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PB

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Everything posted by PB

  1. This was the motto at the beginning of the season, but once the coach discovered that none of the original players assigned to the second line duty were anything but '' offensive threats '' the musical chair was set in motion......of which, just about anything was tried except for pairing Koivu to Kovalev. The fact that this wasn't even done in time of emergency and even in the mist of the free fall crisis led me to believe that Koivu made it expicit to the coach that he didn't want it to happens.....either that or Carbo didn't wants to abuse of Koivu's patience and make his life more mesirable than it should. Lets face it, Kovalev was a pain to play with last year,....as things are, I would suggest that he is also a serious element of dissuation to any top UFA players considering MTL as a destination.....who would really want to line-up with him at this stage of their career ?
  2. Our average seat prices was ranked a low 27th in the league 5 years ago, our prices increase has since brought us to pay the 2th highest avr.seat price troughtout the league this last season. The shame is that we made the playoffs 5-6 years ago and that we didn't in this last one. Price hiked,you bet.....but no progress. No progresses, despite the fact that during that time we have gained equal spending status with the previledge franchises of the pre-lock-out era and that Gainey inheritated 12 NHL caliber prospects from our previous organisation. Our prices is proportionates with loyalty, hypes and hopes but not with quality. Detroit has consistently put forth quality hochey on the ice qualifying for the playoffs now 16 years in a row and their assistance prices ranked 18th league wide. Buffalo's prices ranked a low 28th.....now that's value. I cant critisised the new price hike but as far as I am concerned I found it's offering of poor value. That's CLASS alright.
  3. The team's speed is rather good, specially on the quick side of things. This aspect was more readilly apparent during Gainey's tenure as a coach, less so under Julien and somewhat even less under Carbo. Gainey's system depended more on speed to be efficient, just as it should when your team has it. Anyway, above the speed and explosiveness as personified by the like of Higgins, a team's good overall speed is in large part the result of a great level of syncronicity found from the group as a whole...... cohesion and syncronicity of intents make for faster and better executions.... this level of cohesion wasn't reached during our last season and both our apparent and actual speed suffered.
  4. As CC pointed out, teams in this league, no matter what, will only be as good as their PP and PK alowed them to be. Thats actually the only beef a had towards Carbonneau as a coach this season, we had the most efficient PP in the league yet he failled to capitalised on it when he imposed a system of play that undermined speed and forechecking......the two very aspects that lead the highest amount of penaltys being taken in the league.....having the most efficient PP is one thing but creating PP opportunitys is another,....Carbo's system lead the CH to have one of the fewest amount of power play oppotunitys in the league....that is for me the only reason why we didn't make the playoffs. Anyway, PP efficienty matters big time in this league where the parity is real, its getting harder and harder for the teams to win only because they have better 5-on-5 and a better overall roster.........BUFF possessed an incredible amount of talents on its four lines yet they are strugling with their PP.......where you to add a Souray in their PP mix......they would simply would have been unbeatable and the books would have long been closed.
  5. Can Canadianbuziness recognise what is a bargain in hochey ? Crosby is no bargain according to the statsmachine,.......the statsmachine has gone crasy already and needs a psy pronto.
  6. The Russian League being on the prowl for Russian speaking players is a bad thing, specially for the CH. Losing Perezhogin is a lost for the CH, both from the new CBA and the new NHL perspectives. It might not seem to big of a lost as we watched him played within the confine of his restrained role in his already restrained NHL's team that were the CH, specially this season,.....but there is no doubt in my mind that the CH's system of play will need to evolve and get closer ASP to a template of play as staged by the DETs and BUFFs of this league,.....and in that respect, losing Perezhogin is a set back. If the CH is planning to move up the performance ladder in this league it will need to have good scoring depth down its lines and entertain a tightcheking style that doesn't sacrifice the team's speed, puck control, creativity and forechecking,......a direction, in which, I believe, Perezhogin potential would have come to the fore and served us very well.
  7. Which top center would come here to play with Kovy under Carbo,.....you see UFAs of pedigree have numerous choices in term of destinations.....Montreal is a little too shaky and unpredictable as it stand right now.....I doubt things to be different when the UFA market opens.
