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This is the worst team I have seen as a habs fan, where does it rank on your list?


Metallica

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4 hours ago, Machine of Loving Grace said:

 

So... which team are you talking about?

 

98-99 had Recchi, Damphousse, Koivu, Malakhov, Rucinsky and Hackett. Lots of injuries and they were 2nd worst in scoring but 13th in goals against. Which was strange because 96-98 they were Top 10 in scoring and even 5th in scoring in 97-98.

99-00 they were 4th in goals against but again near the bottom in scoring. That was when we were being led by Rucinsky, Zubrus, Brisebois, and Linden. Even with great goaltending from Hackett and Theodore they still sucked.

00-01 was pretty much the same team but worse in goals against but Koivu was a near point per game centre. 

 

The 00-01 team is probably the worst since the 40s and this team is trying to compete with them. 

I was losing interest during the Tremblay years.  Koivu and the adversity he went through kept me interested.

 

this team is much worse and the record proves that.   I hear a lot of people bringing up traverse and crap players like that,  but is this team really any better - the record sure the hell doesn’t support that contention - hell, going on our record and the eyeball test this has got to be the most boring, useless, gutless, talentless habs team run by one of the most incompetent management teams I can remember.

 

MB’s been on the job longer than Houle was and the tram is getting worse not better.  His hires like Daigneult and Lefebve should have been packing years ago and his first decision - hiring Therrien was a blunder.  At least the first coach Houle had was partly imposed on him by Corey.  As much as I hated Corey and the Houle years, I have to say, I hate MB more than i hated Corey - and that’s really saying something.  

Houle was a nice guy, a former member of the 70’s glory years that should never have been hired.  He was in over his head from the start, but was basically a decent guy.  MB is an arrogant jackass that was dressed up like a thouroughbred, a pretender who clealrybhas no idea of what it takes to win and is more interested in surrounding himself with his childhood chums than building a winner.  

 

There were enough reasons to fire the bastard in his first year - the Therrien hiring, passing over Robinson, making Subban take the bridge deal.  I pointed all of these out at the time, but most bought the kool-aid of his winning pedigree from his role with the hawks.

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6 hours ago, hab29RETIRED said:

I was losing interest during the Tremblay years.  Koivu and the adversity he went through kept me interested.

 

this team is much worse and the record proves that.   I hear a lot of people bringing up traverse and crap players like that,  but is this team really any better - the record sure the hell doesn’t support that contention - hell, going on our record and the eyeball test this has got to be the most boring, useless, gutless, talentless habs team run by one of the most incompetent management teams I can remember.

 

MB’s been on the job longer than Houle was and the tram is getting worse not better.  His hires like Daigneult and Lefebve should have been packing years ago and his first decision - hiring Therrien was a blunder.  At least the first coach Houle had was partly imposed on him by Corey.  As much as I hated Corey and the Houle years, I have to say, I hate MB more than i hated Corey - and that’s really saying something.  

Houle was a nice guy, a former member of the 70’s glory years that should never have been hired.  He was in over his head from the start, but was basically a decent guy.  MB is an arrogant jackass that was dressed up like a thouroughbred, a pretender who clealrybhas no idea of what it takes to win and is more interested in surrounding himself with his childhood chums than building a winner.  

 

There were enough reasons to fire the bastard in his first year - the Therrien hiring, passing over Robinson, making Subban take the bridge deal.  I pointed all of these out at the time, but most bought the kool-aid of his winning pedigree from his role with the hawks.

 

It's true, you did call it almost from the beginning, once MB started making these bad moves. I was one of the kool-aid swallowers, impressed by his c.v. and willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even after he re-hired a guy I rated as one of the worst coaches around (Therrien). The Subban trade revealed him for what is to me. And alas, he is indeed what you say he is. ?

 

In retrospect, the earliest warning sign was the fact that MB was Gauthier's polar opposite in terms of personality: jokey and gregarious, a real hail-fellow-well-met type. Nothing wrong with that at all, in and of itself, but there *was* a faint whiff of prioritizing PR in hiring the anti-Gauthier. I remember worrying a little bit about that at the time, but was reassured by Serge Savard's involvement and by MB's credentials.

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6 hours ago, hab29RETIRED said:

If MB is the best French guy available, we should never have a French GM ever again.  And if retreads like Julien and Therrien are the French options, than screw the French requirements.  First and foremost the Montreal Canadiens should be about building a cup contender.  If we can do that with some French content - great, but the days of an abundance of French superstar players are gone and our best years were not under a French management team.

 

For the GM position, we can get a figurehead who speaks French while having a robust and modern front office behind him, kind of like the Leafs having Lamiorello as an old school guy fronting a bunch of stats guys.  This only works, of course, if egos don't interfere too much.  MB has shown that he won't listen to the stats department and will value personal loyalty over results.  

