Tag Archives: Montreal Canadiens

A Tangled Weber

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I’ll admit up front that the larger point of this blog entry was to see if I remembered my login details for my own website (mission accomplished!).

Now that I’m safely logged in, I just want to get something out of the way, and hopefully won’t take up too much of your time.

Every year around this time, we Habs fans sit around the campfire and look for the shiniest object with which we can adorn our team with. This year, many Habs fans have set their sights on Norris Trophy finalist Shea Weber. Now don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have a guy like Weber in the lineup, even at the hefty price tag he’s sure to command. But (there’s always a but, isn’t there?) there’s a heavy cost to snatching a guy of Weber’s caliber away from the Predators over and above his nasty cap hit.

Most Habs fans simply assume that tossing an RFA offer sheet at Weber, and forcing Nashville – a team with its own internal budget that is surely far lower than the Canadiens – to match the Habs rich offer or surrender his services. Let’s all do the happy dance, right?

You see, there’s a reason why pilfering RFAs from other teams is a rarely used method of player acquisition. On one hand, it’s the NHL equivalent of M.A.D – mutually assured destruction. You want my RFA? I’m taking yours. And the spiraling costs will simply lead to another work stoppage. Just ask Kevin Lowe if he wants a mulligan on the Dustin Penner acquisition, or ask Buffalo how they feel about having to match Lowe’s ludicrous offer to Thomas Vanek. On the other hand, I believe that what goes around, comes around. If the Habs want to swipe Shea Weber, somebody will be all too eager to take a stab at acquiring PK Subban, Carey Price, Lars Eller, or Max Pacioretty in the very near future. Given the heavy contracts the Canadiens are already saddled with, you can safely bet that at least one of those players would be plying their trade elsewhere. Also, in the ultimate safeguard against making RFA pitches for all-star talent, there’s the little issue of compensation to the other team after they fail to match the courting team’s offer.

If you want to sign an RFA, then depending on the annual cap hit they bring them, you have to give up the following assets to the other team:

Salary Amount Compensation
$994,433 or less None
Over $994,433 to $1,506,716 3rd round pick
Over $1,506,716 to $3,013,434 2nd round pick
Over $3,013,434 to $4,520,150 1st and 3rd round pick
Over $4,520,150 to $6,026,867 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round pick
Over $6,026,867 to $7,533,584 Two 1st’s, one 2nd, one 3rd round pick
Over $7,533,584 Four 1st round picks

Now we can safely assume that Shea Weber will fall somewhere between the last two brackets. The Canadiens already fairly thin on the farm, with little prime talent on the horizon. Dropping more high-end picks would be nothing more than a short-term payoff with a suicidal ending. Moreover, when you factor in that Montreal typically has to overpay free agents to compensate for the fishbowl, taxes, politics, (take your pick), it’s also reasonable to believe that Shea Weber would fetch over 7.533 million per season, thus forcing the Habs to kick back four first round picks to Nashville.

Read that again.

Four.

First.

Round.

Picks.

Gone.

Sure, Gauthier could always try to recoup those lost picks in other ways, but you’ve got to ask yourself if the high cap hit and lost assets would be worth acquiring one defenseman. And as a final killshot to this fantasy, let’s remember that the collective bargaining agreement is up at the end of next season, and is sure to have ramifications on how teams dole out contracts over the next year or so. It would be similarly stupid for Gauthier to saddle himself with another fat contract while ridding himself of prime assets.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

In the meantime, I’m going to write down my username and password for safe keeping.

Swan Song

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At the end of the day, the Habs just didn’t have enough left to “fight the good fight”. If we’re looking for reasons as to why the Habs fell after owning a 2-0 series lead, certainly the injuries will rise to the top of the list. And not just the injuries to Markov, Gorges and Pacioretty. Desharnais left the series, Kostitsyn was skating on a bad paw, Halpern wasn’t ready to return from injury, Gill and Hamrlik were reportedly playing with injuries…incredibly the list goes on, yet the Habs pushed this to 7 games and gave the heavily favoured Bruins more than they could handle. We can only wonder how things would have been different if the Habs would have been closer to their real identity.

This series was an epic battle to be sure, and each team had to dig deep for results; Boston salvaged their playoff lives just in time after falling behind two games (a shame that now is the time they get their first series win after dropping the first two games), while the Habs fought back to force a deciding seventh game; and fought back even harder to push that game in to sudden death. When a series goes to overtime in a seventh game, it’s obviously anybody’s to win, and sadly for Habs fans, there was only so much blood to be squeezed from the stone.

Prior to the start of the series, if I had told you that David Krejci, Milan Lucic, Zdeno Chara and Tomas Kaberle would combine for a total of 2 goals and 4 assists in 27 games played, and that the Bruins would score exactly zero power play goals in the series, you would have thought that the Habs were certainly going to take it. Strangely and cruelly enough, you’d be wrong.

Today isn’t the day to point fingers, but here’s a stat that reveals a fatal flaw in “The System”.

The Canadiens and Bruins both scored 17 goals in the series, for an average of 2.43 goals per game. It doesn’t get tighter than that. The issue is this: While the aforementioned invisible Bruins combined for a paltry 6 points, they were also a combined +1. How does that happen? Looking at the teams a little more closely, we see that only 5 Bruins players were on the wrong side of the +/- stat: Krejci (-1), Thornton, Seidenberg, Paille, and Campbell were all -2. Needless to say, three of those guys are not what I’d call crucial to the Bruins success and as such don’t receive a heck of a lot of ice time. Contrast that with the Habs, who had 13 players on the wrong side of the ledger: Gionta and Gomez at -6. Cammalleri at -5. Wizniewski at -3, Spacek at -3, Subban at -2, Sopel at -2, and half a dozen others at -1. Only Weber and Eller were +1. Again, I’m not pointing fingers at individual players, but rather at a system that forces the Habs to win the special teams battle by such a wide margin that it essentially negates what happens at even strength, where the vast majority of a hockey game is played. The power play was terrific, and the penalty kill was better than perfect when you factor in Plekanec’s short handed goal. But without even strength production, you can’t win in the long run.

