smon

Koivu was just being honest. And will he be re-signed? I think so. We'll see. But Koivu haters always crawl out of the woodwork when he plays badly and crawl away when he plays well.

No, it shouldn't. Players like Lecavalier are extremely hard to get and a chance to acquire an impact centre like that does not come around very often. It certainly hasn't in Montreal for a very long time. Waiting for the "perfect" player will just lead to doing nothing...

It will make for an interesting offseason. With all the UFAs, Gainey is definitely going to have the oppurtunity to make some aggressive moves if he intends to reshape this team. To be honest, the more I think about it, a Jokinen wouldn't have changed this team much. He can't carry a team and is a complementary piece. Not a bad thing, look at Tanguay who's only excelled in the same role (he struggled in Calgary when asked to do too much). So from that aspect, Gainey's inaction can be forgiven. But the clock is ticking and the team simply isn't an elite squad, and the onus is on Gainey to fix that.

I honestly would, provided that we had the luxury of choosing either 2009 or 2010, just like Calgary did. Matt Lombardi isn't a bad player at all. And Jokinen isn't a rental, he's signed through next year.

Montreal has hardly been playing like Detroit this season though, have they? I'm not surprised he didn't make any moves, but I'm not impressed with it either. You guys are right, Jokinen was the catch.

Speaking of defense - sorry to raise a long dead issue and pick on such an oft-maligned player, but I thought that Brisebois looked horrendous against Anahiem. I'd rather give O'Byrne a shot. That's about the only line change we'd need right now. I gotta admit that Lang and Kovalev is definitely something that would work nicely though, but right now it's still early.

Well, it's still concievable that Schenn might get sent down. The Leafs have plenty of mediocre D on one-way contracts. It's a dumb idea to keep him around if he's not ready, but if he is, why not? Although the Leafs better hope he turns out better than Luke Richardson.

The clock's ticking for Chipchura, I think. Montreal's in win-now mode right now, and his oppurtunities for this season are limited. The Canadiens will have to think long and hard about his future if he doesn't make the club out of training camp next season.

The GTA could concievably support another team. Makes more sense than the Sunbelt.

I doubt it, because for that to be true we would have to assume that someone from Montreal's head office leaked this info to the aforementioned newspaper. I don't think leaking stuff to the media fits Gainey's modus operandi. Another team perhaps, but I highly doubt that a GM who's so notoriously averse to the media would suddenly open up to a newspaper in another city.

Backstrom might be a UFA, I think. But I agree, the cap numbers don't work out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Sauer HAHAHA Way too many Habs fans on wikipedia?

Speaking of captains, Craig Rivet is the new one of the Buffalo Sabres.

It's been extremely rare to see a player that young who is signed long-term traded in the post-lockout era. The nearest player I could think of would be Mike Cammalleri, but he wasn't signed long-term, which brought about his trade. Or Andrej Meszaros, but again the issue with him was his contract.

I'd guess that Lang might end up alongside Kovalev at some point. Not overly impressed, hope he has some still left in the tank. Still, it's a fairly low-risk move, and the biggest cost is probably the 4M of cap space he'll eat up. Better to get him now than at the deadline when he'd be ridiculously over-valued. Plus, the Habs couldn't wait for the Sundin drama forever. He's a big centre with decent offensive skills (although he doesn't exactly play anything near a physical game), so he's not a bad Plan B. Those days are a few years behind him, it's more like 21 goals and 54 points.