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No offence, but I can't believe that ANYONE is defending Gomez, let alone saying he'd make a better captain than Koivu.

I was always a Gomez fan, way back to his first season in Jersey. Loved his game - the crazy, alarming rushes, the blinding speed, the on-ice smarts, the terrifically inventive playmaking. Zero physical element, but what panache! He would have made a perfect, almost quintessential Montreal Canadien - or so I thought. And in his first year with us he delivered, not his 'A' game, but a reasonable enough facimile to make him a key offensive element for us.

But come on. Since then he absolutely has been the combination of shit and vomit Habs29 points out. He is worse than worthless, he is a one man black hole - the single biggest reason Bob Gainey got fired - and cannot be driven out of town fast enough to suit me.

Those rumours that he's expecting a buyout and plans to go play for Jersey underscore the unreality that surrounds him. It's like he doesn't comprehend that he just completely, totally, and absolutely sucks. He still thinks he's the Man.

Anyone who fails to appreciate what Saku Koivu did for this organization is like anyone who fails to appreciate PK Subban, simply clueless, or else chronically incapable of appreciating good things when they have 'em. The Montreal Canadiens were the problem, not Saku Koivu, whose career was sadly sacrified to an incompetent organization.

Agree 100%.

It's sad that the habs never got Koivu a decent supporting cast. Look how many players had career years with him - Zednik, Savage, Ryder (until this year), Higgins. Its sad that once Kovolev got acquired, the fans and media seemed to start to turn on Koivu and fell in love with with Kovy. There were no rallies when the Gainey dumped Koivu like there were for the "artiste".

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I think the situation with Saku was that he and a group of players disliked carbo, so Bob had to fire him but when he fired him and the habs still sh*t the bed afer he took over as coach that was the end of the revolt. I have no real evidence of this but it makes sense as to why Bob never explained firing carbo and koivu was gone at the end of the season which none of us saw coming.

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But come on. Since then he absolutely has been the combination of shit and vomit Habs29 points out. He is worse than worthless, he is a one man black hole - the single biggest reason Bob Gainey got fired - and cannot be driven out of town fast enough to suit me.

Again, you're doing nothing but discussing Gomez on the ice.

Who did Koivu ever mentor? When did Koivu put his foot down on the partying? Why was Koivu's reaction to Ribeiro pushing for captaincy to fight him in practice? Why was Koivu clueless as to how bad it looked to go party with Todd Bertuzzi and Markus Naslund after a game where the Canucks made the Habs look stupid?

Fact is, Koivu was a warrior on the ice. Not once did I disagree with that. However, Koivu was a terrible captain OFF THE ICE and not once did anything to really prove otherwise. Gomez gets nothing but compliments from teammates, especially the younger players like Lars Eller in how he takes care of them and gives them advice. Removing Koivu and Kovalev and installing real leaders who actually pay attention to someone other than themselves did a fantastic job for the Canadiens off-ice atmosphere. Gone were the party stories. Gone was a group of individuals. Gomez, Gionta and Gill were the reason for that and ignoring Gomez' role when players name him in interviews is being biased to his on ice performance.

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Fact is, Koivu was a warrior on the ice. Not once did I disagree with that. However, Koivu was a terrible captain OFF THE ICE and not once did anything to really prove otherwise. Gomez gets nothing but compliments from teammates, especially the younger players like Lars Eller in how he takes care of them and gives them advice. Removing Koivu and Kovalev and installing real leaders who actually pay attention to someone other than themselves did a fantastic job for the Canadiens off-ice atmosphere. Gone were the party stories. Gone was a group of individuals. Gomez, Gionta and Gill were the reason for that and ignoring Gomez' role when players name him in interviews is being biased to his on ice performance.

I wonder what Gomer would be like as a coach..

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I'll answer question 2 first. No. I loved Koivu and letting him go was a mistake but he is not better than Pleks, costs more than Desharnais and should not replace Eller or a big 4th line center. So if Pleks and Desharnais were gone then yes but I do not see him as viable going forward.

As for your 2nd question. He is maxed out. He will never be better than what we just saw. 60 points is about as good as we can expect. Think about it. Cole had a career year, Pacioretty had a career year so will this happen again? Likely not. I will even take a it a step forward that if we can get a #1 center then we'd be a much better team with Desharnais gone and Plekanec playing in between Pacioretty and Cole.

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What's up JLP ! How's life in Japan ?

Hi Joe! I'm out of Tokyo, living in Toronto and hating it. Not sure what comes next. My last year has sort of paralleled the Habs'...

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Here's a question about Desharnais's defensive weaknesses. I believe it will particularly interest Commandant.