 

For coaching, I still believe Julien is one of the better candidates out there, but long-term that's where the bigger problem lies.  The coach has to speak to the media every day so the language requirement is more significant, and we'll be restricting ourselves to maybe 20% of the available candidates each time we look for someone.  If we have a strong organizational philosophy and the best assistant coaches, the importance of the head coach is tempered, but we're a long way from all of that.

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10 hours ago, Neech said:

 

I had my lowest interest level ever heading into this season, and then the results compounded it.  It's new territory for me as a fan - I only got really into the team following that dismal turn of the millenium period.  It was fun to cheer for an underdog that could just barely scrape their way into the playoffs.  But that was a long time ago.  Unless we get Tavares I'm with Machine: we might as well blow it up and install a bunch of forward-thinkers like the Leafs did.  That's where our language situation and storied history tend to get in our way - it always has to be people with ties to our glorious past, or TBFGA (the best French guy available), not necessarily someone who understands where the game is heading.

Forward thinking? You mean drafting Matthews & Marner, well another couple years of tanking, which I assume you mean to be forward-thinking.

So another year or two of tanking is required, you all for that?

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12 minutes ago, DON said:

Forward thinking? You mean drafting Matthews & Marner, well another couple years of tanking, which I assume you mean to be forward-thinking.

So another year or two of tanking is required, you all for that?

 

It's better to be tanking than to be hovering around the 8th seed at best.  And I was referring to the long list of hockey minds that the Leafs hired a couple years ago.

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1 hour ago, Machine of Loving Grace said:

I'll tank for a decade over treading water. 

 

 

There's no excuse for tanking for a decade, that's just poor management.  3-5 years is all a good management team should need before they're trying to actually win.

 

I thought Buffalo would be a lot better by now - on paper they had a lot of talent heading into the season.  I still think they have a pretty good core set up for the future, especially with this year's pick added to the bunch.  

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1 hour ago, Neech said:

 

It's better to be tanking than to be hovering around the 8th seed at best.  And I was referring to the long list of hockey minds that the Leafs hired a couple years ago.

Nashville was the 16th seed last year and made it to the final. Kings won the cup as an 8th seed.

 

In my opinion it’s a subtle myth that a team can’t squeak in and have a chance at a nice run. It seems that whenever the Habs make the playoffs as an 8th seed it’s because we aren’t a true contender and when some other team

does well as an 8th seed there’s some justification such as “injuries plagued their regular season” or “they are built for the playoffs”, etc.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, xXx..CK..xXx said:

Nashville was the 16th seed last year and made it to the final. Kings won the cup as an 8th seed.

 

In my opinion it’s a subtle myth that a team can’t squeak in and have a chance at a nice run. It seems that whenever the Habs make the playoffs as an 8th seed it’s because we aren’t a true contender and when some other team

does well as an 8th seed there’s some justification such as “injuries plagued their regular season” or “they are built for the playoffs”, etc.

 

 

 

Both those teams were preseason Cup contenders with loaded rosters.  I'm fine with squeaking into the playoffs if we have the talent to actually make a run, but we've never quite had that level of talent.

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28 minutes ago, xXx..CK..xXx said:

Nashville was the 16th seed last year and made it to the final. Kings won the cup as an 8th seed.

 

In my opinion it’s a subtle myth that a team can’t squeak in and have a chance at a nice run. It seems that whenever the Habs make the playoffs as an 8th seed it’s because we aren’t a true contender and when some other team

does well as an 8th seed there’s some justification such as “injuries plagued their regular season” or “they are built for the playoffs”, etc.

 

 

Nashville was under achieving , took time to gel and had players that needed to get healthy (Subban was playing hurt for the first half of the year), but they were one of the favorites for the west.  The habs in he other hand were considered a bubble team except for those that thought that Drouin was going to fix the 4 or 5 hole in our lineup,  they weren’t even picked to make the playoffs by most analysts.

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2 hours ago, Machine of Loving Grace said:

I'll tank for a decade over treading water. 

 

I would much rather be a bad team by design than be built to make the playoffs and miss it 2/3 years. 

 

It's so much worse to think you'll be good and end up bad than know you're bad for a purpose.

If we took the same approach as the sabres and made good deals for Weber, Price and Pacioretty and had the right management team and coach for today’s NHL, that can competently draft and develop players, I think we could be a solid contender in 3 years.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Neech said:

 

It's better to be tanking than to be hovering around the 8th seed at best.  And I was referring to the long list of hockey minds that the Leafs hired a couple years ago.

Remove Matthews and Leaf Mgmt would look pretty typical and would still have big holes up front and on back end.

A monkey would of drafted Matthews...even a Milbury or Maclean would of taken him. 

