Peter Puck

All year long Price has handled the puck with supreme confidence, maybe even over confidence. Every couple of games he has a pass intercepted while he is still behind the net (although I think he has been better in the past month or so). My first question is: 1. Has there been any goal against directly resulting from Price mishandling the puck? I have watched every game this year and the closest thing I can remember is the delay of game penalty yesterday against the Canuks (which i don't really feel was so bad). My 2nd question is: 2. Have we had a loss this year attributable to Price letting in one or more weak goals? Again, I don't think this has happened.

Can anyone shed some light on why the Habs called up Nash and not Carle?

Well I find it strange that he seems to be fine in the Nashville dressing room.

Well maybe I'm still jumping the gun but Sergei scored twice more last night in a 3-0 win over Detroit including a highlight reel short handed goal. He's now got 14 goals and 16 assists for 30 points and is +4. Plek is our top scorer with 43 pts followed by Cammalleri with 31 and AK with 29. I'm not really surprised since I thought he was pretty good with us.

It looks like all he is going to do is participate in one of the 6 skills competition. My guess would be in the hardest shot competition. That would mean all he's going to Raleigh for is to take 2 slap shots. edit: Actually on rereading it looks like he will also participate in the shootout challenge.

I guess. But this seems very fishy. We are now 2 points behind Boston and they have a game in hand. With almost half a season to go, it is clear that we are battling the Bruins and also the Penguins at least as far as a simulation goes. As I say, all we have to do is finish ahead of the Bruins to qualify for the playoffs. Since they lost to the Penguins instead of winning, it seems we are quite a bit better off.

Hi Brian, I am confused about the Penguins/Bruins game in the opening post. How is it possible that the outcome of this game had no change on our playoff chances. The Bruins were behind the Penguins (but with 2 games in hand). Most importantly, if we catch the Bruins we are basically guaranteed to make the playoffs (and finish top 3). Catching the Penguins obviously helps our chances but it doesn't assure us a playoff spot. P.P.

This whole size thing is a red herring. Any of the bigger guys we have are dismissed as "playing small". Any big guy on another team is automatically considered as physical. Sure, we would all like to have a team of quick, fast skating, skilled, huge players with good hands and great hockey sense. The fact is, every player lacks something. We happen to have a number of forwards who are not overly big. Should we trade Plex or Gionta for Ponikarovsky?

I agree with The C. C. and tend to subscribe to theory #4 (plus a major loss of confidence in many players). Theory #1 (our early success was purely a product of Price overachieving) is clearly wrong in my opinion. Price is playing just about as well now as he did in October and November. In October/November we were were giving up only 3 or 4 quality scoring chances per game. Now that number is up to 10 or more. Price is still stopping 60% of those chances. In Oct/Nov we went whole periods without making any serious defensive errors. Now we commonly see 2 or 3 errors within 40 seconds. I also dismiss theory #2 (the system is unsustainable). How is a system sustainable for 2 months but not for 6? I pray #3 (just a slump) is correct. In the past few years, a number of top teams (Pittsburgh, Philly, Washington) have gone into 10 or 20 game tailspins and then recovered. Theory #5 (a repeat of the 2009 collapse) also worries me. I never really came to a satisfying explanation for that collapse - my best guess was to attribute it to Carbonneau. I expect we'll lose today - probably Vokoun will be unbeatable (if he even needs to be). But I am hopeful that a return to home games and the addition of Wiz will lead to a recovery.

rer There is a reason why we can name some many forwards (and goalies) who suddenly emerged as stars in the playoffs and we can't name any Dmen. The reason is that goal scoring stats (or goaltending stats) make these players easy to recognize and they get lots of publicity. Any dman who similarly raises his game will not be noticed by the vast majority of people and so we never hear of them. This doesn't mean that they don't exist, just that we can't name them. I can name one: Subban, although his performance last year wasn't really the same sort of sudden emergence you are looking for.

It's fun to list the overall rank but I won't be counting it as a tie-breaker.

I'm saying 43-29-10 for 96 points 6th in the East and 14th overall.