Desharnais does get overpowered in the defensive end, especially on the road. But to what extent could this be mitiaged by having another effective scoring line? As it stands right now, the top priority of other coaches is to defend against the Desharnais line, and this means that DD gets obviously overmatched down low when the coaches have last change. But let's say we get Pleks some wingers. At that point, the enemy has to start making a priority of matching up against the Pleks line as well as the DD line. This might make it harder to find the optimal matchup against the DD line on a regular basis.

I'm not trying to campaign for Desharnais here, but I do think it's impressive that he's performed as well as he has given that he's basically been our #1 C all season, facing match-ups that reflect this. If we can become a two-line offense, we might actually see his overall performance improve, especially defensively.

This is the sort of thinking that supports my cautious contention that our situation at C is actually better than conventional wisdom suggests. We know Pleks can be better. And there's a realistic possibility that his being better would make DD better. Throw in Eller, and I'm not so sure we need to continue to pant after that elusive Big Centreman, so much as adding high-powered wingers to complement Pleks. Just a thought.

Once again CC, I completely agree with your assessment. I've been saying that we need to get that big centerman, but if we can get our hands on a talented power forward to play with Pleks next year, this will without a doubt make things even easier for the first line. As much as some bitched and moaned about Pleks' lousy season, let's not forget that he pretty much played with every single player on the roster(except for Cole and MaxPac). Give Plex a big and talented winger to play with and the first line will improve, cause the other teams will have to start paying attention to the second line as well. They won't be able to always pay special attention to the 1st line.

Now the real question is, let's just say that we do find that big winger for Plex...who plays with them? Gionta? Bourque?

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Now the real question is, let's just say that we do find that big winger for Plex...who plays with them? Gionta? Bourque?

Gionta was our leading scorer the past two years.. I'm worried about him regressing now, but I think the real problem is Gionta&Pleks have shown zero chemistry over their time here... Perhaps its time for Eller to be converted to wing.

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Now the real question is, let's just say that we do find that big winger for Plex...who plays with them? Gionta? Bourque?

I say Gionta as well, without a doubt.

As for Bourque, he has the perfect size and toolset for 3rd line. Plus his scoring ability, it gives the Habs a very good 3rd line, most likely with Leblanc or Eller + a new heavyhitter winger.

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As for Bourque, he has the perfect size and toolset for 3rd line. Plus his scoring ability, it gives the Habs a very good 3rd line, most likely with Leblanc or Eller + a new heavyhitter winger

.

That would be nice if Bourque would hit once in a while. He may be big, but he plays like he was 5'6" tall.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Once again CC, I completely agree with your assessment. I've been saying that we need to get that big centerman, but if we can get our hands on a talented power forward to play with Pleks next year, this will without a doubt make things even easier for the first line. As much as some bitched and moaned about Pleks' lousy season, let's not forget that he pretty much played with every single player on the roster(except for Cole and MaxPac). Give Plex a big and talented winger to play with and the first line will improve, cause the other teams will have to start paying attention to the second line as well. They won't be able to always pay special attention to the 1st line.

Now the real question is, let's just say that we do find that big winger for Plex...who plays with them? Gionta? Bourque?

Pleks did play in between Cole and Pacioretty when DD was injured late in the season. It resulted in 4 goals in 2 games for the line. Not saying that translates over an entire year but when Pleks finishes a year with 8 less points than DD in a season where his linemates were horrific and a season where our PK was tops in the league then to me it says alot about how much better of a player he is.

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Hi Joe! I'm out of Tokyo, living in Toronto and hating it. Not sure what comes next. My last year has sort of paralleled the Habs'...

Nice. Back in Canada for a long time ?

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I think Desharnais has the potential to improve further, and he will start the year in the same role as last year. Here's the problem with d-d, well not really with him, but the team..our top 2 centres are small. What does Bergevin do about that? D-D is also one of the few francophones on the team, so if the new regime has to choose between the 2 small centres, who do they keep? Scary question, right? We already have a young man with size capable of being the number 2 centre, and we will probable be drafting a player who can play centre/wing, and who can probably play right away. This team is in need of at least 2 more top 6 wingers, so do you convert D_D and the newly drafted player to wing, or do you use an asset like pleks t bring in such a player? I'm not a fan of this, as I like pleks, but you can see the logic there. As for Koivu, he's not the same player anymore, and we do not need another small centre on this team, so I wouldn't consider bringing him in. I'm not mentioning Leblanc here, who also ca play centre, because I think he would benefit from a full year in the AHL, and I think thats where he'll start next year.

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DD at wing eventually.

Galchenyuk - Plekanec - Eller as your top 3 centres. No problems.

That would be great. Then as Pleks regresses with age... hopefully Eller moves up :D! Could be a solid top 3 for years to come.