  8. Absolutely. Building a contender depends on how successfull a GM is with his aquisitions. The Draft, the Trade, the UFA Market,......the GM's Saint-Trinity. You dont get where BUFFALO and OTTAWA are today without steadily registering successfull aquisitions from those THREE sources,......its a pre-requisite,.......no teams can ever get there without their organization winning those battles first. Althought we losted some of the prospects that Gainey inheritated from the previous organizations when he took over, ( Beauchemin, Hainsey ) and that some were traded defavourably, (Hossa - Murray) most are doing doing fine, ( Ryder, Komisarek, Higgins, Plecaneck, Perezhogin, A. Kostsitsyn, LaPierre ) and there is plenty of room for hope about the futur if what we saw from Latendresse, Havlak and Garbowski are any indication of what Gainey's own crop of draftees will be looking like. A big successfull aquisition from the UFA market would be ideal at this point, ( better than one obtained from trading of course ) but, as we know much too well, it isn't being easily acheived in here as it is difficult to attrack them since we are not one player away from being a serious contender, yet it will have to be done one day,.......the sooner the better, yes,....is it feasible under our circumstance ? ( the dead weight and all ).....I doubt it.
  9. The provided link by RAFIKZ was a great read for CH's and Muller's fans,....even contained a positive element in it (Schneider). Good initiative by rafikz lead to a good active thread. I also would like to know as to why it was scrapped ?
  10. A little less money to be in a BONA FIDE CUP CONTENDIND TEAM was more like it in Colorado those days..... but hay,....Bob could always give it a try.
  11. Well said ,.......yet I cant be helped but to ponder a little more,......about the negative implications involves with keeping the statu quo going.........or about the opposite choice. Personally, I believe that the choice should be decided following the premise dictated by one crucial factor,.........which option could best be an IMMEDIATE UPGRADE to get the HIGHEST PERFORMANCE from this team next season. Keeping Carbo, as you said, might preserve a certain image of credibility to the organization,.....on the other hand, I would suggest that failure to adequatly compete next season and missing the playoffs again will be of worst consequences than PR imagery. He did let Carbo in the whole season after all (thats more than Lamoriello did with Julien) but Gainey needs to be sharp on his commitment to the club next season. Maybe the best compromise would be that Gainey himself be the coach next year.
  12. Blunt yet sharp and funny....keep them coming bad boy.
  13. I would love him to come here and laid out to Carbo the Wing's system blueprint under which Detroit always plays well and is always a pleasure to watch.......cohesive and tight checking yet plenty of movement and great puck possession, creative, skillful ,......could be an hybrid system between the Red Army and the MTL Canadien of the seventys......haaa life would be good.
  14. The house is a little to messy for Koivu to confidently go out there and personally recommand free agents to joined their destiny to ours. Koivu has already expressed his frustrations with the negative results and poor acheivements this organisation as provided the team thus far ( the lost of prospects, bad untimely players exchanges, signing the wrong UFAs...or the wrong coach....or both,....missing the playoffs ).....and the possible damaged cap space ahead or the uncertainty resulting from not having signed our own best free agents during the season, is nothing reassuring as to what awaits the CH the next couple of years or the free agents adventurous enought to join in.
  15. Agree,..... Pedneault is over the top and Houde is all over the place and nowhere...... any other options would make my day.
  16. The '' many oppotunitys '' where the results of the CH being out-played, often dominated, while playing the defensive passive style they where asked to play by Carbo. The opposite is truth for whenever they left aside the overly constricted defensive mould which they were strapped in at the beginning of each of their games, the level of their game immediatly increased,.......to me, the LEAGUE-LEADING stats no.19 and the LEAGUE-LEADING no.24 ( only two wins short of being an ALL TIME record ) is nothing else than a shure indication about which style exploited best the inherent goods pertained in the team. I still think that the style they had to played in was not only inconsistant with the inherent goods contained in the team but that in doing so it also impaired on the full blossoming of those assets. The straight-jacket was, I think, the dominant reason for our regression this season.
