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BTH

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Everything posted by BTH

  1. I don't get presents. I guess not watching the Habs is enough of a present.
  2. True, but for the supposes of this thread, let's not consider how likely it is to happen. The question is which scenario would be best for the organization: top 5 in the East, 8th place, or bottom 5.
  3. Yeah, probably, but then there would be too many options to rank. lol If we can all decide that the lottery pick is the most valuable, then the Canadiens are best off taking steps (AKA older guys for younger players) to help them get the high draft pick. They wouldn't have to outright tank, just let nature take its course.
  4. NOTE - I edited the third option in the original post. I tried to do it right after I made the thread but my internet dropped out. I changed it so that it wouldn't be a no-brainer that #3 is better than #2. The new scenario involves sacrificing a bit of youth for the improvement to the current team.
  5. Number the following scenarios in order from most preferred to least preferred. - The Canadiens finish in the bottom five this season and get a lottery pick. - The Canadiens keep pretty much the same group together and edge their way into the playoffs, losing in the first round. - The Canadiens trades a pick and/or prospect* for a veteran, make a massive turnaround, finishing in the top 5 in the East, but don't win the Stanley Cup. I'm not asking whether you think management should try to tank, only which scenario would be best for Montreal's future, supposing it were arrived at "naturally." *Weber, Leblanc, Tinordi, Palushaj, Kristo, ...
  6. You can count me in too. I think by Phonebooth he was referring to the Bell Centre. That might be able to hold us all.
  7. Every losing team looks like that! It's possible to look good in a single loss but if your team is consistently losing, I bet they look completely uncoordinated on the ice. Claiming rifts in the dressing room is the easiest explanation because it allows for the choosing of a scapegoat. In the second paragraph, you're talking about hockey chemistry, not personality chemistry. Obviously, GMs need to consider what each player will bring in relation to the group of players he is being added to, but that is different from speculating that X, Y, and Z are feuding with A, B, and C based on the way they play. Gauthier has more access to their feuds than we do, but from our perspective, as mere viewers without inside information, we really have no window into the locker room dynamics.
  8. No, no, no! But this team is supposed to be of especially high character. First, there were the Three Amigos: Ribeiro, Dagenais, and Theodore who just had to be dumped because they were ruining the team. Losing them was considered addition by subtraction. Then the team was supposedly "pure" of character, right? Nope. They kept losing and that means more accusations of bad character. There was Samsonov. Then after he left, people blamed Higgins, Price, Chipchura, Stewart, Ryder, etc. for partying too much. Grabovski was traded for being a poor sport. Then Koivu, Kovalev, Komisarek, Higgins, .... the entire core of the team was rotten and had to be ejected. They were replaced with proven leaders like Gomez, Gionta, Cammalleri, Moen, Mara, ... There were new bad apples. Latendresse was traded for Pouliot (who later became a bad apple himself), Lapierre was traded because he didn't like being a fourth liner, Sergei Kostitsyn had to go, more addition by subtraction. Andrei has been called a cancer for years. Now our new leaders are the problems that need to be purged from the dressing room? What are the symptoms of a team with rifts in the dressing room? All the same symptoms as losing. As long as the team is losing, they will always be people accused of having bad attitudes. Other than interviews where players openly talk about problems in the dressing room, all talk about cancers and rifts is as speculative and arbitrary as basing severity of punishment on Zdeno Chara's intent. A GM can spend his entire career getting rid of "bad apple" after "bad apple" and never get anywhere. "Ribeiro never seems to make that pass to Ryder. They must be feuding. I need to trade one!" Gauthier should be basing his decisions on hockey terms not on his idea of the friendship dynamics within the team that he gets from watching the games.
  9. Not everything I wrote was meant to be a counter-argument to something you said, I was just writing stuff. But the reason you call it a "storm" is based on him hiring an English interim coach and saying he's going to be replaced by a French coach later. You wanted Martin fired, hence you thought good would come out of it, that he would be replaced by somebody as good or better, that there would be no PR disaster, ... So I'm asking what scenario you were foreseeing. Firing Martin could only result in a downgrade. Replacing him with a crappy francophone would be underwhelming (and would look Mickey Mouse to other people around the league), and replacing him with an English coach would be a PR disaster in Quebec and never going to happen. Somehow, unless Molson finds the 1 or 2 good candidates that may be out there next offseason, Molson has accomplished to do both though. If they were going to fire Martin, they should have replaced him with a top English coach. Now they're pretty much down to hoping one of Guy Boucher and Alain Vigneault get fired.
  10. If you have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the team, it isn't a sport, some playful competitive activity we like to watch for fun - it's a business. Having a French coach keeps good business relations with much of Molson's target audience. Molson doesn't want to gamble millions on hiring a coach that is only more likely to make Montreal a top team. Pretty much every owner will feel the same way.