There are other factors contributing to the series loss, and I’m sure you’ll read about them. While losing to the head-hunting, bird-flipping, lie-telling Bruins stings in the worst way imagineable, there’s never been more reason to be optimistic. The Habs core is in place, and youngsters like Price, Subban, Eller, Desharnais, Pacioretty all revealed themselves to be superb NHL players over the course of the season – and they’re all going to make huge strides in development in the coming years (Dear Salary Cap: Please keep rising!). Gauthier has a lot of work in filling out and improving the roster, but this is clearly the best team we’ve seen in a very long time, and I’m already looking forward to October.

Stranglehold, ho!

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Raise your hand if you thought the Habs would come home from Boston with a 2-0 series lead.

HEY! YOU! Put your hand down. You’re LYING!

Thursday’s 2-0 win was heartwarming and spirit-lifting in the best of ways, but I have to admit that I got a little greedy in the moments prior to game two on Saturday when it became known that Bruins’ all-star defenseman Zdeno Chara would miss the game with dehydration. With him out of the lineup, I reverted from being satisfied with a “worst case scenario” 1-1 split in the series to calling game two a virtual must-win because opportunities like that don’t present themselves often. The Habs capitalized early and never looked back, fulfilling my greedy desires.

Needless to say, I think I speak for a lot of Habs fans in saying that being in this position feels a little surreal. Now with the series back in Montreal, where the Habs have dominated the Bruins this year, I can’t shake the feeling that the hockey gods have something nasty lined up for us. How to best represent how I feel? This clip says it all. Playing the role of the hockey gods is Lucy. The Habs and Habs fans are represented by Charlie Brown:

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I’m probably wrong. The Habs have shown more poise, guts and determination than even last year’s Cinderella team if you ask me. They’ve out hit, out skated, out worked, out coached, out smarted and out classed the Bruins in nearly every facet of the game. There’s no reason to think they’ll feel the nerves now after putting the 8-6 “Boston Beatdown” and 7-0 crushing way behind them. The Habs won’t deviate from their game plan, which is to score early, then apply the king of all sleeper holds. Even Jacques Lemaire has to be envious of how the Habs are able to smother opposition for such long stretches.

So as I sit here nervously working my way through a cold, cloudy Monday, tell me that the hockey gods are enjoying this as much as we are.

So for all those I called a liar at the start? Maybe you’re right and I’m wrong. After all, as George Costanza reminds us:

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Expectations

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It’s a word that we use often. Pierre McGuire constantly reminds us to “manage” them, but we often let them get away from us just the same. When we talk about individual players, coaches, teams and outcomes, we all have our own expectations for what the final analysis should read. Sometimes their fair, sometimes they’re more fantasy than reality-based.

I can’t recall a playoff series that has such a wide gamut of expectations on either side of the fence as this 33rd matchup between Montreal and Boston. Both sides expect (demand?) victory, and both sides have compelling cases as to why their side will come out on top.

No doubt Bruins fans, and indeed Bruins management expect their team to employ the ‘Big, Bad Bruins’ philosophy. It’s been their identity for decades, and it’s how they play the game. They’ll expect the belief of superior size, and skill, propelled by their two most recent home wins over Montreal, to grind the Habs in to a gooey tri-coloured paste. They’ll expect to break the Canadiens’ will through intimidation. The Bruins almost certainly expect to prove that their Northeast Division win wasn’t all for naught, and they want to do it with authority. Their Head Coach, Claude Julien expects that his team will carry their strong regular season in to the playoffs with their rough-and-tumble style, and escape the first round unscathed (no doubt he has to expect that, otherwise he can expect to be shown the door). General Manager Peter Chiarelli clearly expects big things, as he was the one pulling the trigger on significant trade deadline upgrades. He will have answering to do if the Bruins don’t go very deep in the playoffs.

The Bruins see this postseason as a prime chance to win it all for the first time since 1972. They’ve added Tomas Kaberle, Rich Peverley, and Chris Kelly for their playoff run…you don’t make those types of additions if you don’t think your window is wide open. These moves signaled the Bruins intentions and expectations, and they desperately want to capitalize before that window slams shut. The pressure is squarely and intensely on the Bruins to squash their pesky little foes and take another step in leveling the scales – which currently tip heavily in Montreal’s favour: 24 playoff series victories to the Bruins’ 8. Should the Bruins again fall to their bitter rivals (the Habs represent the ultimate bear trap) you can expect a lot of questions. You can expect a lot of anger. You can probably also expect some big changes.

The Bruins have elite goaltending, but I’m not sure what to expect of Tim Thomas, and I bet I’m not the only one. He’s a virtual lock for the Vézina trophy as the league’s best regular season goaltender, as he should be, but his numbers against the Habs are anything but impressive. Who will we see? The former and probable once-again Vézina winner, or the guy with bambi legs when facing the Habs?

Goaltending aside, there’s a lot of very good talent up front wearing black and gold. Bergeron, Horton, Krejci, Peverley, Ryder, Recchi, Marchand and Lucic are all terrific players in their own right. They’re a solid mix of power, skill, speed, and sharpshooting. Overall they lack playoff experience, but Dr. Recchi’s long career probably carries enough experience for everyone to share in. Defensively, however is where the Bruins are vulnerable. Outside of Chara, their defense is nothing to write home about. They’re not horrendous, but the quicker Habs forwards should be able to exploit that weakness – provided the Canadiens can get possession of the puck.

As for the Habs and their fans, last year’s improbable run deep in to the playoffs broke ground that nobody with the CH tatooed on their heart had seen since 1993 - a lifetime for fans spoiled by annual Cup parades. That run to the Eastern Conference Finals – for better or worse – sent the explicit message that simply making the playoffs is no longer enough. The happy news – if you can call it that – is that both the team and fanbase seem to be in lock-step with this belief. The team knows the bar has been raised, and the fans are all too happy to go along with that.

