Canada has a bottom-six forward problem. Well, most of Canada.

Montreal and Edmonton have had awful starts to the season. Calgary and Winnipeg had sleepy starts, but now see themselves in the middle of the pack in their respective divisions. Ottawa is off and running – their 12 points in nine games is seventh best in the NHL, and most of that was without superstar defenceman Erik Karlsson.

These are five teams in very different situations and operating environments. But they have one incredible commonality – they aren’t getting any offensive punch from their depth forwards.

The divide is fascinating. For a frame of reference, the average NHL forward averages around 0.7 goals per 60 minutes. For a top-six forward (who usually is more skilled and is playing with better teammates), that rate rises to around 0.8 goals per 60 minutes. For a bottom-six forward, that number jumps down to about 0.5 goals per 60 minutes. So while we might have different expectations relative to the league’s premier forwards, the reality is that bottom-six players are still reasonably productive offensively.

Keep that in mind when you take a glance at the below graph, which shows the bottom-six forwards’ scoring rates for each team through the first two weeks of the season. (To identify top-six forwards, I used a minimum of five games played as a cutoff and then ranked each forward based on average 5-on-5 ice time per game. More on this in a minute.)

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Toronto and Vancouver have been fine on this front. The other five Canadian teams, not so much. Don’t strain your eyes looking for Edmonton and Winnipeg – their number is actually 0.0, so they don’t appear on the graph.

Why are things so dire right now? Eyeballing the deployment from our Canadian coaches, what immediately jumps off the page is the talent discrepancy between Toronto/Vancouver and the other five teams. Toronto has no issue generating offence with any line on the ice, and they’ve been able to push talented players like James van Riemsdyk, Mitch Marner, and Leo Komarov into depth roles.

Vancouver, a team in transition, has found softer ice time for a couple of old stars in the Sedins and other proven veterans like Thomas Vanek and Sam Gagner.

Now look at the other five groups:

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There’s some talent to be found in those other five teams (Bobby Ryan and Alex Galchenyuk are two obvious callouts), but beyond that, it’s a lot of defence-first/defence-only forwards and young players trying to find their way in the league.

For each team, there’s a slightly different takeaway. In Ottawa, Guy Boucher’s militant adherence to “The System” means a lot of defensive-minded forwards see ice time. Regardless of how you feel about Boucher’s philosophy, one point not in dispute is that such a theory is going to stunt offence somewhere in the lineup. Combine a bunch of checking forwards with a lot of minutes not playing with Karlsson and you have a bottom-six forward group that’s never going to score a swath of goals.

Montreal’s situation is more complicated. Their most talented player in the group, Galchenyuk, is a guy they have tried to trade. Their younger players have been struck by the goal-scoring epidemic that seemingly plagues every Habs forward these days. And even low-risk, high-reward buys like Ales Hemsky haven’t panned out.

The most frustrating situations are in Calgary and Edmonton. The Flames have been rolling the dice on a series of youngsters, with limited success. Curtis Lazar's career goals-per-season average is still under six, and we're probably approaching the point where the organization considers moving on. Sam Bennett is an established NHLer, but he's never scored at the rate a fourth-overall pick would deserve. And the rest of the guys – Troy Brouwer, Jaromir Jagr, Kris Versteeg, and Matt Stajan – have all seen their best years pass.

In Edmonton, it’s a worst-case scenario. Ryan Strome and Zack Kassian have provided limited firepower, and their list of fringe AHL/NHL talents haven’t been able to get a footing either. Mark Letestu has actually found the net this year, but his markers are all on the power play.

And then there is Winnipeg. Keep in mind the Jets had one of the league’s more prolific offences last season, finishing sixth in total goals. So it’s not like their team is starving for talent. The young players in the top half of their lineup have carried their weight ­– Nikolaj Ehlers and Patrik Laine, for example, have a combined for 10 goals. But the depth issues in Winnipeg were real last season and they appear real again. The team is extremely top-heavy and will be reliant on their big guns to carry much of the scoring load. It’s saying something when journeyman checking-line forward Shawn Matthias could be your bottom six’s best bet to find the net.

This is going to be an interesting story to track as the regular season progresses. Most of these teams have playoff aspirations, and a couple of teams’ dreams go well beyond that. But in a modern era where goal scoring is at a premium, teams really can’t incur the risk of running out such ineffective units over a long period of time.

To that end, one has to wonder if a lot of the trade block focus – especially for these five groups – will be on finding another talented attacker.