5th annual HabsWorld points prediction contest. Hall of Fame: 2006-2007 Jean won with a prediction of 92 points when the Habs finished the year with 90 pts. If only we could have won that last game. 2007-2008 Adirondack Bud exactly predicted our final total of 104 pts. 2008-2009 Zowpeb won by predicting a strong start followed by a slower 2nd half ending with 99 points. The Habs finished the season in 8th place with 93 points. On September 22, 2008 Zowpeb predicted "I think we'll see a rough patch just past the mid-year point... " Wow. 2009-2010 Joelassister correctly predicted the Habs would finish with 88 points. Honourable mention to kaos who predicted a season record of 39-34-9 (87 pts) while the Habs finished 39-33-10. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rather than just predicting our regular season final points total, predict what the Habs regular season record will be. Also predict in what place in the East the Habs will finish. The winner will be the poster whose point total is closest to the Habs at the end of the season. Ties will be broken using the NHL tiebreaking formula. The place prediction will serve as a further tie-breaker. Make you predictions before the beginnning of Thursday's season opener.

Yes, he is small but I think he has the attitude and style of play to make it. Admittedly, I haven't seen much of him -just clips.

21-42 look pretty good to me. But I would have Brendan Gallagher up around 15.

I would like to see the PQ try the following. If the province is going to contribute toward a new arena in Quebec City then the new team needs to be a real francophone team. The PQ should try to require that the only players allowed to play for the new Nordiques are francophones from Quebec.

Maybe but I think they want to keep Janus in Florida not the AHL so that he'll get more starts and so they need an AHL backup.

We got the better player in this deal. It is a bit of a risk because he may not come back from Russia. As far as I can tell, Tampa needed an AHL backup for 1 year. Desjardins will probably do this job quite well. After this season they have other prospects to replace him. That works well for Tampa since he will be a UFA. So they gave us a better player who is unavailable for use in the AHL this year and who doesn't fit into their plans anyway. I am also not sure that Desjardins fits into our plans. He looks like he may well be a career AHLer. Of course he may continue to develop and could make the NHL eventually but he is already (almost) 25. I think there is a reasonable chance that Ramo will return next season to be our NHL backup since Auld may be gone.

Personally I think it clear that Ramo has the higher ceiling. However, I think the big advantage here is that Ramo will not be a UFA until 3 years from now. Desjardins will be a UFA at the end of this season (unless he somehow plays 28 NHL games which will never happen). We have 3 years to convince Ramo to come back.

The Habs have since made it clear that they thought both Price and Staal were future franchise players. The scouts disagreed on which of the two to pick and Gainey/Timmons decided tht a franchise goalie is more valuable than a franchise Dman. This makes it clear they were picking what they thought was the BPA.

Lets get the facts straight at least. He showed up to camp still recovering from an injury. He played 2 preseason games and then was sent down. When did he slag his teammates in the press? Link please. And don't point to some russian "reporter" - all those guys are unreliable nd hardly qualify as press.

Sure Sergei handled himself badly. But the Habs handled him badly too. The difference is that an experienced coach should be able to deal with an immature player. Sergei has a lot of talent - he has the skill set to be a top 6 forward. He is capable of playing with grit. He regressed under Martin but still was quite good defensively. You ask "what was Martin supposed to do?" The answer is that Martin was supposed to teach him how to play in the NHL. Sergei has the skills and Martin failed to mold him into a player. What he did intead was drive him out of town. It's easy to say that its Sergei fault but there is no question Martin failed with him. We will see how the Predators do. I'm pretty sure Sergei has the makeup to be a good player. The coach's job is to develop that potential.

I'm not so sure we won this trade. Lots of people are down are Sergei but I still think he is the probably the best player among the three. Martin doesn't like him and handled him badly so I guess we had to get rid of him. But I think it will take two years before we know whether we got the short end of the stick on this deal.

Also note that neither of these teams has strong goaltending. Yet one of them will win the cup. We need to stop wasting picks on goaltenders. Lets dump both Price and Halak (neither has ever reached a cup final) and try finding some more average to below average tenders.

This is great news as it guarantees us a spot in next year's Stanley Cup final.