Recall that just one year ago, it was a pretty much a brand new Habs roster, with new coaching, new management and new ownership…how could they have done what they did considering all of the upheaval? It was mind-boggling to be sure, but fast forward to the present day, and the new car smell has worn off this Habs team. The Canadiens are now expected to replicate their results from last year – or at the very least not bow out in round one – not to the hated Bruins – and especially not after what Chara did to Max Pacioretty. It’s simply unacceptable to Montreal fans – no matter their conference rankings – that the Canadiens be eliminated by the Bruins. It’s the bitterest of pills. Fans of the Bruins will undoubtedly be upset should the Bruins fail, but most of them will quickly get behind the Celtics and Red Sox to soothe their pain (though the Sox may not be the ideal place to find solace right now). In Montreal, fans will gnash their teeth over a loss to the Bruins all summer long.

Getting a little more granular, Habs fans expect greatness from Carey Price, despite his less-than-stellar career playoff numbers. His playoff experience certainly is a mixed bag, but think back to Price’s rookie season and his performances in the first round against the Bruins – most notably his game seven performance. His 5-11 playoff record is underwhelming, but it overshadows some brilliant performances, and is skewed by the complete no-show the Habs put forth during the centennial collpase. After a terrific regular season, and with a solid record against Boston over the past 2 years there’s little reason to expect anything different from the Habs netminder. He will almost certainly be good, but he needs to be better than Tim Thomas if the Canadiens are to win this series. There will be defensive lapses all around him and he will have to continue to bail out his mates, as has done since October.

With the aforementioned centennial sweep at the hands of the Bruins a long faded (repressed?) memory, it should not factor in to anybody’s psyche in this series; the Habs roster reset of last season took care of that, even if the Bruins choose to use that sweep as a source of confidence. So what else do Habs fans expect? Certainly they expect the best players to perform like the best players, as they should. That means Plekanec, Gomez, Cammalleri and Gionta need to produce on the scoreboard, with no exceptions. If Plekanec can’t produce points on the road, if Gomez can’t salvage his disastrous season in the playoffs (where he usually excels), if Cammallieri goes stone cold again, and if Gionta is neutralized, the Habs are done like dinner. There cannot be any “yes, but X was good defensively” or “yeah but X played hurt” type of excuses if they fire blanks. Guys in their paygrade don’t earn several million dollars just to be defensively reliable; Jeff Halpern is. Mathieu Darche is. Tom Pyatt is. Also, at this stage, everyone has a nagging injury, so that excuse carries little water except for with apologists. This is the time of year when good players really earn the paychecks and make their names, so these four key cogs need to deliver on the scoreboard, end of story. It would be grossly unfair to the likes of Lars Eller, David Desharnais, Andrei Kostitsyn and Benoit Pouliot to expect them to carry the load offensively, and any production from Moen, Darche, Pyatt, Halpern, and White while certainly welcome, should be seen as found money. It can be argued that the Canadiens’ under-25 group is a prime reason why the Habs are in the playoffs, but it will have to be the highly paid veterans who lead the charge. Defensively, the group “is what it is”. They’re slow, old, not very tough and don’t move the puck particularly well. As they did in virtually each of the 82 games, the Canadiens will be caught running around their own zone in a frantic, disorganized mess from time to time. This is expected, and habitual with this team. Anyone surprised at that may need to be handed the smelling salts. While it’s unlikely for the defense to clean up its act now when they have even more miles on the tires, their veteran savvy may reveal a trick or two up their sleeve. Shot blocking is one thing; physicality, and quickly moving the puck with purpose are other animals entirely. By now you know which ones the Canadiens do well, and which ones they don’t. The questions is which of the things that they don’t do well can they mitigate the most?

We can expect Jacques Martin and his staff to be steady in their demeanor, even if it isn’t always deemed the ideal approach. Don’t expect any surprises. Don’t expect much emotion, or much reaction to anything. There will be canned coach-speak, and the common clichés. In this respect, the Habs coaching staff is as easy to set expectations for as it gets. If there’s one unfortunate expectation it’s that the coaching staff has been unable to stop the Canadiens from taking minor penalties through 82 games, and there’s not much reason to think they’ll find a way to stop it now…but any more bench minors for Too Many Men should be viewed as unacceptable. The Canadiens already spend too much time on the penalty kill and in their own end at even strength. There’s no need to make that problem worse by taking entirely preventable penalties. While the Habs usually do a good job of killing penalties, any time spent on the penalty kill is time wasted in the Bruins zone, and precious energy spent by the likes of Tomas Plekanec and Roman Hamrlik. On the flip side of the special teams battle, the Habs do a terrible job of drawing penalties. They’re not big enough to force opponents to take interference penalties, and they don’t play a style that allows their speed to force opponents to hook, hold, grab and trip with much frequency. In order for the Habs to get on the power play, they need to be antagonistic thorns in the Bruins’ side, and they need to avoid retaliating when they do raise the Bruins ire. They need to be that team that the Bruins constantly whine about. Getting under the Bruins’ skin and getting them off their game is paramount.

If the Canadiens are planning on applying pieces of last year’s playoff game plan to this year’s, it would be at best a risky gambit. While the Canadiens allowed offensive-minded players like Ovechkin, Semin, Crosby and Malkin to fire at will, once they faced the Flyers, who are a deeper, more evenly distributed team they were stopped dead in their tracks. This Bruins team more closely mirrors that fatal Flyers bunch in that there isn’t one or two players to shut down in order to win. Stop Ovechkin and Backstrom – you win. Stop Crosby and Malkin – you win. Stop Richards and Carter? Oops - what about Brière and Giroux? It’s tough to identify just a couple of Bruins to stop, because others are eminently capable of seamlessly filling the void; they’re like the Hydra that way. No doubt they’re a formidable group, and they’ll seek to overwhelm the slow-moving Habs defense. The Canadiens would love to block as many shots as they did last year, but it would be dangerous indeed to allow the Bruins free passage in the Habs zone as they did with the Capitals and Penguins.

At the end of this long-winded post, I’m expecting a simlarly long series that will go at least 6 games. I believe that whoever takes the first game will eventually win in 6 games…and I think Carey Price will steal game 1 in Boston.

Three Thin Arguments

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I’ve managed to stop chuckling barely long enough to bang out another blog post. This time I’m taking aim at three arguments that are currently fan favorites when describing the present-day Habs woes:

  1. Injuries
  2. “They’re still ahead of last year’s pace”
  3. “Look at what happened last year”

Spare me. These are all weak arguments that do nothing more than slather plaster over gaping cracks.