  17. The interview with the D Senator's Chris Phillip who just resigned a multi-year contract is interesting,...... two things made him stick around the Senators,....respect for the organization and the sentiment that the team is solid and always in a position to win championships. We have some reasons to be concerned if we believe that Phillips's concerns are pretty much the only relevant matters to side along the granted financial concerns of most UFA players. I dont worry about the respect Markov have for the organisation, which he has a plenty, but as a hockey player I know that he cant possibly have the easthetic and emotional satisfaction players have when they play within a solid top echelon performing team in which all their talents gets to be fully expressed,.....along with the conforting sentiment to know that the team as the spine solid enought to bail you out when you have a so-so night. The new CH organisation has failed to orchestrated a steady improvement of the team, missing this season's playoff's qualification has demonstrated that the opportunity brought about by newNHL's challenge has not been met successfully here,........an opportunity for redemtion, an opportunity to erase the spectre of the losing environment that have been ours during the last decade has been missed. Koivu has expressed is concerns with the direction of our team,......we took a step back and regressed towards providing the winning environment UFA players like Marcov and others might be looking for.... in that respect there is reason to worry.
  18. Sold out houses at the Bell started at the very end of the 03-04 pre-lock-out season a little after the Kovalev acquisition and included the Boston-Tampa Bay series that followed,....otherwise the two seasons folowing the lock-out have been sold-out. The slumping CH kept the Bell full in the second half only because tickets had already been purshased earlier in the season,.......I doubt that fans will be buying season tickets to the same extent than they did prior to this last season. CH president Boivin's statement of the CH being in a financial position to look at '' super vedette '' was meanted to stimulate season-ticket sells but I believe that people in MTL knows better and they will hold-on to see what style of hockey will the team be asked to play next season......I know I would.
  19. At the start of the season I thought that althought the CH didn't have any top notch scorers in its roster at least it had 4 talented centers spread throught the 4 lines ( Koivu, Ribeiro, Bonk,Plekanec), ..........something that couldn't have been said in regards with some of our competitors. An advantage ? I definetly thought so. An advantage not considered as such by Gainey-Carbo but considered as such by Dallas,...getting Ribeiro increased the scoring depth of their team, losing him decreased ours,.....they made the playoffs,....we didn't. Lets not forget that Dallas was hurt last summer when losing Harnold '(?) to the UFA market, they also got hit pretty bad during the season with all the injurys,......yet didn't regressed and made the playoffs again. That's my problem with the CH, we didn't lose crucial players to UFA in the inter-season neither was the team hurt to an overly significand degree with injuries during season. Our regression took place under much easier cirmconstances,.....this can only be explained or attributed to the negative effects that resulted from some of the many managerial decisions that where made during that time,........one of them being the Ribeiro-Niinima trade. That decisions was bad specially because of the timing, we needed Ribeiro one last season,.......what made it even worst, is what we got in return. We regressed, yet had no excuse to do so, our playoffs record is brought back to the front..... 3 playoffs participation in our last 8 seasons,....ouch !
  20. Last season under Gainey the CH where asked to play a more agressive type of game than they had under Julien,.....the checking line was dismantle and all lines where balance to acheived maximun pressure and to play the puck pursuit style that Carolina had so much success playing........the CH was reborned and finally made a qualification out of it. When playing the serie against Carolina we never had it so good hockey wise, I mean the pace was just incredible......I actually remenber the TSN commenting about it as being the best of all the series hapenning at that time and suggesting that a tape should be made and send all over the league to show how the game should be played. At the beginning of THIS season questions where asked about how defensive a system for the Club Carbo had in mind........he reassuringly answered that he would ask the CH to play the same style as they did during that serie,....agressive puck pursuit,....playing hard on the puck...etc. That never happens,......the style was different from the start,......the pace wasn't there,......puck possession time and forecheking where almost non-existant........this team had no identity, no force to be reckoned with and the lousiest 5-on-5 of the league. My verdict is that Carbo is no coaching genius and that Gainey failled to supervised and interfered. No coaching genius because he lost sight of the '' big picture '' and because he left his turnover paranoid stance design and influence the game in a way that stiffled the players, their puck possession, their speed, creativity and ultimatly their offensive capability. The step we made last season was lost because of this backward scenario......I felt.
