xXx..CK..xXx

I could go a lot more in depth about this but I'm going to simply predict that Duchene is going to have a solid year wherever he ends up and say you heard it here first. That said, my definition of solid year is 60+ points. He's a good player in my own opinion but people keep saying we would be acquiring Duchene expecting him to be a PPG player and while that would be fantastic, I don't think that should be the expectation of him. All I know is that people are high on Drouin and yet the expectation of him is 60+ points. Duchene is 2 years removed from a 59 point season and he can do it again. I agree that their asking price is to high though and it probably means they don't want to actually trade him. Their ask should be similar to what Tampa Bay got form Drouin at best. Not Sergachev + Anything... Let alone Galchenyuk.

I was thinking more his best trade and free agent signings a la Vanek and Radulov. Shaw brings a mixed bag of emotions. Alzner counts but I wasn't personally high on the signing, although he was the best available. Petry, I'll give you.

I'll just say this.... Since Bergevin became GM of the Habs, he's made the most trades of any manager in the league. As a result, I think it's fair to say he deserves to be scrutinized, whether positively or negatively. I'm happy being a Habs fan and couldn't care less about the Predators but with Bergevin being as active as he's been, I can't see the argument that he's done some amazing job with his overall body of work. Many of his best signings are no longer here and so while they were good in the short term, they're no longer here. Drouin is the first one he's locked up and we'll see how it goes. I think at the same time, his bad moves are also looked at through a microscope which isn't fair. But the truth is he's clearly made some mistake throughout his tenure in my opinion. Often many of us differentiate between which of those moves should be deemed the mistakes, but they're out there. As a result, I don't see why he should be heavily defended by anyone, outside of one getting tired of hearing constant negativity and trying to place a positive spin on things.

I guess what I was saying is that regardless of the management group, I can't possibly envision us having a better shot at the cup without Carey Price. Outside of the Bruins, I can't think of a recent contender who didn't have multiple elite forwards on their roster. Chicago has/had Toews, Kane, Sharp when he was healthy, Hossa and much more. Pittsburgh has Crosby and Malkin but then also Phil Kessel and LA has had players like Kopitar, Carter, Gaborik, Richards when he was useful and much more as well. What's different about that Bruins team is that they had a goalie who played at an elite level. As it stands this season, we have Max Pacioretty and then the potential of Drouin and Galchenyuk. I've watched Drouin closely before and have seen him outshine pretty much any of the names I've listed but he hasn't yet reached 60 points in a season so we can't pretend he's at a Crosby or Malkin level yet. I understand that what I've just summed up proves the point that things need to change on the offensive side of things but I sincerely believe that if we were to lose Price, it would take at least 2 elite forwards to make up for that loss with the way our team is configured. I'm not convinced on a personal level that something like a Mikko Koivu and Dubnyk would help our chances at a cup after losing Price. There are probably better examples out there but I don't imagine losing Price would allow us to get something like Bishop and Seguin on our team at the snap of a finger and even then I'm not thrilled. The point is, I don't see us as ever having a better shot without Carey Price, despite the reality that he's never won it himself. That's what I mean by there's no guarantee of a better outcome. Perhaps there are better options out there when it comes to the management team, but that's another story.

Did you ever think of the possibility that Carey Price genuinely doesn't feel that way about the Habs? You can throw him into the bucket of Leaf Fan Homers who think the Habs can be competitive. The reason Carey Price needs to believe this team has a chance to compete is simply because of himself. He doesn't need to focus on all the other noise and things he cannot control. Price leaving for that reason would please the 5-10% of fans who agree with you and demonstrate a certain level of unprofessionalism to the rest. It would never happen because that's not who Carey Price is. I would be very irritated if I found out Carey Price played for this team with thoughts like that in his head. As fans we can think that way, but if someone is going to try and convince me that Price doesn't think we can win a cup as a result of the players in front of him, I'm going to tell them that they are incorrect and that there's a possibility they've never played sports at a competitive level before. We're getting played with this topic. People are complaining about constant mediocrity and think the answer is to trade away or lose for nothing our hero simply in order to make our team worse, accomplishing nothing more than getting someone fired, with no guarantee of a better outcome on the other side.

Having Price gives us a better chance at winning. Carey Price is better than 9 out of 10 1st overall picks. He actually does have his weak moments but he's still a great foundation to build on. If our management team after Bergevin happen to be as incompetent as some feel Bergevin is, then there's no guarantee that we have a better offense even without Price on the team. Even if we did have better offense, it's so obvious to me that we would soon miss our goaltending of the past. I've been fine being a fan of Jose Theodore playing above his potential, Jeff Hackett making highlight reel saves, Jaroslav Halak emulating a stop sign and the organization making the decision to keep Carey Price. The opposite extreme is being a fan of Philadelphia who have been a mess in goal and had their best season behind Michael Leighton, which consequently happens to be when clever hockey people began questioning... Does one really need an elite goalie to compete for the Stanley Cup? I feel as though the Habs have been more consistent than literally any of the other teams people have been comparing them to outside of the Chicagos and Pittsburghs. Heck, when talking about the past decade, we've even been more consistent than a team like Washington as well, who only relatively recently developed their drafted Carey Price light.

Interesting graph there 👍

Anyone who wants Price gone for any reason is in denial, or not a true fan. And that includes the best reason there is which is the cap space.