Let’s dismantle the arguments one by one, shall we?

1. Injuries

By now we can all agree that the Canadiens have been the walking wounded this year. Just about every defenseman has been on the shelf…even the guys brought in to replace injured regulars have found their way to the shelf. But we Habs fans tend to look at things with a very narrow lens. When one looks at the full picture, it shows that the Habs are actually in the bottom half of the league when it comes to man-games lost to injuries – that is to say that 16 teams (including 7 playoff teams as of last week) have suffered more man games lost to injuries than the Canadiens have. You can cite the quality over quantity argument if you’d like, but the fact is that Markov and Gorges have both been “replaced” with acquisitions (Wizniewski, Mara, Sopel) and while those 3 likely aren’t quite as good as the other two combined, the drop off isn’t so severe that it should affect the team’s fortunes to any significant degree. Up front, it’s pretty evident that Plekanec, and Cammalleri aren’t themselves, but as I mentioned here, when a player decides to play wounded, he is signing an implicit agreement that he’s good to go, with no excuses. If the player is hurt badly enough to prevent him from being a productive member of the team, stay home. Rest up, and come back when healthy. Having Pacioretty out of the lineup is also a big blow, no doubt. He was the Canadiens most productive forward at the time of his injury, and any time a guy like that is lost, there’s bound to be some pain. However, the loss of Pacioretty does not in any way explain why the Canadiens are 4-7 since losing him, while being badly outplayed in nearly every game over that stretch (the only games in which the Habs looked good, are games in which the opposition was dreadful – Pittsburgh and Minnesota). It also in no way begins to describe the lifeless, emotionless, complacent manner in which the Canadiens have taken to the ice in many games. Are they exhausted? Some guys probably are…in which case we need to ask the coaching staff why some guys were so foolishly overused. Nevertheless, who did the Penguins have to turn to in the absences of Crosby and Malkin?

No matter how you slice it, injuries are not the reason why they’re in such a funk. The Canucks have lost more than a hundred man games above and beyond the Canadiens. While they are certainly deeper offensively, their defensemen have been ravaged WORSE than the Habs all year. This has not prevented the Canucks from not only continuing to play well – but they are running away with the much tougher Western Conference, and will easily win the President’s Trophy as the top poing getting team in the league. They haven’t used injuries as a crutch. What’s that? They play in a weak division? Ok, ok, you got me. Sort of. It is a weak division, but the Canucks have beaten up on everyone all year, regardless where they play. Many teams have sacked up and played on to success - why can’t the Habs? Is it talent? Is it coaching? Uncontrollable circumstances? It’s certainly your right to decide. I simply choose to look at stats, and try to take a bigger look around before making blanket statements.

2. They’re Still Ahead of Last Year’s Pace

Today, the Canadiens sit 5 points ahead of their pace from last season. Is that really relevant? I’m not so sure. Last season, the Canadiens mark of 88 points in 82 games was enough to get them in to the playoffs, but it was the lowest point total for any playoff-bound team since the lockout ended. So if you want to measure this year’s team against a team that had set the bar so very low – more power to you. But let’s continue the charade.

The Habs are up 5 points over last year. Goodie! Again, using a wider lens, here’s how the other seven playoff-bound teams in the Eastern Conference (as of today) stack up in terms of points earned when compared to this point last year:

Philadelphia: +20
Capitals: -13
Bruins: +14
Penguins: +3
Lightning: +21
Canadiens: +5
Sabres: -19
Rangers: +7

Of those teams, only the Capitals and Sabres have had a big drop. Yet most would agree that this year’s Capitals team is much more balanced and well-rounded than last year’s juggernaut. As for the Sabres, well if you’re one of those that leans on injuries as the grand reason behind the struggles, the Sabres can also use that excuse – they sit in 18th in terms of man-games lost to injury, right behind the Canadiens.

Breaking down the numbers further, the average playoff team from this year is 4.75 points ahead of last year’s pace. Also of note is that 4 of them (Rangers, Penguins, Flyers, Capitals – 2 division leaders, don’t you know?) have had more injury troubles than Montreal. Can we round up 4.75 to 5? Presto!

So while the Canadiens remain ahead of their pace from last year, it doesn’t make them any better of a team relative to the other playoff teams in the conference.

3. Look at What Happened Last Year

There’s not much that can be said here. The Canadiens surprised everyone with their improbable 7-game upsets over Washington and Pittsburgh. The Canadiens discovered that a suicidal game plan can work – and it did - for a while. Offensively gifted (selfish?) players like Ovechkin, Semin, Backstrom, Green, Malkin, Crosby were totally befuddled by their inability to beat Jaroslav Halak. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, it was mostly panic that forced them to shoot from the outside, and they allowed Habs defenders like Hal Gill and Josh Gorges to block a large portion of their shots. Halak, for his part, was unbeatable when he was on, but was awful when he was off. I don’t care what era you’re playing hockey in, when you ask your goalie to stop 40 to 50 shots in the playoffs, against some top players in the world - you’re asking for trouble. When they hit a deep, skilled, big team like the Flyers, they were summarily trounced, being shut out in 3 games of the series.

There’s a well-known adage that lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Hoping for the Habs to get hit again when they go up against the likes of Philly, Boston or Washington may be ok for some, but it doesn’t work for me. Yes, I will be there cheering for the team as hard as I can and willing them to whatever success I’m able to.

But I’m not going to blindly join those who ignore signs of concern, or choose to stay quiet about it since words (of any blogger/journalist/fan/twitterer) are for naught. It doesn’t make one a bandwagon jumper, nor does it make one a bad fan if they choose to shine a light on what they perceive to be some serious issues. Some would rather see nothing but unicorns and ice cream type posts. “Stay positive!” Sorry, that’s not for everyone. Some of us bring a critical eye to the web when it comes to the Habs, and that’s ok. The glass half-full crowd is fine, too. Where the whole house of cards falls apart is when both sides attack each other and resort to personal attacks. It isn’t a sin to expect better from the Habs, who had their eyes on 3rd place in the conference less than 2 weeks ago, only to drift lifelessly in to 8th place without a whimper. Some are satisfied with 8th, and more power to them for it. Others aren’t. We have to live with each other’s viewpoints, or employ the unfollow button (or any other form of avoidance that is available to everyone).

