JoeLassister's 2010 Post of the Year thread

[JoeLassister]

I decide the nominees. I vote the winner. I win. Your arguments are invalid.

Candidate #1.

Oh, you mean the mighty Brodeur who at 22 during the 1995 Stanley Cup championship year posted a 2.44 GAA and a .902 SV%?

When adjusted for a lower scoring era (1995 was the lowest scoring season between 1971 and 1995) the number is a pedestrian .896.

He also faced only 908 shots in 40 starts, a number that placed him 18th in the league even though 9 players played less games than him.

Instead, let's rewrite history to compare Price to the 31 year old Brodeur, yep, that is the comparable. Not the below average 22 year old on

the best defensive team in the league who tied for 22nd in SV% behind Wade Flaherty, Ken Wregget, Guy Hebert and Darren Puppa.

This is the type of nonsense that leads to this city eating it's own. This buzzsaw of unrealistic expectations that rip players to shreds and the

fanbase who sits back and pisses and moans "why do all these players regress in this city"? Poor us.

This scene plays out OVER AND OVER AND OVER like groundhog day. Jocelyn Thibault was ripped to shreds and the fanbase clung to the

saviour on the horizon, Jose Theodore. Theodore was the media darling as the prospect/backup. Then Theodore became the starter.

Theodore then became the whipping boy for the Canadiens Mensa Nation until his career was destroyed for Cristobal Huet. Huet was cast aside

for Carey Price who at 20 had a fantastic debut, until he faltered in the playoffs. After a dominant stretch leading the team to first in the Conference,

two shutouts in the first round of the playoffs, Mensa Nation threw him under the bus for Halak in Game 4. Now we are in Halak is the saviour mode,

if Price goes, where do you think this is heading?

This is like an episode of Three's Company with the same ######ing plot every episode. Halak will get pearl harboured for Cedrick Desjardins

and all the geniuses will side with the young unproven goaltender.

THis has been going on for close to 40 years. Vachon to Dryden, Dryden to Laraque, Roy to Hayward, Roy to Racicot, Thibault to Theodore,

Theodore to Hackett, Theodore to Huet, Huet to Price, Price to Halak. Give me a break.

Nobody remembers the brilliant year of Andre Racicot in 1993?

Racicot - 17-5-1 3.39 GAA .880 SV%

Roy - 31-25-5 3.20 GAA . .893 SV%

Did the Canadiens play with more confidence behind Racicot? That must be the answer, because before the playoffs, the Gazette poll overwhelming

had the fans supporting the trading or Roy to hand the job over to "Red Light". After being down 2-0 to the Nords, the media and fans wanted

"Red Light" to start Game 3. DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

Patrick Roy was run out of town by a fanbase who watched him win two Playoff MVPs, 3 Vezina trophies and a perennial All-Star because he had

A BAD GAME. Arguably the greatest goaltender of all-time, deemed "not good enough", booed out of the Bell Center.

Wake up people. Price is not the problem, you and your expectations are.

Edited February 2, 2010 by JoeLassister

[rafikz]

Ok I'll help to keep this thread alive

Bump

[JoeLassister]

No help. It is so subjective that 100% of the duty is for me. Everytime I'll say to myself "post of the year material", I'll come here to put it as a candidate. Winner will be announced by JoeLassister's commitee (me, myself and I) on January 1rst, 2011.

[JoeLassister]

Candidate # 2.

Haha how can we as fans ask the habs to play with grit, heart and determination, when we as fans give up before the series even starts. Have some faith guys!

[JoeLassister]

Candidate #3. Sometimes, a pictures really worths a thousand words.

[JoeLassister]

Candidate #4 and officially front runner !

1. Eller developed in the Sweden (good hockey country) where as a 19 year old (but in his first full season because he was injured for most of the previous season) he put up numbers identical to those Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson did in his rookie season in the SEL. Last year, he played in the AHL (good hockey country) and despite needing to adjust to NA style hockey, he was one of the key players of a very bad team. There is a massive difference between a newly selected 13th overall 18 year old and a 21 year old that was selected 13th overall three years ago and has developed steadily since then. He isn't a giant question mark. He's an NHL-quality player right now and sure to get better.

2. Trading Halak at his highest possible value is exactly the point. Ideally, every time you trade a player he's at his highest value. This is what a goalie at his highest value gets you. Name me trades in the past 10 years where a goalie retrieved more than this in return.

You also haven't mentioned the cap - the most important part of this deal.