So I still don't see what big difference they have made (other than not shooting themselves in foot, as per norm in Hogtown)?

Babcock (or almost any coach) normally does well, given hall of fame players on his roster...other than that Detroit sucked every year since Lidstrom-Datsyuk were gone (good time to bail eh Mikey). Wings have won all of 3 playoff series since 2008-09 finals loss. Therrien managed same in just 2 playoffs.

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28 minutes ago, hab29RETIRED said:

If we took the same approach as the sabres and made good deals for Weber, Price and Pacioretty and had the right management team and coach for today’s NHL, that can competently draft and develop players, I think we could be a solid contender in 3 years.

 

 

Trading Weber, Price  and Pacioretty I agree you can fix this in a few years  . These play can get you young good NHL ready players picks and prospects for the future. Which is what this team needs.

 

By keeping them you are hurting the franchise by keeping it hostage. You have a pipe dream that all you need is Price to carry the team to a cup. Price cant do it alone.

 

Right now we have aging star players, no elite prospects ready to make the jump and a bunch of 3/4 line prospects.

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2 minutes ago, Metallica said:

Trading Weber, Price  and Pacioretty I agree you can fix this in a few years  . These play can get you young good NHL ready players picks and prospects for the future. Which is what this team needs.

 

By keeping them you are hurting the franchise by keeping it hostage. You have a pipe dream that all you need is Price to carry the team to a cup. Price cant do it alone.

 

Right now we have aging star players, no elite prospects ready to make the jump and a bunch of 3/4 line prospects.

Also aging young players, prospects, coaches....heck everyone is aging.

Weber 32, Price 30 and Pacioretty 29, yes you are correct they are ancient and ready for bone yard.

Which high pick did Habs miss that elite prospect you speak of? Don't go to 2003 like most need to do to try and answer that.

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28 minutes ago, DON said:

Remove Matthews and Leaf Mgmt would look pretty typical and would still have big holes up front and on back end.

A monkey would of drafted Matthews...even a Milbury or Maclean would of taken him. 

So I still don't see what big difference they have made (other than not shooting themselves in foot, as per norm in Hogtown)?

Babcock (or almost any coach) normally does well, given hall of fame players on his roster...other than that Detroit sucked every year since Lidstrom-Datsyuk were gone (good time to bail eh Mikey). Wings have won all of 3 playoff series since 2008-09 finals loss. Therrien managed same in just 2 playoffs.

 

Not sure what the point is here... but, a big difference that the Leafs made is they fired Nonis and his stats-dismissing front office and hired a whole lot of young, smart, forward-thinking hockey minds. 

 

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8 minutes ago, Neech said:

 

Not sure what the point is here... but, a big difference that the Leafs made is they fired Nonis and his stats-dismissing front office and hired a whole lot of young, smart, forward-thinking hockey minds. 

 

I think the best move the leafs made was saying bye to Mr.Burke.

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2 hours ago, Neech said:

There's no excuse for tanking for a decade, that's just poor management.  3-5 years is all a good management team should need before they're trying to actually win.

 

I was exaggerating for effect. Of course it's pointless to hire a management team that couldn't turn the club around by 2021. I'm just saying I would rather take a long term rebuild that goes until I'm in my 40s over the current situation the team has been for the majority of the past 25 years.

 

1 hour ago, hab29RETIRED said:

If we took the same approach as the sabres and made good deals for Weber, Price and Pacioretty and had the right management team and coach for today’s NHL, that can competently draft and develop players, I think we could be a solid contender in 3 years.

 

Absolutely. It's why I support a full scale rebuild. I think highly of the 2019 and 2020 drafts. If we get a Top 5 pick in those drafts plus some other players in the first and second this club will be going in the right direction of a proper rebuild. Getting Jack Hughes in 2019, or one of Quinton Byfield or Alexis Lafreniere in 2020 would be even better.

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5 minutes ago, Neech said:

 

Not sure what the point is here... but, a big difference that the Leafs made is they fired Nonis and his stats-dismissing front office and hired a whole lot of young, smart, forward-thinking hockey minds. 

 

And who are you referring to? Young GM Lamorillo (dosent get any old-school than this), young head coach Babcock (same comment as LL) , Cliff Fletcher isn't a spring chicken neither and what is an example of this forward thinking (play Matthews and Marner a lot?)? Advanced stats is pretty minor deal if that is what you refer to.

Leafs simply tossed a ton of money at some guys to come manage and hope that will pan out.

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22 minutes ago, DON said:

Also aging young players, prospects, coaches....heck everyone is aging.

Weber 32, Price 30 and Pacioretty 29, yes you are correct they are ancient and ready for bone yard.

Which high pick did Habs miss that elite prospect you speak of? Don't go to 2003 like most need to do to try and answer that.