Solutions?

Today, there aren’t any outside of the Habs locker room. This is the team that will enter the playoffs (so indicates this site). The coach is the guy that will rubber stamp the game plan. The players will have to deliver, stifling system be damned, or hit the links early. The solutions lie in the room. That’s why I won’t hit the panic button.

Looking ahead to next season, it is in my view imperative that if he isn’t going to be replaced by a more progressive-thinking coach, somebody needs to convince Jacques Martin to loosen the reigns and allow his offensively-minded players to explore and maximize their talents. It’s been proven that his system sacrifices offense in the name of defense. With a goalie like Carey Price, you can afford to open things up. The Canadiens also desperately need more size up front. Even with a system that focuses on speed, the small forwards would skate themselves to death trying to go around much bigger defensemen before long. They also need size in order to penetrate opposing defenses to make life miserable for the other goalie. It goes without saying that they also need somebody with that nasty demeanor, too. This means that a player or two from the current top 6 is likely going to have to leave to make room. That’s a post for another day. Martin must also improve his in-game management skills. Put players in positions to succeed. Let Halpern, a league leader in faceoffs, take faceoffs whenever possible. Use Subban on the powerplay as often as possible. Use timeouts appropriately. Make discipline a priority. Show some emotion once in a blue moon!

Injuries will always be an issue. That’s not going to go away for anyone, so the Habs need more depth to replace battered bodies when they can’t play. With all due respect to guys like Halpern and Moen, they aren’t top-6 players any day of the week, on any team in the league. The Canadiens are certainly heading in the right direction in terms of depth, but they aren’t there yet.

Listening to call in shows, and reading fans on twitter, it’s as if the sky has already fallen for some. Others simply shrug and wait for mid-April. Again, it’s all good, but for everyone’s sake we all need a thicker skin at this time of year.

Smoke Them Out

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Ahh there’s nothing like a once-in-a-lifetime goal drought to isolate the two poles in Habs land.

On one side, there’s the rabble rousers who resort to the trade everyone, fire everyone rhetoric. On the other side, there are the kumbaya types that don’t see any reason to panic; being outscored 12-0 over 3 important games is no different than being outscored 12-9 in those 3 same games. A loss is a loss is a loss, after all.

The rioters are expecting hellfire and brimstone to fall at any moment now, while the calm, zen-like members of Habs Nations look back to last season as proof that anything can and will happen.

The crazies are willing to throw everyone under the tank treads for lack of results – blow the whole thing up (again!); the peace & love crowd cite injuries as the reason for poor performances and promise a better showing in the playoffs.

My take?

Let’s start with the coach and get him out of the way. Anyone who has spent any time here knows that I’m not a fan of Jacques Martin’s system, nor a fan of his monotone approach. Never have been, not since he took over as coach. I hear he’s been vocal, nasty and angry during some practices throughout the year, but it would be nice for some of that ire to be directed at the officials once in a while. I get the feeling that the Coach does not even care to give the perception that he is publicly willing to stand up for his team. Does he deserve to be fired? No, not today he doesn’t…or more aptly put, firing him today would be counterproductive, as a massive shitstorm of controversy would swarm and overwhelm the team. The Habs organization has made its bed with this staff, and we’ll have to live with it for now. No coach has made it through 4 full seasons as head coach in Montreal since the late Pat Burns about 20 years ago, so chances are that Martin is closer to the end of his tenure than to the beginning. Injuries aren’t the reason why his passive system has been in use for so long; he’s employed it since taking over the job (despite saying that he would install a speed game based on puck possession). I had gotten off of his case recently, as I had rationalized that as players drop, the system can make lesser replacement players productive in a very simple way. But once the real talent comes back in to the mix, the system stifles, as offensively minded players struggle to think defense first. I feel that a coach – one man plus his staff – ought to adjust to the strengths of his 20+ players rather than force those players to swallow a system that doesn’t suit them. Simply put – the coach does not adapt. It’s one size fits all, take it or leave it.

As for the players? I think it’s fair to say that they’ve under delivered, with the exception of Carey Price, PK Subban and perhaps Andrei Kostitsyn. Others like Mathieu Darche, Hal Gill, David Desharnais, Max Pacioretty and Alex Auld have all made valuable contributions to the team (and why some of those names creep up in discussions for the Jacques Beauchamp award for unsung hero), but either haven’t been around long enough to be part of the core or don’t have the responsibility to carry the heaviest of loads. Unfortunately the players that have had the worst seasons are the ones paid the most money to produce. Whehter they’re playing hurt, or been overused, you have no choice but to take them at their word: when they lace up their skates to hit the ice, they are doing so with an implicit agreement that they are healthy enough to play and produce. By suiting up, they themselves eliminate the injury excuse.

When you play in a system that emphasizes defense, any reduction in offense is going to have a major effect at some point. As fellow blogger HabsWatch points out, when it comes to playoff success it is indeed offense that wins, not defense, as is the popular belief (I highly recommend reading both part one and part two if you have not yet done so). While its easy to blame the lack of offense (Habs rank 24th in the league in goals per game) on the Coach, the truth is that not even Coach Martin wants this little offensive production to work with, and that’s where accountability to the players comes in. That the Canadiens are still in a tie for 6th place, and a few points ahead of last year’s pace can almost be entirely attributed to Carey Price, who has earned a star in 25 of his 34 wins (12 1st star selections, 8 2nd star selections, 5 3rd star selections). Just call him Mr. Spackle. What other conclusion can one arrive at? As Rick at All Habs points out, it is the responsibility of the Coach to create the conditions for success. No player among the top 6 is delivering a good return on their significant salary. Don’t look to injuries to try and deflect all criticism of Martin; the Canadiens are 17th in the league in man-games lost. Yes, yes quality over quantity…but again, as Rick points out:

Martin-apologists claim that coaches of teams who experience injuries, all revert to playing a more defensive game. Statistics don’t support this argument. Of the top five teams in the league in terms of goals scored, four of them have lost more man-games to injury than the Canadiens.

We can argue until we are blue in the face over relative terms of talent missing from rosters but there’s no question – based on statistics – that the Canadiens don’t have it as bad as we think when it comes to injuries, and that they must adopt a defensive system as losses pile up.