Since almost a year ago when we got Gomez, Gionta, Cammalleri and Spacek we knew (expected) that we would get worse this off-season. We were right up to the cap, with Plekanec and both goalies needing new contracts. There was no way we could retain our line up from last season. As of a week ago, our choice was this:

Lose Plekanec via free agency, without signing a replacement. We have no internal replacement. Taking an 8th seed team, subtracting their leading scorer and then trying again is a disastrous move. Not an option.

Lose Hamrlik via buyout, without signing a replacement. We have Subban as an internal replacement but our defense needs more than that. Maybe an option.

Lose Halak via trade, sign a cheap quasi-replacement to be our back up. We have an internal replacement in Price. Receive compensation (a great prospect that can help us short term plus another pretty good prospect). Maybe an option.

We chose Option 3 for clear reasons: we have an internal replacement and we get to add new talent to our system. It should also be said that Lars Eller is exactly the type of player that a team carrying Scott Gomez and Roman Hamrlik's contracts needs: cheap players that can contribute more than their salaries would suggest (young players). We had Subban on D, and now we have Eller at F. Our team was very short on this type of player that could produce without boasting a 5 million dollar price tag. We used to have an army of such players (Higgins, Plekanec, Kostitsyn, Komisarek, Price, Halak, Streit) but they all left or commanded higher salaries with age. Eller will provide us with cap-friendly secondary scoring for the next couple of seasons before he gets a raise.

Whether you like the value of Halak/Eller comes second to the fact that a Halak trade was (almost) necessary. We were in a tough position and Gauthier had to make a tough, unpopular decision. If we enter next season with a lineup better than last season's Gauthier will have done a remarkable job this off-season - and will likely receive little credit for it.

[JoeLassister]

Candidate # 5.

Prime Minister Koivu - the real issue lies in the historical and psychological complexes of Quebec nationalism. For generations French Canadians were a subordinated underclass in their own province, their economy, wealth and upward mobility controlled by English-speakers in general and Montreal's English minority in particular. That's not rhetoric, it's a demonstrable sociological fact that lingered until well into the 1970s. Add that ongoing and grinding day-to-day cultural humiliation with deeper insecurities going back to the conquest of New France by the English and you've got a recipe for an intense concern with personal and collective dignity.

Enter the Habs. At some point in the 1940s, with The Rocket leading the way, the Montreal Canadiens become a symbol of French Canadian success. A humiliated people looked to the hockey team as the vehicle for their frustrated aspirations and dreams, both on a personal level ('I may be a subordinate at work pushed around by English bosses, but goddamn it, my hero the Rocket - a 'tis gars, a little guy just like me - he won't be pushed around by anybody!') and a collective level (it's French Canadians who are conquering the world via the Canadiens).

This helps to explain the quasi-religious intensity with which the Habs have registered in the collective psyche of French Quebec. They became a compensatory device for the oppression to which that community was subject.

The problem is that these issues don't apply any more. They haven't for decades now. Francophone Quebecers are no longer in any way subordinate within Quebec. In fact, they are now in the position of a commanding majority that struggles to come to grips with the necessary restraint required to justly deal with its devastated and dying anglophone minority and cultural minorities rooted in immigration. But the nationalist narrative vis-a-vis the Habs has not died off in some quarters even though the sociological conditions that created it are long gone. Somehow the Habs are STILL supposed to be the vehicle compensating for humiliations and oppressions that no longer exist.

A further pathology of this kind of nationalist hangover is that it contributes to a willful blindness about the real problems. For instance, in hockey terms, the real question is less why the Habs don't have francophone stars than why there are so few elite-level hockey players being produced in Quebec these days. But asking that question might require some self-critical analysis. Easier just to blame The English (read, the Habs and their owners).

It's at best juvenile and at worst racist. Tremblay is both, I fear.

Easy Ryder: no question the Habs should try to scoop up elite talent that comes from their own backyard. That makes good business sense AND good hockey sense. Everybody can agree on that. What's idiotic is attributing the Habs' failures on this score to an intentional effort to 'abuse Quebecers.' This is the emotionally stunted nationalist paranoia that fuels Neanderthals like Tremblay and the knuckle-dragging talk show callers to whom he appeals.

[JoeLassister]

Candidate #6

Media & Accountability

Criticism of Criticism From Critics That Ought To Be Left In Critical Condition

Maybe the anti-Montreal fan/media critiques have gotten old... but last night I was thinking about Price and his biggest dickrider, Jack Todd, and how this situation can possibly play out.

