xXx..CK..xXx

I agree. Everything I've stated assumes that the top pairing defenseman should have some semblance of offensive capability as seems to be the case in today's NHL. We definitely have some decent players on the back end individually, I just expect some players to play in roles they are not built for. I'm one of the more rare Emelin fans and yet still agree that Alzner-Weber would be a better first pair than Emelin-Weber if that were to happen. I just have to believe that losing a 40 point defenseman has to hurt a team who was able to afford him. I understand that Markov is old but the cap hit is the reason we didn't sign him, not his age. The amount of dollars he signed for, wouldn't have changed his position in the lineup. Even if you have Alzner and Weber on the top pair, you can then place Markov on any of the other lines and have the potential to generate offense from the back end on another one of our pairs. We would be more dangerous with him on the team. I seem to be on an endless rant but it's also not just the single moves I'm pointing out that are the cause. People have good arguments such as Markov's age but the counter arguments seem to always omit some details. Bergevin clearly stated at the beginning of free agency that he had an offer on the table for Markov. As a result, it's not like Bergevin made the assessment at the end of last season that Markov would be too old to be a productive piece of our team going forward. And all I'm saying is that he should have used the cap space if cost was the concern with Markov. Not all teams have to use cap space. Boston has room. San Jose has room. We have room. The difference is that we seemed to be saving it for something based on two free agents we didn't resign and then used it on nothing. It's possibe we use it, but at this point I have a hard time imagining that we will use the amount saved.

I personally think there's a chance he makes it considering he has to go through waivers. He's been with the club more than Hudon and they might be battling it out at left wing. At worst, he'll fill in come injuries.

Markov's minutes were reduced until we realized someone like Emelin shouldn't be playing top pair minutes and had no other option. I was on the exact same boat as you are, thinking we needed someone outside of Markov to play those minutes but we had no one else last season and still don't this season. That's the point. Markov also played fine in the role. If one thinks Markov is too old and slow, that doesn't change the fact that someone should be acquired to fill his role. The truth is, we didn't resign Markov because of a cap hit, not because of minutes. So use the money. We also signed a 39 year old, too slow Streit soon after. Alzner is an upgrade on Emelin so perhaps that's "good enough" for some, although it still isn't clear if he will be playing on the top pair or elsewhere. My hope was further strengthened by perhaps the blind faith that we had a youthful Sergachev in line to potentially replace Markov on the top pair in the future. Could that have been this season? Since "anyone" can play with Weber, it's certainly a possibility and names like Jerabek have even been thrown out as a potential candidate for the top pair, so I would have to think it would have at least been considered. Instead, we have a hole on the top pair and our only main trade chip that was used, albeit for an exciting return, was someone who may have filled that hole. Even if he wasn't, we didn't resign anyone to do so, including a player who would have at least been able to produce offense from the back end. What if someone gets injured is certainly a weak argument until it demonstrates a lack of depth in a certain area. It's not being used to demonstrate how much we would miss a Weber, it's being used to demonstrate that we won't have an effective top pair without him in response to the claim that we can have one at the moment due to the fact that Weber can help make "anyone" look like they belong and that we have a legitimate top pair.

Looks like the countdown clock for the Habs first preseason game is down to 3 days & 16 hours. The preseason in general starts tomorrow (Saturday) when the Canucks face off against the Kings.

I also don't like double posting but lastly, just as much as our defense needs to be good defensively, we don't have many players who can generate offense on the left side. In my opinion, Streit is the best offensively out of any of our left handed defensemen and if that's not an issue, to each their own and we're going to need a lot of power plays.

If Bergevin's reasoning for not signing Markov to a deal is the expectation that he does not continue being Markov all of a sudden, then he will deserve some credit if that does become the case. His current form in the KHL doesn't suggest that this will be the case though and so if Markov does well this season and the Habs do not, I think it will be fair to criticize Bergevin about it, even if we do make other moves throughout the season. The difference in cap hit was probably at most 1 million in both the Radulov and Markov scenarios, and that's a realistic viewpoint. If Bergevin's idea was that Markov would regress this season and we should use the cap space elsewhere, I wouldn't be so harsh on him. As it stands, we did not use it on anything else (Streit) and likely will not until later in the season when any cap hit we take on will be reduced. I stand by the thought that regardless of the specific player/contract we're talking about, we could have signed at least one more effective player this off season and still had a chance to better our team anyway later in the season. On a completely different note, I find it amusing that Darren Dietz is leading the KHL in scoring amongst defensemen. Too bad he's a righty. Not to mention he's not in our system anymore.