All told, responsibility is shared from the Coach, down through the players on the bench. Whenever the season ends, blame (isn’t that a nasty word?) will be shared throughout the team. The big question is what will happen in the off-season to rectify the issues?

Peering in to my sometimes right, often wrong crystal ball, there’s a couple ways this season plays out.

1- The Canadiens make the playoffs, but get trounced by a much stronger opponent somewhere along the way. The angry mob resumes their act on the call in shows and on twitter, while the other side divorces themselves from that segment, saying that the frustrated, emotionally compromised vocal ones are not “true” fans. They claim that the team that has too many bobos and too many tired bodies to make a dent in the playoff picture…they say that they are proud of their team just for getting there considering the injuries (again, never mind the fact that 16 other teams – more than half the league – have it worse than the Habs. It also can’t be ignored that 7 other playoff teams have had more injury trouble than the Canadiens). These arguments hold some validity and merit. In my humble view it also gives a free pass to a team that doesn’t quite have its act together.

2- The Canadiens make the playoffs, and lightning strikes in the same place again. Cinderella descends on Montreal again and douses the angry mob with cold water. They fall in line, sing ‘olé’, loot stores and burn police cars, while the do-gooders do the Balky dance of joy, thumbing their noses at those who were ever worried or angry in the first place. Staking out the high ground, so to speak.

Despite my opposition to the chosen style of play, and despite my reluctance to swallow the excuse of injuries, I am not hitting the panic button – nor will I hit the panic button, even if the Canadiens get shut out in each of their 6 final regular season games. The panic button is something to be pushed when desperate solutions are needed. The fact is that there is no trade, signing or firing that can be done at this point that will vault the Habs in to being a Cup contender. The key to the Canadiens success lies where it always has: in the dressing room. This group of players will need to figure out how to score and how to win again. With 6 games left, there’s still time for David to refocus and find the confidence necessary to stand up to Goliath. The Canadiens haven’t forgotten how to play hockey in the past week. They will win again, and they almost certainly will get on the board tonight vs the Thrashers.

The world is not coming to an end. As we should have learned last year, there is always a reason to have faith, but we should also recognize that lightning typically doesn’t strike in the same place twice. Despite how the two poles behave, the true believing eternal optimists are to be envied for the ability to roll with the punches and enjoy the ride wherever it goes. On the flip side, it is possible to have faith, while looking closely at the statistics with open mind and go against the grain of popular opinion. It doesn’t necessarily make one uneducated or a bandwagon jumper to voice concern or shine a light on some of the ugly truths.

Bouncing Back

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It seems as though there’s no obstacle too big for this undersized Habs team. Dating back to last year’s amazing playoff run, and after suffering through a staggering amount of injuries to key players this year, you’d think the Habs would eventually run out of magic. But they continue to not only hang around in games, they continue to win at a very high clip. At some point, it stops being magic, and starts becoming identity. While we wouldn’t want to tempt fate and see what happens if Price were to be injured, or if Subban were felled, considering how they manage to find ways to win, you wonder just how far they’d fall, or if they’d fall at all.

Without Plekanec, Halpern, Gill, and a litany of others in the infirmary, Habs nation couldn’t be blamed if they thought the end was nigh after Friday’s drubbing at the hands of the Rangers. Nobody looked good in that match, including Habs (and perhaps league) MVP Carey Price. All we fans could do is shrug in resignation…what else could the Habs have done? Sure, injuries and fatigue are no excuse in today’s NHL, but at some point, you need to call a spade a spade, right? The Habs have relied so heavily on the Bulldogs organization to keep filling the roster that Hamilton is now in danger of sliding out of the playoff picture, where once they were gliding along comfortably. When does the camel’s back break? Apparently not any time soon. Fast forward 48 hours, and the Habs would take the same team that was trounced in New York and proceed to hang 8 goals around the Wild’s neck. Go figure.

The Habs keep coming. They fill holes, and when they fall behind they don’t quit. They rebound from losses very quickly. All of this speaks to the character, guts and yes, coaching of the team. Guys like Gionta, Gill, Hamrlik, Kostitsyn and many others keep the team aloft while Price provides Hart-trophy-caliber goaltending. Meanwhile, behind the Habs bench, a frequent target of my ire has to be given much credit. Jacques Martin may not be the type of coach that makes a good team great, but he is the type of coach that can make a depleted team competitive, and keep them that way over the course of a long season. You can read more on that by Steve here. While my frustration with Martin has been that his strict system prevents his team from maximizing their skills, one has to wonder what happens when a progressive, aggressive coach loses the lynchpins of his team. Mike Babcock and Dan Bylsma immediately spring to mind as guys who thrive in almost any scenario, but there are only so many Babcocks and Bylsmas out there, and that’s precisely the reason why Pittsburgh extended this Jack Adams candidate (and winner in this blogger’s opinion) for another 3 seasons. Nevertheless, the Canadiens have a good teacher in Jacques Martin, which is a good consolation at a time like this. With any luck, he’s also in the middle of shedding the dubious mantle of being a guy who doesn’t develop youth properly. Looking up and down the Habs roster, it doesn’t take a genius to see that the kids are contributing more than their fair share to the Canadiens’ recent success. Pacioretty, Eller, Subban, Desharnais, Weber and now White are all contributing to the Habs success in a big way on a nightly basis. If Martin is going to get the flames when he bungles youth management, he needs to be praised when they play well.

Martin may not be the guy with the intangibles of creativity, and adaptability that are so essential in the playoffs, but if not for his dull, boring system, the Canadiens are likely not where they are today. While Price’s spectacular play is far and away the biggest reason why the Habs are 1 point behind the Bruins with 10 games to go, “the system” is the second reason. I’m ready for an appetizer of crow, as I’ve spent a lot of time hammering Martin over the past two seasons. Results count in this league. Everyone is accountable for their results, and people should be praised and reprimanded appropriately. He’s still not “my guy”, and I would still like to see him replaced with a more progressive coach before his 4 year contract expires, but for now, the Canadiens are winning and that shouldn’t be tampered with. Should the Canadiens repeat last season’s playoff success, I’ll be ready for the main course of crow.