I have always supported Price and believed that he was going to someday be an elite goaltender. For a year or two, it seemed like there was hardly a hockey enthusiast around who would have disagreed. Then came Halak. Unlike Price, Halak was not a high draft choice, hadn't been a star player all through his junior years and hadn't come to Montreal facing an unendurable wall of pressure. The underdog began to outplay the struggling hero and so the goalie controversy began. Fans and journalists complained that Price was being awarded starts based on reputation, that he was not being held to the same standard as his mild-mannered teammate. An outright war seemed to break out among fans: Price or Halak? One was a superstar, the other was lucky to be a back up. The only issue more important to us Habs fans was whether Bella from Twilight would wind up with the ghostly Edward or with Jacob, the hunky werewolf.

Players were attacked personally, boos were heard, blah blah blah. This is a story we all already know intimately. When Halak was traded to St. Louis, half the fan base felt like they had just lost the war they had been fighting for the past year or two. Even Jack Todd shut his mouth for a short while (though nothing would stop Red Fisher from ranting about the trade without actually bringing up any of the factors that Gauthier had to consider in making his decision). It was a time for Team Price-ers to celebrate their victory and Team Halak-ians to complain that Habs management is clueless and just made The Roy Trade 2.0.

Now we play the waiting game.

This is what I was thinking about last night as I watched Price steal a win against the Penguins. If Price bombs and Halak has a solid career with the Blues, it would suck for all Habs fans... except for Jack Todd and his like who will delight in the opportunity to say that they were right all along (whether by fluke or by insight). A couple of weeks ago, just after Price was booed in that first pre-season game, I saw a couple of guys on my Facebook news feed saying that they were rooting against the Habs until Price was gone, admitting that they "want him to fail so bad." Being upset with management's decision is one thing but rooting against a specific player because of your disappointment in the trade (or because you think the player in question sucks) takes things to another level, a personal level. This, however, only applies to a few extreme cases, and probably to nobody on this board.

But what if the trade turns out to be a great one? This is where things get interesting, isn't it? In this situation, all Canadiens fans should be happy. Will Todd and the extremists be disappointed or even embarrassed that they harassed and booed a young player over the span of years only to see him turn into an elite player and prove many of his articles to be the mean-spirited, self-promoting rantings of a gutless provocateur? I think not. I think that if Price turns into an elite goalie, Jack Todd will shrug his shoulders and say, "I've never been so glad to have been proven wrong! Price sure has matured an awful lot in these past seasons and showed up his critics," ignoring the fact that he was the critic (or the main voice in the press representing the critics) and that his contributions were nearly the cause behind ruining this player's career. Price was attacked personally on a regular basis by a so-called professional (the same "professional" who wrote an article bashing a leader and good guy like Gomez for being ugly) in articles that persuaded many fans to voice their displeasure for Price - which in turn caused a hell of a lot of stress on our player, not to mention the fact that it nearly (and still may) ruin his career (--> life) - and then he can shrug it off and he say he's happy he was wrong. I don't write this so that we can all feel bad for Price, however; the guy's a millionaire, young, handsome and is probably doing just fine even while facing so much pressure and so many detractors.

My question, instead, is: where is the accountability? Why should anyone bother to analyze decisions rationally when you can bitch, bitch, bitch about professionals trying their hardest and then never be held accountable when it turns out you were completely clueless? Why root for a team that may win or may lose when you can root for yourself and win all the time? By making life hell for your athletes, you can take pleasure in being right when you contribute to their crashing and burning or you can shrug it off and take pleasurable in them succeeding when they prove you wrong. Those of us who actually cheer for the players on our team don't have such luxuries.

I'm still confident that Price will be a top goalie in the NHL and I'm equally confident that Todd will shrug it off, praise Price's new-found maturity and Gauthier's foresight, and then move on to his next target without ever losing any credibility among the general public. Nobody will be held accountable for almost ruining an innocent humans career (even less so, if they actually succeed in doing it). Nobody will change the way they analyze hockey from then on. Nobody will lose their job, their credibility or even their mean streak.

It disappoints me that media coverage in general is so weak. The French media's crazy and the English media's dumb. The Gazette reports the news competently but also holds biases and doesn't offer much analysis beyond the most basic statistics. TSN has entertaining coverage but also relies on their analysts to be experts on all 30 NHL teams which is frankly impossible. As a result, they wind up talking out of their asses a lot of the time. Sportsnet is just pathetic. I was watching them the other day (don't ask) for about 10 minutes and in that time their experts were predicting the results for that nights games. The conversation went something like this when it came time to speak on the Pittsburgh-Montreal game:

"Pittsburgh is predicted to win this game."

"Ya think!? They lost their first game and are pumped up to get a win in their new building. Against Montreal, this is money in the bank for them." I can only hope that poor analyst didn't lose too much of his hard-earned cash last night.