Of course Weber can make anyone look good and I was going to add that to my post. That's not fully the point though and not a justification for not having a top pairing left handed caliber defenseman on the roster. Maybe Alzner is, but one thing that is for certain is that he won't be helping contribute to our offense. The argument you responded to was Stogey questioning why we would sign Alzner instead of Markov (& Radulov) It seemed you were arguing that the Alzner signing made sense because Petry needed a responsible partner so the point that he'd be fine with Weber is moot because it doesn't validate the Petry needing a stabilizing partner argument. (Big) If Alzner does end up playing top pairing minutes then he does in effect become Markov's replacement. If he doesn't, then "anyone" can play with Weber. If that's the case, we may as well play Streit there! (As I once suggested, due to the same reason... Weber can "make anyone look good".) The difference is that you see that as a positive and I see it as an issue that should have been fixed. We went through much of the season with Emelin on the top pair and seemingly did not learn our lesson and then didn't resign the player who should have been there all along and would have been the best option again, admittedly probably for only one more year. I don't expect it to happen, but if Weber gets injured, who leads our defensive corps? The answer is probably Petry as much as some would say Alzner. If we signed Markov? The answer would have been Markov.

It's true because while I don't yet consider myself fully a supporter or fully a harsh critic, I was upset with the off season due to the fact that I can't see us winning a cup this year as a result of some of the moves that were made and the cap space we have left. While I am fully aware that things could change during the season with our cap space, there seem to be supporters of his who are genuinely happy with the current roster overall at this point in time. They are happy with our slight improvement on offense, willing to overlook our defense and how we let Markov walk and happy with the reality that anything is possible with the cap space we have dangling in the air. I'm not a critic of his in the overall grand scheme of things but right at this moment I guess I could be called that and I will be until those improvements have been made. My opinion is that while last year's trade deadlines truly did have slim pickings, this summer was an opportunity to at least address our glaring needs. It can be argued that we traded for Drouin to finally be that #1 center but I believe him being played there is simply as a result of necessity. Even after acquiring Drouin, most people were like "okay, our right win is now stacked". But it had to be him or Galchenyuk. That's generally fine, but we still need another top 6 center who has played that role before. Even with Drouin, our depth at center isn't great unless Plekanec returns to form, and I believe that about 5% of the fan base could see that happening and perhaps another 35-40% are pleased with Danault in the role. Even if we hopefully consider that our center situation has improved, we already needed help on our top pairing defense and acquiring our center created another void at top pairing LHD in the longterm and then we also signed no one to help it out in the short term. There is a constant musical chairs going around and while most teams do have holes to be filled, there seems to be clear issues with our makeup and all I'm complaining about is that we had the cap space to allow us to be a better squad than we currently are. It's already hard enough to win a cup as it stands, and now it becomes even tougher. Good enough to make the playoffs, yet difficult to imagine winning it all.

Good theory until we end up seeing Alzner playing on the top pairing with Weber simply out of necessity. Then it becomes nothing more than a justification and our true void will become apparent.

Let's sign Markov and then trade him, a draft pick and maybe even a prospect to Colorado for Duchene. Oh wait. Kidding aside, I still think we should be in on it despite being in the minority on the topic. I'm not saying he's anything more than a top 6 center, but we still do need a top 6 center. The only issue is I'm definitely past trading anything much of value to them for him and so I expect it to certainly not happen. On the other hand, I expect the return for him to be less than his actual value in the end. Thus, the perfect storm.

The one thing that most people will agree on when it comes to the Habs next season is that there are a tonne of question marks surrounding the team. As a result, it's difficult to predict how things will pan out. The one constant is Carey Price. We could discuss being an optimist or pessimist but is a team full of question marks a good place for a professional team to be? Of course experts are often wrong in their preseason predictions but I think the Habs should have more of a stable base beneath their feet to stand on. Had we signed Markov or Radulov, the painted portrait of where we are headed would be a lot more descriptive. Danault and Lehkonen had relatively strong seasons last year and what happens if one or both of them possibly regress in a sophomore type fashion? We can't afford that. My opinion is that at least one of them are not top 6 players on many of the better teams. Another question mark is our top pairing left defenseman. This is another hole which could have been filled by either Markov in the short term or Sergachev in the long term. Sergachev is certainly more of a question mark himself than Drouin but he sure did blast a nice goal from the left PoiNt just yesterday. The point isn't necessarily only about an all in mentality, the point is that coming from a very patient person, we clearly had the opportunity to ice a better team than we currently have. It's not a what if scenario. The Radulov signing on its own is certainly a what if but signing Markov could have been done and it would have improved our team over where it stands now. As much as we can pluck somebody up this season I have a hard time imagining that in a one season window, they would be more effective to our team and/or have more of an impact on our team than Markov would have had. After Radulov scored 7 points in 6 playoff games last season, the same could be said for him. Acquiring an elite player is now going to cost us not only their salary, but any piece(s) we have to send back as well. We genuinely have less of a chance of winning the cup without either one of those two players on our team and we could have with 100% certainty had at least one of those players. That's the mentality I cannot gel with. We didn't have to blow our team up in any shape way or form to resign one of the two, or even someone else who was available. I agree that just like most years, we will make some moves this season and many will be ready to say, look there, I told you so, but make no mistake in thinking that we wouldn't have also been able to make some bold moves to improve our squad within the season even if we had done more this off season to improve our team to an even greater extent than we did.