There’s a lot to like about this Habs team. An awful lot. While fans of other teams may not see it that way, and may accuse the Habs of being a team that relies on underhanded stick work to defend themselves instead of doing things the “honourable way”, we know better. The Canadiens were a soft, easy team to play against for too long. Opposing teams used to love coming to Montreal to play. The atmosphere was great, and quite often the visitors left with 2 points in the bank and basked in Montreal’s nightlife afterwards. We don’t hear that as much any more. Now the Habs are developing some top-end skill, they have elite goaltending, and they’re becoming difficult to play against. This may irritate other teams and their fans who had become accustomed to seeing the Habs retreat in the face of adversity, but what this tells me is that the Canadiens are very much heading in the right direction.

Now, if only the Alaskan Albatross would get his act together.

Pathetic

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There’s no other word for any of what’s transpired in the past 36 hours. Some may use “unfortunate” and “coincidental contact” as ways to describe it. They have their right to be idiots.

This whole debacle has been pathetic.

Pathetic is Chara’s insistence to keep hacking away at Pacioretty after the latter gave him a light bump in the back after scoring in overtime.

Pathetic was the sight of Max Pacioretty unconscious on the ice. With his parents in the stands.

Pathetic is Chara attempting to hide away on the team bus and not take responsibility for what he did.

Pathetic is Chara, after being dragged off the team bus then placing the blame on Pacioretty for leaning and jumping in to the glass.

Pathetic is the Bruins continued philosophy of goonery and excessive aggression.

Pathetic is the NHLPA for not realizing what’s at stake.

Pathetic is the NHL’s flaccid non-response to this flagrant dirty hit (and countless others), especially when the head disciplinarian contradicts himself.

Pathetic is the National media’s collective shrug and willingness to leave it as a “good hockey play gone bad” (save for Pierre McGuire and Cam Cole).

Pathetic is the National media’s stance that it’s “the building’s fault”.

Pathetic is the National media conveniently dismissing the history between the two players.

Pathetic are the Canadiens brass for not speaking up publicly for their players, and their fans. DONE!

Pathetic that the only way the NHL may listen is if million-dollar sponsors threaten to disassociate themselves from the league.

Pathetic that this has gone on for so long without a solution, that the law and/or government may now decide to intervene, and pathetic that fans around the league will act surprised and claim that there’s no place in hockey for “the law”.

In how many other ways is this incident pathetic?

Found: A Home for Two Wingers

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Prior to the start of the season, the Canadiens had several challenges in front of them. Among them:

  • Would Carey Price be able to handle the pressures of not only carrying a team on his shoulders, but force fans forget about playoff hero Jaroslav Halak?
  • Would the smallish Canadiens forwards be able to grind out another season and remain productive?
  • Would Andrei Markov be able to return to the lineup and give his team a badly needed shot of adrenaline?
  • How would an aging, eroding defense hold up?

Most of those questions have been answered by now, but there’s another question that everyone had on their mind: Would Andrei Kostitsyn and Benoit Pouliot be able to deliver the goods? With little cap flexibility and not many assets to wheel & deal, Pierre Gauthier knew, as did everyone else, that if the Canadiens scoring prayers were to be answered it would be because his two big, skilled wingers answered those prayers.

Through 65 games, their numbers aren’t all that impressive on the surface:

  • Andrei Kostitsyn – 16 goals, 20 assists in 64 games, with a +3 rating.
  • Benoit Pouliot – 13 goals, 13 assists in 62 games, with a +7 rating.

There’s a litany of excuses and exonerations for both, though both have earned their fair share of criticism. In the case of AK46, some of criticism snowballs to a big ball of hate while Pouliot’s criticism leans more towards resigned ambivalence. I’m not sure which is worse; at least the hate shows that people care and expect more.

As Jacques Martin shuffles lines, he seems to have stumbled on something that finally works. Kostitsyn is now riding shotgun with Lars Eller and Travis Moen, forming what is far and away the Canadiens biggest line. Kostitsyn and Eller seem to have chemistry together and have been feasting on favourable matchups as teams throw their top defenses out against the likes of Plekanec and Gomez (though why would anyone bother these days with Gomez?). Pouliot, for his part has been quietly effective with mini-mite David Desharnais. He’s still prone to moments of stupidity and still finds ways to disappear for prolonged periods, but he’s not the bambi-legged, fragile kid that he was when faced with superior opposition near the start of the season. Right now, Kostitsyn and to a lesser degree, Pouliot are finding their all-important comfort zones. Perhaps they won’t put up the numbers expected of players selected in the top-10 of an NHL draft; in fact, under a stifling Jacques Martin ‘defense-first’ system, it’s unlikely that their numbers will ever cause eyeballs to pop. But they do have the talent to totally overwhelm the bottom lines of opposing teams and provide the Canadiens the secondary scoring that they desperately need.

Taking a closer look, Kostitsyn had 10 points in 11 October games. Recently he’s posted 7 points in his past 5 games. Combining those 16 games, AK46 has 17 points. Pretty impressive I’d say. The other 48 games, sadly, aren’t as pretty, as he totaled just 7 goals and 12 assists. Interestingly, Habs scribe Arpon Basu revealed what I think is a telling stat. While Kostitsyn can be maddening from game to game, and week to week, as evidenced in the break down of this season, his overall numbers are astoundingly consistent from season to season: in each of the past 3 seasons, AK46 has posted remarkably similar numbers: 0.55, 0.56; 0.56 points per game.

Perhaps its time for us to recognize the pattern and see him for what he is and stop harping on him to become what we think he ought to be. Afterall, if we recall Einstein’s definition of insanity:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The temptation for Jacques Martin will be to put Kostitsyn back on the top line with Plekanec and Cammalleri, and that may eventually be the right move – especially come mid-April. But for now, Kostitsyn is back on the scoresheet with the consistency that Habs Nation has been longing for, and he deserves credit for riding out the very choppy waters to this point. He’s found solid footing with Eller and perhaps he’s found a good home on whichever line you consider it to be. The happy byproduct is that Lars Eller is thriving in an increased offensive role. It’s a huge win-win for the Habs. It would be a mistake in this blogger’s opinion to jerk Kostitsyn back to the “top” line now while he’s in the midst of his best hockey since October.