I was amazed at how they spoke as if 1) Montreal was a bottom 5 team in the NHL and 2) whenever a good team plays a bad team, the good team has a 90% chance of winning, as if upsets rarely occur at the NHL level.

This is all a bit besides the point. I just find it kind of gross that experts aren't held to a higher standard than they are. They can spew whatever garbage they want and never worry about being wrong. I don't think this is only the case in hockey. I'm a bit of a cinema (amateur for the moment) expert and I see similar idiocy among the major mainstream media voices in that field as well. And then there's Fox News...

This post isn't targeted at someone like brobin who falls closer to Halak on the Price-Halak continuum. It's targeted at the boo birds and trolls like Todd who are constantly poisoning the Canadiens well. Journalists will blame the General Manager when he throws contracts worth millions at stars that refuse to come here, never acknowledging the fact that they're a major part of the reason why players will sometimes accept less money to avoid playing in Montreal. So ###### them. The best hockey analysis I've read has been by amateurs on message boards and blogs. So keep it up posters. For every troll like Todd let there be fifty of us billy goats gruff.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BTH]

Sweet. Doubled my odds!

[dlbalr]

(JoeLassister @ Feb 5 2010, 06:44 PM) No help. It is so subjective that 100% of the duty is for me. Everytime I'll say to myself "post of the year material", I'll come here to put it as a candidate. Winner will be announced by JoeLassister's commitee (me, myself and I) on January 1rst, 2011.

And the winner is?

[JoeLassister]

hahaha gotta think about this...

[dlbalr]

hahaha gotta think about this...

4 days since you posted that, the suspense is killing me...well maybe not.

[JoeLassister]

According to the fact that he pointed out (and very well) a long time and persistent issue, not only in sports, but also in politic / meteo / even health (H1N1 alert anyone ?), the winner has to be ......................

BTH !!!!

QUOTE (BTH @ Oct 10 2010, 07:17 PM)

Media & Accountability

Criticism of Criticism From Critics That Ought To Be Left In Critical Condition

Maybe the anti-Montreal fan/media critiques have gotten old... but last night I was thinking about Price and his biggest dickrider, Jack Todd, and how this situation can possibly play out.

I have always supported Price and believed that he was going to someday be an elite goaltender. For a year or two, it seemed like there was hardly a hockey enthusiast around who would have disagreed. Then came Halak. Unlike Price, Halak was not a high draft choice, hadn't been a star player all through his junior years and hadn't come to Montreal facing an unendurable wall of pressure. The underdog began to outplay the struggling hero and so the goalie controversy began. Fans and journalists complained that Price was being awarded starts based on reputation, that he was not being held to the same standard as his mild-mannered teammate. An outright war seemed to break out among fans: Price or Halak? One was a superstar, the other was lucky to be a back up. The only issue more important to us Habs fans was whether Bella from Twilight would wind up with the ghostly Edward or with Jacob, the hunky werewolf.

Players were attacked personally, boos were heard, blah blah blah. This is a story we all already know intimately. When Halak was traded to St. Louis, half the fan base felt like they had just lost the war they had been fighting for the past year or two. Even Jack Todd shut his mouth for a short while (though nothing would stop Red Fisher from ranting about the trade without actually bringing up any of the factors that Gauthier had to consider in making his decision). It was a time for Team Price-ers to celebrate their victory and Team Halak-ians to complain that Habs management is clueless and just made The Roy Trade 2.0.

Now we play the waiting game.

This is what I was thinking about last night as I watched Price steal a win against the Penguins. If Price bombs and Halak has a solid career with the Blues, it would suck for all Habs fans... except for Jack Todd and his like who will delight in the opportunity to say that they were right all along (whether by fluke or by insight). A couple of weeks ago, just after Price was booed in that first pre-season game, I saw a couple of guys on my Facebook news feed saying that they were rooting against the Habs until Price was gone, admitting that they "want him to fail so bad." Being upset with management's decision is one thing but rooting against a specific player because of your disappointment in the trade (or because you think the player in question sucks) takes things to another level, a personal level. This, however, only applies to a few extreme cases, and probably to nobody on this board.