  11. I wasn't in favour of firing because there were no good replacements available. Jacques Martin is the best French-speaking coach in the world that hasn't retired yet. Any replacement, with the possible exception of Guy Boucher who has high upside, is a downgrade. The only reasons to fire Martin were 1) to send a message to the players. Firing a coach often triggers a hot streak. 2) to send a message to Gauthier that his ass is on the line. 3) you think all the players quit on Martin and will play better without him even if they make a downgrade at coach. Addition by subtraction. These arguments aren't enough for me to fire the best (French) coach available. Hence I didn't want him fired. But you did want him fired. So what did you expect to happen? Other than the hiring of a top unilingual English-speaking coach, who did you want them to hire? Are you telling me you would have been happy had they hired Marc Crawford, Bob Hartley, or Patrick Roy as their permanent head coach? You always need to consider potential replacement candidates though. The only reason why Gauthier's back's against the wall is because management is trigger-happy and prepared to fire him when the team loses, even if there is nobody out there that is likely to do a better job than him. Without using hindsight, I could defend every trade and signing Gauthier has made. All of them are sensible moves to me. The only basis on which to fire him is that the team is not in a playoff position. But a sensible owner that is looking at the big picture would conclude that even if the team isn't doing well, a GM that is making the best decisions under the circumstances should be kept around. Firing him might appease the fans and media because it sends a message that missing the playoffs is unacceptable but it wouldn't improve Montreal's chances of making the playoffs in future seasons, so it would actually be a blow against those very people that would most support the move. Instead of making business risks that are most likely to lead to winning, management would prefer to make symbolic moves that create the illusion of taking steps toward winning. Molson knows that keeping the Habs good enough to compete for the playoffs while keeping up appearances of attempting to contend for the Cup is all the team needs to sell out every game. Making good hockey decisions that don't sit well with the fans and media just isn't worth it for Molson from a financial perspective. Otherwise we would be hiring the best coach available, or keeping him in place when we're lucky enough to have him.
  12. I marathoned season two of The Walking Dead last night. (Spoilers, obviously) This is a cool show. I like the relationships that are building within the group, how networks of friends and enemies are building and shifting - X is friends with Y and Z but Y and Z don't like eachother and are close to different people in the group. The characters are all pretty cool too. The only ones I don't like are (I forget their names) but the black guy who cut his arm and Sophia's mom because they don't seem to really add much to the gruop, and also Carl because I think the boy's an annoyingly bad actor. I'd prefer a more realistic kid. I also didn't like Sophia and was happy she died. The best part about that scene for me was that they had been searching for her for days and finally realized that she had been right next to them all along, already bitten. At the end of the first season I was worried Season Two would be about finding the cure for the epidemic. But that thought never even surfaced throughout the entire season. Instead it went back to surviving. That's the real strength of the show: that it isn't about saving the world, winning the war, or finding an eternal solution to the zombie apocalypse - it's just about surviving in this world, hand to mouth, day to day, moment to moment, in nature red in tooth and claw. My favourite moment so far was Shayne saving himself at the end of Episode 3, where he shot (I think) Otis, the fat guy.
  13. Guy Boucher is the only French candidate I would like.
  14. I don't think hiring an interim coach increases the pressure on Gauthier. It's just to ensure the French media that they'll have their French coach soon enough. If Molson is the one that fired Martin, then it was intended as a clear message to Gauthier that he's next in line. They have so few choices that the only possible replacement for the moment is Cunneyworth (not really a replacement at all; the firing was more of a statement than an attempt at improvement). The choice of coaching replacement hardly affects that. Either way, Gauthier knows that he'll probably lose his job if the team misses the playoffs. I think the real mistake is in firing management so readily to begin with. Martin was the best coach available and I think Gauthier's actually done a very good job, better than most, certainly better than other French speakers (if that's a requirement for the GM position). Replacing Gauthier will probably be a downgrade, just as replacing Martin was. Best to leave good staff in place even when the team struggles and that way you create organizational stability. What's Mickey Mouse is getting a new coach every two years.
  15. You remind me of the hilariously pessimistic character Dolorous Edd from the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. Some of his quotes are: "We will defend the wall to the last man!" said Cotter Pyke. "Probably me." Said Dolorous Edd, in a resigned voice. Dolorous Edd: I never win anything, the Gods smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice, deep pool of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks? Grenn: He survived? Dolorous Edd:No, he was dead already from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks.
  16. You wanted Martin to be fired despite the fact that there was no good replacement available. Now that he's been fired and been replaced (with one of the better, and yet still very underwhelming, choices out there) you think a massive mistake has been committed and that the GM and owner need to change before more massive mistakes are committed. It seems like you've made a total 180 (reminiscent of Mike Boone after Carbo was fired). The only justification I see for that is that you wanted a long-term coach to be chosen because giving Cunneyworth an 'interim' title puts added pressure on Gauthier to make a panic move to save his job.
  17. Cunneyworth's intro press conference doesn't inspire any confidence in him. He seems like an elementary school phys ed teacher that gives skinny eight year olds pep talks when their class plays knuckleball.
  18. Didn't Carbonneau and Gainey also use Darche on the powerplay? He must be the biggest suck up in the Canadiens locker room.
  19. The list of potential bilingual candidates is pretty awful, led by Crawford. It's too bad this didn't happen like a month ago, we could have had Muller. Our next best bet is probably Guy Boucher or else a well-respected anglophone, maybe Randy Carlyle, but maybe someone better (Ted Nolan?). I hope not Bruce Boudreau! But perhaps I'm being Quixotic.
  20. I don't think this will improve the team but the good news is that the new coach doesn't speak French. Maybe it'll transition into our next (long-term) coach being Anglo too.
  21. Oh, right. I've heard that before. It explains a lot. lol
  22. Chris Hitchens died today. The guy had style.
  23. I want Kaberle and Emelin on the points, Plekanec and Cole along the boards, and Subban in front of the net (imagine how many penalties he would draw!)
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