I did some two second research after my post on whether or not there was anything on this tax situation specifically with Radulov and came across this article... https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dallas-stars/stars/2017/07/03/stars-sign-alexander-radulov-five-year-deal-averages-625-million I admit that it's from a Dallas centric point of view and Radulov is not going to go out there and say taxes this, taxes that but the one common theme that does come up is Radulov pointing out that the Dallas team looked to be headed into a "win-now" mentality, which was probably the same thought process which led him to the Habs only one season earlier with some recent moves the team had made. In short, while Dallas was off signing players Iike Methot, Hanzal and Bishop in addition to Radulov, The Habs were trading away their best prospect for Drouin and offering a first come, first serve contract to either Markov or Radulov. For one, that type of mentality doesn't demonstrate any sort of commitment to Radulov and secondly it doesn't show a commitment to winning. Even if he does sign, he knew Markov wouldn't be there to help the team win. I'm always a believer and once the puck drops I will be cheering on but I tend to feel the same way Radulov does, whether it's BS or not. This is the first season I've gone in feeling that way but am willing to change my thought process once we make a move or two as one would hope we do.

I would have signed Radulov to 5 years 7 million per because it would have given us a better shot to win the cup and not necessarily hurt us in the long run. Radulov is a first line player and will be effective for the next 5 years because his heart is in the right place. There are a lot of doubters about him but he works his butt off in a similar fashion to Jagr. Any way you slice it, there's something to complain about. The Habs do have the tax situation and Radulov's agent did play hard ball. So despite my previous post, it is possible that the tax situation came into effect in this context. What would the good news have been? We have plenty of cap space to make up for that difference. On the other hand, I do think the tax issue is an easy way for the fan base to come to terms with not having had a chance to acquire a player. If it is true, then it puts us into a similar boat as we are when it comes to having to sign a French speaking coach. On the other hand, Marleau went to the Leafs and there are other Californian teams who manage to have no trouble signing unrestricted free agents despite high taxes. The New York Rangers also signed Shattenkirk and Radulov signed with The HABS only one year prior and it would be silly to think he didn't get other offers as well. The positives are that we have cap space to be in the running for any elite player who becomes available. That's a nice pill to swallow but that's defending a plan that was unintentional and it is clear that management is winging it to an extent, as CC hypothesized. To me, Radulov is only the beginning of the debate because we then also failed to sign Markov to a deal with the remaining space. It's easy to give him the benefit of the doubt after one incident, but there seems to be a pattern.

Again, I think the Radulov negotiations were difficult. However, the tax issue is one that could be brought up for any player. How do we have anyone playing for our team? The circumstances were different but one season before Radulov was the hottest commodity to an extent and the Habs managed to be the team to sign him. There were different avenues in terms of how we could have coaxed Radulov to want to play for us and those who mention the tax issue are simply finding a reason that it couldn't have worked. Perhaps it actually is true but soon we'll find that to be the reason amongst fans for every player who decides not to sign with us. In October and November Bergevin stated that it was "too early" to know if the Radulov we were seeing was the real Radulov. While I can understand how we shouldn't get too excited after a month of success, just like the Habs often start hot themselves, it wouldn't have been hard to imagine that Radulov could be one of the better offensive players on our team. With Bergevin's statement, he basically closed the door on any potential contract extension during the actual season itself when we may have had the upper hand compared to other teams. When you have an offensive player on your team and you need offense, you should be holding the advantage when compared with other teams. Not only that, you should be thinking about keeping them on your team. If the grand plan was to save the cap space for another offensive dynamo then sure, we shouldn't waste the cap space but as it stands now, we didn't save it for anything whatsoever. That we didn't even sign Markov afterward, brings me back to this topic. Otherwise Radulov would admittedly be a non topic. Saying that Radulov also seeked talent to play alongside offensive minded players on a Dallas squad, well, tell that to Drouin and Pacioretty and what might have been a 1st line combo of Pacioretty-Drouin-Radulov. Boom, we would have had a better squad than last season just with that. That to me is just part of where things went wrong. It didn't have to be Radulov but we had options to acquire players without losing any assets in return, and now we have none.

