my own experience, it took me more time to feel that. But Demi, he’s elite in that department at a very young age, so he’s got that now. Some players might get that a little later.”

Demidov is not perfect. He has work to do on his play without the puck, his defensive work, his tracking in the neutral zone and so on. As St. Louis loves to point out, you only play a fraction of the game with the puck on your stick, so what you do when you don’t have the puck matters a lot. Demidov has shown a commitment to improving in that area, which is why St. Louis says he was comfortable promoting him to the top power-play unit.

St. Louis refers to it as Demidov’s “alarm” of when it’s time to go from offence to defence.

“I think he’s very engaged in that sense, and to me that’s encouraging,” St. Louis said in Seattle last week. “To me, being engaged is way more important than actually having all the right details. He’s going to get more detailed in that part of the game as he gets more experience in this game, but having an alarm shows me you have the intention of doing the work on the other side of the puck.”

But for now, we will focus on Demidov’s work with the puck, because that is what had Zegras asking questions, what has Caufield’s buddies obsessed, and what has the Canadiens scoring on more than half their power-play opportunities with Demidov on the top unit.

And we will do it through the prism of two Demidov plays from his past two games.

The wall play

Saturday night against the Ottawa Senators, Demidov scored the tying goal with 2:23 left in regulation, allowing his linemate Alex Newhook to settle the game in overtime.

SPOOKY DEMI!!!#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/J5RtN5214U

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) November 2, 2025

There is a lot going on in that play, but the area of focus here is how Demidov shed Senators defenceman Nick Jensen along the boards before he entered high ice and really went to work. He created space for himself against an NHL defenceman, which is something he has been doing regularly at such an early stage of his career.

As Demidov gets the puck along the wall, he sees Jensen coming at him. This is when the decision in his brain takes shape.

“It’s once you go up, you see he’s coming so hard on you,” Demidov said, “so you just try to do this.”

“This” is Demidov leaning on his edge work. His ability to change direction is otherwordly. When asked where he learned to use his edges so effectively, Demidov’s answer was immediate.

“My father,” he said.

Alexei Demidov spent a lot of time on the outdoor rink with Demidov and his older brother, Semyon, as they grew up just outside Moscow, and from a very young age his youngest son learned the importance of being strong on his edges. Alexei did not play hockey at the professional level, but he loves the game and imparted that to his sons.

“I don’t know, maybe from five years old, we started to build inside, outside edges,” Demidov said. “We would do this stuff. It was from childhood.”

Jensen got a quick lesson on just how long Demidov has been working on his edges. As Demidov changed direction with the puck to head back toward the corner, Jensen followed. But a fraction of a second later, Demidov was headed back toward the blue line.

Jensen did not follow.

“That,” Lane Hutson said the next day, “ was sick.”

But the reason why Hutson found that sick might be different than what you would consider sick. It wasn’t changing directions twice so quickly so much as it was what Demidov was able to do after.

“It’s the way he got out of it so clean with his hips,” Hutson said. “When he slips checks, that’s the way he gets out on his forehand, is he winds his hips around it. Inside edges.”

At that point, Hutson demonstrated what he was talking about, going into a Mohawk technique in his sneakers.

“Everyone notices it,” Hutson said. “When he gets a puck off the wall, he’ll dive in a little bit, and then he’ll slip out and the guy can’t check because he’s thin and he’s carrying the puck out here.”

By “thin” he means how little of Demidov’s body he exposes to contact because he is on his inside edges and using the Mohawk technique, which in and of itself is not something that is unique to Demidov — far from it. It is his ability to use that technique immediately after the double change of direction that makes it unique.

“It’s pretty fun to watch,” Hutson said.

The deception ahead of the shot

On Tuesday night against the Flyers, Demidov scored a go-ahead goal for the Canadiens on the power play.

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You know how this ends#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/OkjUjSZ8Wt

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) November 5, 2025

As Caufield, a supreme shooter himself, watched that shot, only one thought went through his mind.

“I was like, ‘Holy s—,’” Caufield said. “Like, right after he scored, go to the pile and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ But yeah, he’s able to do that like it’s nothing. It’s pretty special.”

The release on the shot is enough to elicit that reaction. The puck is flat on Demidov’s stick one second. The next, it is headed to the top of the net. No snap, no backswing at all, just a lightning-quick twitch.

“What a shot that was,” Hutson said after the game. “He’s got a pretty special shot, and people are starting to see that.”

But what made that shot so effective is how Demidov set it up, especially with Nick Suzuki waiting on the other side for a potential pass.

Suzuki has scored three goals this season, all of which have come on the power play with Demidov selling a shot before passing to Suzuki, leaving him with an open net to shoot at.

It happened against the New York Rangers on Oct. 18 when Demidov faked a shot before sending a seam pass to Suzuki.

This is the net Suzuki had to shoot at as a result.

Suzuki’s next goal came against the Vancouver Canucks on Oct. 25, and this is how Demidov sold the shot that night.

And this is the net Suzuki had to shoot at after he got the pass.

“Yeah,” Suzuki said that night in Vancouver, “it’s nice to get those empty-netters.”

Which is what makes that Demidov goal against Philadelphia that much more impressive, because he set it up by providing Suzuki with another empty-netter earlier in that same game.

This was Demidov just before sending a pass over to Suzuki.

And this was the net Suzuki had to shoot at as a result.

So when Demidov was in a very similar situation later in the game, with Suzuki locked and loaded on the other side awaiting yet another wide-open net, Demidov decided to switch it up. He showed pass all the way, and look at all the Flyers’ sticks here and even goaltender Dan Vladar. They are all assuming Demidov is going to pass the puck, because they’ve been burned by it before, but also because Demidov’s body language screams pass.

Instead, Demidov not only shot it, but shot it in a way that caused Caufield to swear in his head. And he did so with no one in a position to block the shot, not even Vladar.

“I think because no one knew he was shooting it because he’s such a dangerous passing threat,” Hutson said. “I know he was looking to pass for sure, so to catch himself last second and handle it one more time, for the goalie, it’s so hard to read that. Just the extra handle is pretty cool.”

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There is a lot about Demidov that is “pretty cool.”

His linemates Newhook and Oliver Kapanen get a good dose of it every time they come back to the bench after a shift. Demidov’s brain goes to work.

“He has a very creative mind and he’s eager to create and to score and be productive,” Newhook said. “It’s often times just small plays where we talk about what we both see and what he wants me to do in certain situations or vice versa. That’s all part of just learning each other’s tendencies and how to become more efficient as a line. He’s a pretty positive guy on the bench. For a Russian guy, he speaks a decent amount.”

Kapanen, whose intelligence on the ice is probably his biggest trait, is consistently impressed by how Demidov can process the game on an intellectual level.

It’s much like the current advancements in artificial intelligence; once you think you have a handle on it, something new comes out.

That’s Demidov to Kapanen.

“We know what he’s capable to do and what he’s doing out there, so it’s easy to read now,” he said. “But, of course, there’s something new every day.”