I don't think it is when one of those contracts came at the cost of teenage year old Sergachev but it's just a personal opinion of mine. I guess I wish the worst for him at this point so I can be wrong. Either way, I look forward to seeing Drouin on the Habs. I agree that it's very possible and even likely that one side is right about Bergevin, one way or the other. As much as I've gotten over some of the things I was upset about a few years ago, I've had my doubts about some moves of his for years now. With that being said, I was refering to exactly what you pointed out you aren't. There are those who on both sides seem to never agree with the other side. In addition, unlike you with Shaw, the example would be that most things that Bergevin haters, for instance, do agree with, would be the obvious things like Pacioretty's contract, Price signing, etc. Those signings are met with mediocre approval whereas anything that is moderately debatable is automatically assumed to be exuberantly wrong. Those fans seem to want the forest burned without even searching if there is anything of value within its boundaries. It is in that sense that neither side is right in my opinion. Each tree should be looked at with an open mind and given a chance to thrive. Some people do that, some people don't. When the forest does grow, it might look different than anyone imagined.

We traded Sergachev for Drouin. Not to mention we did that before losing Radulov to free agency when by all accounts he was expected to resign with us due to what was said to be a solid offer. Those who compare Radulov to Drouin should ask themselves whether or not they'd prefer to have Radulov and Sergachev or Drouin? Or how about Radulov and Drouin or Drouin? Even if I add Alzner's name next to Drouin in the first example, it's still not that pretty. Next season, Sergachev would not have had an expensive contract and there's a possibility we could have offered slightly more to Radulov and encouraged him to stay. In the end, I'm not blind to the fact that we may have lost Radulov anyway but the point remains the same in that we lost one player for nothing and traded away a key asset to acquire the "better replacement". In addition, Sergachev was to potentially be Markov's replacement of the future and even present. We have still yet to resign Markov and as a result lost Markov's replacement and still don't have Markov on the roster either. We can be patient and see how things play out, and I've always been of the belief that the "playing out" of this will involve resigning Markov but as things stand, we've got marginally better at offense and marginally worse at defense if I'm being generous. Those who don't see that seem to be the ones with the blinders on. +Shlemko, Alzner, Morrow? -Sergachev, Markov*, Emelin There seems to be a bit of an argument going on here that I'm not really a part of. Those who are defending seem to be mainly defending Bergevin, with a mixed bag of heavy duty Drouin fanatics sprinkled in saying "wait until he shows you". Those who are complaining about this off season, many of them seem to be those who haven't been happy with Bergevin for quite some time and so they're looking for anything to jump on. We each have our own opinions but I don't feel as though it always needs to be about Bergevin specifically. My opinion has nothing to do with him, but the team in general and I think we could have addressed our needs at center and LHD a little differently this off season rather than trade away our best prospect who could have filled the void himself. We also then loaded up at wing when there are still question marks at center. We do have plenty of capable centers on the roster but we also don't have any without question marks. Danault: Is he really a top 6 center? Plekanec: Will he be able to rebound? It's more possible than people think if he works hard this off season. Galchenyuk: Can he be trusted enough by the coaches as a well rounded 200 foot player? Does this even matter? Drouin: Was he brought here to even be a center? Is he better at wing or center? Shaw, Mitchell, DeLaRose: Top 6 centers? No Our off season had some good moves and probably some that are being completely overlooked. Will Jerabek bring the goodness? Can Hemsky stay healthy and produce? Is Schlemko better than expected? Can Drouin be our Sidney Crosby? (I have high expectations as well) There are some positive possibilities out there but from what I've seen of the debate, you have those who seem to support no matter what on one side and those who to seem to be down in the dumps even when the Habs are playing hockey in May or Nashville has been eliminated. As a result, the specific arguments can lose their value.

The average save percentage of a backup goalie to be expected is said to be around .910 from what I've read. Also, after about a half hour of calculations, backup goalies won 47.18% (377 wins out of 799 games) of their games last season. Albeit, some of them were 3rd string quality. I'm not debating the aura Price has when he's at his best, but the numbers provided don't show anything abnormal going on when it comes to the results our team has in front of our backups.

That took me a lot longer to understand than it should have. Funny indeed. As for the topic being discussed, I've literally always been a Habs optimist but when we were discussing the loss of Radulov, many people argued that Drouin was better than him, so the loss of Radulov would feel less meaningful. One could have argued that the loss of Radulov due to injury (last season) would have been huge as well but when we acquired Drouin, the initial reaction was that we had added yet another piece to our offensive unit. When we lost Radulov, it was only then that people seemed to point out that Drouin's ceiling is astronomical and that he could improve our offensive unit single-handedly even with the loss of Radulov. It is in that sense that it makes sense to worry about the "what if" he gets injured. Pacioretty is proven but outside of Galchenyuk, Lehkonen and Gallagher's potential there's not much outside of Drouin and we are weak at center. I think even those who are "rational" about the team would like to see us in that inner circle of top tier contenders since we hover every year. That list of teams includes Pittsburgh, who should be the current model of success, and they were able to win the cup without a significant piece in Letang. In addition, they could have won had either of their goalies gone down as well.

Just a bad joke It was mentioned that Gallagher is our spark plug and for one reason or another Steve Begin came to my mind as someone who did that job quite well for us. The league's changing though and I'm not sure if he'd get as much of a look anymore.

Gallagher for RNH and Steve Begin I miss his spark plug ways. Not sure if I just insulted or praised Gallagher with that offer.

Now that I've read the article, I've re-read what you wrote. I don't know why Jagr even hired his agent Petr Svoboda if he's the one making personal calls to GMs. I can see there being some truth to it but the truth is most likely being twisted.