I made a list all ready in a previous topic about elite centers we have past up on in the first and 2nd round of drafts all through the years from 2000 to now. They're some pretty big names we passed on to draft players that turned out to be bust. 

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4 minutes ago, Machine of Loving Grace said:

 

Absolutely. It's why I support a full scale rebuild. I think highly of the 2019 and 2020 drafts. If we get a Top 5 pick in those drafts plus some other players in the first and second this club will be going in the right direction of a proper rebuild. Getting Jack Hughes in 2019, or one of Quinton Byfield or Alexis Lafreniere in 2020 would be even better.

 

Here is my problem with this theory; there are alot of "ifs" there. IF the Habs are a bottom feeding team after trading the older core, IF the Habs win the spot to pick an impact player, IF that player becomes a star, IF that player does become a star, the team will do well IF he has a great supporting cast. There are more "ifs" in that scenario than tweaking this current roster to become a contender. 

 

Nowhere in the rule book does it state that the worst teams automatically become a Cup champion in the future

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8 minutes ago, Metallica said:

I think the best move the leafs made was saying bye to Mr.Burke.

Intentionally tanking and getting Matthews is looking to be their best move by far.

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6 minutes ago, Metallica said:

I made a list all ready in a previous topic about elite centers we have past up on in the first and 2nd round of drafts all through the years from 2000 to now. They're some pretty big names we passed on to draft players that turned out to be bust. 

Yes and Commandant shredded that list didn't he, so try again with more realistic guys you were actually pissed about "at the time of draft" that they passed on. Not simply scanning old drafts and cherry picking all who made it, simply going with 100% hindsight is pretty boring argument.

 

*I will grant you McCarron-Tinordi screw-ups, both those picks sucked and I hope were influenced more by Molson wanting no more smurf references about his team and not Timmins actually thinking these two would be impact players.

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The legit arguments are 

 

2003... Jeff Carter.   The other centres in 2003 were not realistic possibilities at 10, but I'll buy Jeff Carter

2005... Anze Kopitar and Gilbert Brule..... but the pick is Carey Price.  Did you want the Habs to pass on Price to take a centre? and what if they took the highest rated one and got Brule? The idea that it would be kopitar... who went 6 picks later is a little far fetched.  I'm gonna say we did okay with Price. 

 

2006... Giroux.... should have taken him. 

 

2011.... Kuznetsov.... should have taken him.

 

Thats pretty much the list. 

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1 minute ago, Commandant said:

The legit arguments are 

 

2003... Jeff Carter.   The other centres in 2003 were not realistic possibilities at 10, but I'll buy Jeff Carter

2005... Anze Kopitar and Gilbert Brule..... but the pick is Carey Price.  Did you want the Habs to pass on Price to take a centre? and what if they took the highest rated one and got Brule? The idea that it would be kopitar... who went 6 picks later is a little far fetched.  I'm gonna say we did okay with Price. 

 

2006... Giroux.... should have taken him. 

 

2011.... Kuznetsov.... should have taken him.

 

Thats pretty much the list. 

Getzlaf wasnt a real possibility????  Most had him at 12 and he slid.   My brother and I argued prior to that draft, I wanted Getzlaf, he wanted Parise.  Both would have been. Better picks.

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11 minutes ago, illWill said:

 

Here is my problem with this theory; there are alot of "ifs" there. IF the Habs are a bottom feeding team after trading the older core, IF the Habs win the spot to pick an impact player, IF that player becomes a star, IF that player does become a star, the team will do well IF he has a great supporting cast. There are more "ifs" in that scenario than tweaking this current roster to become a contender. 

 

Nowhere in the rule book does it state that the worst teams automatically become a Cup champion in the future

 

I don't consider tanking a guarantee. Plenty of teams have tanked in history and it did nothing for future success.

 

But I do consider tanking a great way to pretty much give an organization an enema and clear out all of the people who pushed the team to failure and start fresh. It tends to be a line in the sand to say, "We're moving into a new direction." There's a lot that can go wrong, as we've seen in Edmonton in hiring Chiarelli. But there's no better to hit the restart button.

 

This franchise has tried with varying degrees of success since the 80s to rebuild on the fly. When the 70s dynasty aged out they didn't bottom out but had Top 10 picks in 80, 81, and 84, with 84 being a goldmine that carried the franchise for 10 years. Since then it has been treading water for the most part. Even the early 2000s was just a retool due to Theodore and eventually Gainey deciding they just needed a couple extra players to contend. I'm tired of it. I want to see this organization start clean in the 21st century and try to draft as many superstars as possible, and the best way to do that is to be as bad as possible. This year proved we can have one of the worst records in Habs history when trying to make the playoffs. Wouldn't take much to make them bad enough to finish 31st.

 

Again, there's no guarantees in sports. But I'll take increasing odds over weak hope.

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