I would be remiss not to point out that something will eventually have to give, because Jeff Halpern, like Travis Moen, Mathieu Darche, Tom Pyatt and Ryan White before him- are not legit first line wingers. They can plug a hole, as Glen Metropolit did last season, but they aren’t permanent solutions. But while Kostitsyn is surging, don’t pull the rug out from under him. He’s proven to be a guy that doesn’t respond to the whip in a good way. He needs to gain confidence by putting the puck in the net, and its becoming clear that the best way for him to accomplish that is to lessen the pressures on him and let him beat up on weaker opposition.

Martin goofed at the start of November when he separated Kostitsyn from Plekanec in an attempt to spark the sea of despair that is Gomez’ wing. Coach Martin has received a huge amount of criticism for not adapting or learning from his mistakes. He’d be as insane as some fans if he repeated it again.

It’s fixed for now, Jacques, don’t break it.

Mythbusting

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When you follow a team that generates as much discussion and speculation as the Habs, urban legends and outright myths are bound to spring up like dandelions. Two of the most popular myths that have endured for years are that the Canadiens cannot lure superstar free agents to Montreal for reasons relating to media pressure, taxes, political strife, and the fishbowl atmosphere. When former General Manager Bob Gainey signed big names like Brian Gionta and Mike Cammalleri to long-term contracts, much of the long-held myth died. Other lower tier free agents like Hal Gill, Jaroslav Spacek and Travis Moen also elected to ply their trade in la Belle Province. Tomas Plekanec elected to return to Montreal when he could have likely gone elsewhere for more money. Gainey proved that as long as the dollars are there, the signatures will follow. This doesn’t mean that it will be a cake walk to sign big names in the future, but it’s far cry from the “fat chance” that it was just a few years ago.

The other myth is one that has needed a debunking in the worst way, and that is the long-held belief that once the Canadiens give up on a young player, he goes on to stardom elsewhere in the league. I don’t know where the myth started, but maybe it traces back to the early 90′s when the Canadiens sent John LeClair to Philadelphia. LeClair went on to 50-goal fame with the Flyers, something no Habs fan saw coming, and something that hasn’t been easy to swallow nearly 20 years later. Perhaps some would refer to the deal that sent Chelios to Chicago for an over-the-hill Denis Savard? On the flip side, let’s also recall that youngster Gilbert Dionne, he of 60 career goals with the Canadiens over parts of 5 seasons was sent packing, only to accomplish less than nothing with the duration of his NHL career. If he had scored 2 goals per game in the 27 games he had left in front of him in his NHL career, he would not have matched his career output in Montreal. Eric Desjardins and Mathieu Schneider went on to have terrific careers after playing with the Canadiens (and being contributors to a 24th cup victory, I may add), but its not like the Canadiens “gave up” on those guys. Both played several years in Montreal and were part of deals that were intended to make the Canadiens better. Give to get, as it were.

Today it seems that the consensus among fans is that once the Canadiens trade Andrei Kostitsyn away, he will instantly fulfill his first round draft pick promise and score 30 goals without breaking a sweat. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. If he finds the right fit, he will. If he doesn’t get his head in the game, he won’t. If he does manage to consistently score, it will undoubtedly fuel the fire that says youngsters departing Montreal instantly get better by changing scenery, or escaping the clutches of vile gangster Jabba the Hut Head Coach Jacques Martin.

But let’s take a quick look at the ledger, shall we? Without breaking down every stat and every situation, the Canadiens have let the following “young” players go over the past few years:

  • Michael Ryder
  • Chris Higgins
  • Mike Komisarek
  • Mikhail Grabovski
  • Sergei Kostitsyn
  • Kyle Chipchura
  • Guillaume Latendresse
  • Max Lapierre
  • Matt D’Agostini
  • Ryan McDonagh
  • Jaroslav Halak

It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, and without breaking it down in to minutae, at a glance we can see that of those names, only Belarussians Mikhail Grabovski and Sergei Kostitsyn have Habs fans up in arms today. Micheal Ryder has remained a decent player, but isn’t blowing anyone away in Boston and while Latendresse had some success after his trade last year, he’s been hurt for the vast majority of this season. Matt D’Agostini has posted respectable numbers overall, but he isn’t exactly burning up the scoresheet, either. In fact his recent stats suggest he’s slipping back to the form that saw him wear out his welcome in Montreal. Defenseman Ryan McDonagh has been a solid addition to the Rangers blue line but has a long way to go. He will always be known as a guy that was traded away so that the Canadiens could get their man in Scott Gomez. No doubt that the sting of that trade will help fan the flames. The rest of the names: Higgins, Komisarek, Chipchura, and Lapierre have all gone on to circle the drain in their post-Canadiens tenures. Higgins continues to struggle to find the form that had Habs fans labeling him as the team’s future captain. He’s seen time in New York, Calgary, and now Florida, with few signs that he will return to being the player that had three consecutive 20-goal seasons in Montreal. Mike Komisarek has been a huge failure in Toronto after signing a big contract, and everyone except Brian Burke will admit that. Kyle Chipchura is a spare part in Anaheim as he was in Montreal, and Max Lapierre is utterly lost with the same Anaheim team. Perhaps most famously, Jaroslav Halak has been very average with the Blues this season after enchanting an entire city with his performance last year. After a fantastic start to the season, his play has eroded significantly.

Circumstances vary, and the jury is still out on many of these players, but it’s clear from just taking a quick look at the list that very few players actually leave Montreal and become poster boys for success, or are cautionary tales for giving up too early. The myth is just that: A myth. It’s no guarantee that a young player will become a star elsewhere. That said, in this age of the salary cap, it is imperative that teams get the best from their young players or suffer the consequences. The Canadiens have struggled in this aspect, but it’s pretty clear to me that they were not always dealing with blue-chip stocks. I’m not getting in to what the Canadiens got (or didn’t get) in return for these players when they were given their walking papers. That’s a separate issue for another time.

But for now, we can at least try to shelve the discussion that all youngsters dumped by the Canadiens become superstars elsewhere.

Can you think of any other Habs that were traded away, only to become stars elsewhere?