But what if the trade turns out to be a great one? This is where things get interesting, isn't it? In this situation, all Canadiens fans should be happy. Will Todd and the extremists be disappointed or even embarrassed that they harassed and booed a young player over the span of years only to see him turn into an elite player and prove many of his articles to be the mean-spirited, self-promoting rantings of a gutless provocateur? I think not. I think that if Price turns into an elite goalie, Jack Todd will shrug his shoulders and say, "I've never been so glad to have been proven wrong! Price sure has matured an awful lot in these past seasons and showed up his critics," ignoring the fact that he was the critic (or the main voice in the press representing the critics) and that his contributions were nearly the cause behind ruining this player's career. Price was attacked personally on a regular basis by a so-called professional (the same "professional" who wrote an article bashing a leader and good guy like Gomez for being ugly) in articles that persuaded many fans to voice their displeasure for Price - which in turn caused a hell of a lot of stress on our player, not to mention the fact that it nearly (and still may) ruin his career (--> life) - and then he can shrug it off and he say he's happy he was wrong. I don't write this so that we can all feel bad for Price, however; the guy's a millionaire, young, handsome and is probably doing just fine even while facing so much pressure and so many detractors.

My question, instead, is: where is the accountability? Why should anyone bother to analyze decisions rationally when you can bitch, bitch, bitch about professionals trying their hardest and then never be held accountable when it turns out you were completely clueless? Why root for a team that may win or may lose when you can root for yourself and win all the time? By making life hell for your athletes, you can take pleasure in being right when you contribute to their crashing and burning or you can shrug it off and take pleasurable in them succeeding when they prove you wrong. Those of us who actually cheer for the players on our team don't have such luxuries.

I'm still confident that Price will be a top goalie in the NHL and I'm equally confident that Todd will shrug it off, praise Price's new-found maturity and Gauthier's foresight, and then move on to his next target without ever losing any credibility among the general public. Nobody will be held accountable for almost ruining an innocent humans career (even less so, if they actually succeed in doing it). Nobody will change the way they analyze hockey from then on. Nobody will lose their job, their credibility or even their mean streak.

It disappoints me that media coverage in general is so weak. The French media's crazy and the English media's dumb. The Gazette reports the news competently but also holds biases and doesn't offer much analysis beyond the most basic statistics. TSN has entertaining coverage but also relies on their analysts to be experts on all 30 NHL teams which is frankly impossible. As a result, they wind up talking out of their asses a lot of the time. Sportsnet is just pathetic. I was watching them the other day (don't ask) for about 10 minutes and in that time their experts were predicting the results for that nights games. The conversation went something like this when it came time to speak on the Pittsburgh-Montreal game:

"Pittsburgh is predicted to win this game."

"Ya think!? They lost their first game and are pumped up to get a win in their new building. Against Montreal, this is money in the bank for them." I can only hope that poor analyst didn't lose too much of his hard-earned cash last night.

I was amazed at how they spoke as if 1) Montreal was a bottom 5 team in the NHL and 2) whenever a good team plays a bad team, the good team has a 90% chance of winning, as if upsets rarely occur at the NHL level.

This is all a bit besides the point. I just find it kind of gross that experts aren't held to a higher standard than they are. They can spew whatever garbage they want and never worry about being wrong. I don't think this is only the case in hockey. I'm a bit of a cinema (amateur for the moment) expert and I see similar idiocy among the major mainstream media voices in that field as well. And then there's Fox News...

This post isn't targeted at someone like brobin who falls closer to Halak on the Price-Halak continuum. It's targeted at the boo birds and trolls like Todd who are constantly poisoning the Canadiens well. Journalists will blame the General Manager when he throws contracts worth millions at stars that refuse to come here, never acknowledging the fact that they're a major part of the reason why players will sometimes accept less money to avoid playing in Montreal. So ###### them. The best hockey analysis I've read has been by amateurs on message boards and blogs. So keep it up posters. For every troll like Todd let there be fifty of us billy goats gruff.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very nice read and right on the kisser. Honorable mention to CC for being able to explain (I just can't write a text like that in English) the franco-anglo situation here. Close second.

Congrats to all of the nominees and good luck for 2011.

[BTH]

According to the fact that he pointed out (and very well) a long time and persistent issue, not only in sports, but also in politic / meteo / even health (H1N1 alert anyone ?), the winner has to be ......................

BTH !!!!

Very nice read and right on the kisser. Honorable mention to CC for being able to explain (I just can't write a text like that in English) the franco-anglo situation here. Close second.

Congrats to all of the nominees and good luck for 2011.

All my self-esteem was riding on this!

Thanks. I'm glad you liked that one.

Now, to start a dynasty...

oh, and this post works a lot better now that my prediction about Todd came perfectly true.

Edited January 12, 2011 by BTH

[JoeLassister]

All my self-esteem was riding on this!

Thanks. I'm glad you liked that one.

Now, to start a dynasty...

oh, and this post works a lot better now that my prediction about Todd came perfectly true.

What did Todd say now ?