  21. Gainey fired Green with Julien last season, Green had been the D coaching specialist with the CH quite a while prior is firing, many peoples have question the substraction......specially those that felt uneasy watching the D and thought that they could do better. Yaa its funny the friend thing......Gainey got his friend Carbo a job.......Carbo got his friend Muller a job, I hope they are not like me who prefered hiring a good friend instead of a more appropriate person when I had a little compagny in the past.........as suspected I had lots fun working with the friend....but the compagny didn't prosper as it should have....it was a trade-off which I prefered and the consequence didn't affect any other one than me.
  22. Two rooky coachs and a GM who minded is own buziness was not a serious combination altogether, some serious proplems plagued our game all season long, there was not enought competence availlable and the game as played was flawed I fell,.... and really su..ked at time. Rivet's experience is interesting, the transplantation from one system to the other has him feeling that the job gets done more efficiently over there.......I am not surprised, we lacked cohesion and efficiency in our zone all season long until our apocalyptic first period in Toronto. Gorges too was transplanted, but in the opposite direction, he too must have had vivid impressions of the experience.......of course our journalistes forgot to ask him about his first impressions......just too good a question I suppose. I remember writing here my first impressions about Gorges on his first game with us..........I spoke with anthousiasme about Gorges offensive instinc, speed and spontaneity and warned everyone to enjoy his play before Carbo isolate him from the forwards and turn him into an impotent and boring defenceman. Carbo then isolated Gorges not only from the forwards but from the game altogether.........instead he gave us NIINIMA,][';yes, thats it=NIINIMA"":yesL{>NIINIMA......
  23. In the West the team I am sheering for is Detroit. Puck possession has always been taken seriously over there and because of it, they are still, next to the Soviet of lore, playing the most beautifull hochey that the game has to offer. But.......Anahein, for the little I have watched, looked awsome...their forwards are extremelly well served by their amazing D, incredible game flow all over and yet plenty of hits too......I look forward to their next game, something new is going on there.........I still will sheer for Detroit but I foresee Anahein to have the best chance in the West. In the East, for the little I have seen, Ottawa command respect......there is a classic feel to their excellence that make me think of the CH in the mid-seventys......because of it, and because I didn't see BUFF playing other team than our own this season....I have to think that OTTAWA will win in the East......they will, if their goally allows them to. For hochey I usually only watch the Habs......but this year has been pretty bad and it is clear while I watched the teams mentionned above that the Habs are playing a lackluster brand of hockey.
  24. Good for you..........as for me I dont share your trust for now.
  25. Just a year ago, I would have let myself indulged into thinking that most any UFAs would come and play here,.....if the offers made to them respected their market price value. Don Meehen's agent partner Bob Perno said that the likely players that would sign in Montreal in most circumstances would be '' veterans in the last segment of their carreers ,''..... like Yannick Perreault has been the last two seasons. Elite, steadfast and predictable players usually end-up having a choice of destinations once they get to the UFA market,......they will look for the right money,.....a winning environment......where wife or personal reason could possibly play a certain part. Right now Montreal is not a winning environment, missing qualification this spring cannot be hidden, neither is the fact that Montreal failed to qualified 5 times in the last 8 seasons. So keeping the bums aside, ( players that would take advantage of our precarious situation in order to obtain more money than they could elsewhere, ex. Kovalev, Samsonov ) the potential candidate players for Montreal would be, and only be, the ones who could have personal reasons to live and play here. Of the unofficial list of names above, I only know one player that has pronounced himself favorable to play here if he was to be approached........Zubrus, ( wife-family, he likes MTL). The only other player which I would speculate of possibly having a personal reason would be Briere, (because it might be meaningfull to him to live here and to play for the CH). Of course Markov and Souray also belong to those few having a personal reason. A pretty short list, but unless you tell me otherwise......the only realist list I know of. Its a shame to be restricted from that source of improvement,.....all sources are important, (draft,exchanges, etc), but there is no other single source that can rival its impact and immediacy when successfully done.
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