I hate opening up the thread with a negative tone considering that's not usually my style but it looks like Bergevin doesn't intend to use the cap space like many argued based on that summary, unless it's for a reason that won't help the team in the short term. I won't need to say it anymore after this but this is the least pleased I've been with an off season in some time. The Habs have a decent team but there's no doubt in my mind that we will not win a cup. Call me naive (since we never win) but this is the first season in my life I've gone into a season truly believing that reality. If Markov wanted 6 million for one season, give it to him. At least we would have had a chance. Offering him 5 million with bonuses is likely undervaluing him because I'm sure he wouldn't have hit every bonus within the contract and so 5 million would have been the best case scenario and likely not the actual amount. As for the Radulov negotiations, I've long admitted that Radulov's agent seemed to be playing hardball but I'd be shocked if his agent didn't come back to him after Dallas made the "same" offer and said, well, can you beat that? As much as that's not an ideal situation for Bergevin, offer him 250k more. He would have been well worth it. Maybe he doesn't take it but in the context I've been given, it looks like Bergevin didn't even try to negotiate and got burned by two different players in two different situations. Obviously we could not have had both players on our team but the fact that we have neither player and Bergevin is "shocked" we have neither player on the team is a stupid reaction as a GM. One is only shocked when they didn't have their nose deep into the issue. Furthermore, he would now be willing to take on an expensive contract as long as assets come our way as well. Sounds like a great Plan "E". The sky is not falling but this is how I feel. With that being said, my automatic NHL GameCenter renewal is about the only automatic renewal I've ever been pleased about and I'm looking forward to the preseason starting in less than a week.

Pacioretty-Drouin-Gallagher Byron-Danault-Galchenyuk Lehkonen-Plekanec-Hemsky Hudon-McCaron-Shaw

I wholeheartedly agree that the consensus amongst most people is that Julien is a better coach than Therrien. With that being said, while others may refute this claim, both Julien and Therrien got relieved of their duties, mainly for the same reason. Both of them wore out their respective welcomes. It's not something that is unique to Therrien. 4-5 years ago, I didn't look forward to facing a team coached by Julien. The past few years, however, I didn't see Boston as a threat too often when we faced them and quite frankly it's not like their squad lacked talent. As for writing off last season as being largely Therrien's team even after Therrien's departure, I'd have to hope that's not true. Sure, Julien may have not been available in the off season which would have rushed the decision to fire Therrien immediately instead of waiting until the off season all the while not giving Julien enough time to overwhelm the squad with new systems, but when it comes to the playoffs, the Habs should have been Julien's team. Finally, Julien's treatment of Galchenyuk has me biased. No coach should play him on the 4th line, and so while I'm all for defending the coach (being a coach of another sport myself) he began his tenure in the doghouse with me. Other than that, I look forward to seeing good things from him.

Whatever. Long live the Therrien haters overreacting. As if he's actually going to hurt the team in any way with this small position. If you want to start some gossip, Julien has impressed me far less in his very SHORT stint with us so far than Therrien did. It's been so short however that he does deserve the benefit of the doubt. Then again, the point remains and the purpose of this post was not to slag Julien.

It will be interesting to see how Dallas fares this season. Currently we have about 8.5 million free in cap space and the Stars have a little over 2 million. The difference in cap space between the teams is essentially Radulov's salary. Last season we ended with 103 points and the Stars ended with 79. I agree that we shouldn't have overpayed for Radulov because of the long term rammifications on the cap but ageing or not, I would have taken him on our team this season considering we do have the cap space. Once signed, he could also have been used as a trade chip himself, if we wanted relief from his cap hit in the future. My posts aren't really placing blame on Bergevin per se but with that being said, I don't think things went according to plan this off season. In addition, I have mixed emotions about the fact that we don't have to shed salary to acquire one of those players back. On one hand that's great and all but are we really going to want to use Hudon or McCarron or Carr or DeLaRose as those trade chips right before we get to see them grow into their potential after having been so 'patient' with them? Are we ever going to develop players from within and see them play for our squad? On the complete opposite side of the coin, will they be enough to acquire top end players in addition to say, draft picks? They aren't exactly elite prospects at this point in time. I generally agree. The only thing is that I think that after acquiring Drouin, we had the potential to drastically improve our offense. As it stands, it doesn't look much better to me unless Plekanec becomes a top 6 caliber center again or both Drouin and Galchenyuk thrive at center. I am lesser than enthusiastic than most about seeing Danault in our top 6 and perhaps that is my own problem.

Assessing this off season as having been lateral is not so far off the mark. What CC was saying is the squad isn't clearly much better than last season and to end up where we are, we had to get rid of our only elite prospect. If you're going to trade Sergachev for Drouin, then you had better sign Markov with the cap space you have left over. It's September 5th and we're supposed to expect that Bergevin will actually spend up to the cap limit this season? Which team is going to throw this 8 million dollar player at us? Every day that passes once the season starts, the cap hit that player takes up lessens and so even if we did manage to trade for an 8 million dollar star at say the deadline, it still wouldn't put us to the cap limit. Everyone seems to agree that letting Markov go leaves a negative taste in their mouth and yet that reality is ready to be overlooked with a quick snap of the finger simply in order to continue to be a defender.

For the seventh time, we didn't replace Radulov with Drouin. We traded Sergachev for Drouin. Furthermore, even after the move, Bergevin stated that it was still the intention to sign at least one of Radulov or Markov on a first come, first serve basis. As a fan, it becomes easy to justify that we replaced Radulov with a younger player with more potential but I don't understand the purpose in doing so when it clearly wasn't our GM's intention. He did not trade for Drouin as a result of Radulov leaving. That's just not the way it happened. With that being said, at face value, I was about 10 times more upset at letting Radulov go than Markov the moment I heard the news. The reason being that he has more years in the tank (sure the lengthier contract can be spun in a negative manner as well) as well as the fact that with Radulov and Drouin on the team, I think we go from having a relatively weak offense to potentially one of the more dangerous ones in the league. Perhaps we did still get better on offense but as good as Drouin is, it's not by much due to the fact that we also lost some effective pieces. After the dust settled, however, I do agree that letting Markov go becomes the bigger "mistake". I believe that Radulov and his agent were being tough in negotiations whereas from what I understand Markov was willing to bend and sign a one year contract. If anyone thinks we have a better chance at a cup without Markov and all this cap space, then I wouldn't be able to agree with them. I can't gel with the mentality of not icing the best team possible now unless we are a completely rebuilding team. I'm usually very positive and think we still have a decent team but I don't think that it's the best team we could have had. Still some time to change that mentality but that's the positive in me coming out again.

?? I admit the details of the exact quotes on this leadership issue are fuzzy to me but as much as I think leadership and intangibles are qualities that can make or break a team, I think it's an overblown statement when it comes to the Habs. I think we have had some locker room issues in the past without throwing out any names but I don't see leadership as having been an issue for us in the recent past. That sounds like a really easy explanation to a more complicated problem. I do agree that I think Price getting injured was the main issue in 2016 and there's no words inside a locker room that can help overcome such a drastic problem. As you said, it's a debateable topic and I've seen people completely disagree with this point of view but as much as our chemistry may have been great, I personally think a team without a captain has issues of its own. There's usually some good candidates for the position on any contending team in my opinion. There's also no evidence that our chemistry was good because we had four A's and no captain. The only thing that would cause such a rift in my opinion would be if there were other players who thought Pacioretty wasn't deserving of the position. Since the players apparently voted themselves, I can't see that being the case.

Too innovative for Team Hidebound just like it is too innovative for 29-30 other teams. It's not like we didn't do it for a period of time or anything. Of course it is 'arguable' but I think not having a captain can be a distraction of its own. It's basically saying that we don't have anyone "good enough" for the role. What I see from your argument is that we should basically have our players fear being thrown into captaincy due to the political rammafictions of being in the position and I don't see the postive innovation of that at all. If anything, not having a captain would be another "innovative" ideology similar to our unique stance of having only a francophone speaking coach. Something else to complain about.

I wouldn't trade Plekanec before the season at this point. It's not like his value is high, leaving him susceptible to lowering it by not playing well. In my opinion, coming from someone who's harder than he should be on Danault, Plekanec is arguably our best center right now. That has nothing to do with Plekanec compared to what it has to do with the reality that center is our other weakness. If we were to trade for a defenseman, I'd use a winger or another defenseman as bait rather than a center. Even if it were to help relieve cap space. We don't really need that right now.

Looks like Christmas came early for AK Bars... Fitting jerseys.