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DD at wing eventually.

Galchenyuk - Plekanec - Eller as your top 3 centres. No problems.

Funny. Many ppl sort of envision him as a poor man's St.Louis. And I know we had injuries but why on earth did nobody try him on the wing last year?

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Funny.  Many ppl sort of envision him as a poor man's St.Louis.  And I know we had injuries but why on earth did nobody try him on the wing last year?

Cause last year our coach totally refused to break up that line, even when it was obvious the team was going nowhere and some new combinations to see what we could do this year should have been tried. Cunneyworth pissed me off by sticking with the same lineups even when it would have been an ideal time to experiment.

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Cause last year our coach totally refused to break up that line, even when it was obvious the team was going nowhere and some new combinations to see what we could do this year should have been tried. Cunneyworth pissed me off by sticking with the same lineups even when it would have been an ideal time to experiment.

I agree but any one of us would have done the same thing to try and get the most wins/production, in order to bolster our resume.

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I agree but any one of us would have done the same thing to try and get the most wins/production, in order to bolster our resume.

Pierre McGuire did something similar in Hartford. So did many other coaches who found zero coaching jobs afterwards. GMs look poorly on coaches who do it.

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It seems that we will be waiting for the Memorial Cup to conclude and the Devils to be eliminated before there is much progress on the coaching front. In the meantime here are my two questions

1) Do you think Souray would be a good fit as a replacement for Gill?

2) We are pretty sure there will be a team in Quebec in the near future. Will this be a new franchise or a relocation? If it is the former, what does it mean to the Montreal Canadiens roster. If it is latter, where is the team coming from?

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It seems that we will be waiting for the Memorial Cup to conclude and the Devils to be eliminated before there is much progress on the coaching front. In the meantime here are my two questions

1) Do you think Souray would be a good fit as a replacement for Gill?

2) We are pretty sure there will be a team in Quebec in the near future. Will this be a new franchise or a relocation? If it is the former, what does it mean to the Montreal Canadiens roster. If it is latter, where is the team coming from?

1. Souray: if cheap and no more than two years, then yes. He's a different skill set from Gill, though. But a great bit of insurance for the PP. I'd rate that a strong pickup if the contract makes sense. I doubt it will, and if it doesn't I don't think we want another dubious contract on the blueline; people are worked up enough about Kaberle.

2. I'm sure Buttman would prefer a new franchise, but are there local investors? To my limited understand the discussion around Quebec has generally assumed relocation. Since Phoenix is seemingly out of the running, a new QC team may not be imminent. Personally I hope it never happens.

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1. Souray: if cheap and no more than two years, then yes. He's a different skill set from Gill, though. But a great bit of insurance for the PP. I'd rate that a strong pickup if the contract makes sense. I doubt it will, and if it doesn't I don't think we want another dubious contract on the blueline; people are worked up enough about Kaberle.

2. I'm sure Buttman would prefer a new franchise, but are there local investors? To my limited understand the discussion around Quebec has generally assumed relocation. Since Phoenix is seemingly out of the running, a new QC team may not be imminent. Personally I hope it never happens.

Souray was a slug years ago, horrendous defensively and is slower than Gill, wouldnt touch with ten foot pole. I would try and resign Gil before Souray (but dont really want Gill niether)

There are so many crap teams in USA ready to fold, that just a matter of which one moves where? and would love to see a team in Quebec, they used to have some very spirited games. Why wouldnt you like one in Quebec city?

I want contraction and would love to see at least 4 teams axed, instead of the 10-15 money makers being used to prop up the rest, sooner or later some of the southern teams got to go.

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Souray was a slug years ago, horrendous defensively and is slower than Gill, wouldnt touch with ten foot pole. I would try and resign Gil before Souray (but dont really want Gill niether)

There are so many crap teams in USA ready to fold, that just a matter of which one moves where? and would love to see a team in Quebec, they used to have some very spirited games. Why wouldnt you like one in Quebec city?

I want contraction and would love to see at least 4 teams axed, instead of the 10-15 money makers being used to prop up the rest, sooner or later some of the southern teams got to go.

Well a team in Quebec City would hurt Montreal's profits and fanbase... That could lead to a tighter budget... but! It could take the "french" pressure off us.

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Well a team in Quebec City would hurt Montreal's profits and fanbase... That could lead to a tighter budget... but! It could take the "french" pressure off us.

No, no, it will work in just the opposite direction. The 'which team is more French' game risks becoming a constant and major subplot between the two clubs. Why do you think we drafted Alfie Turcotte? :monkey:

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No, no, it will work in just the opposite direction. The 'which team is more French' game risks becoming a constant and major subplot between the two clubs. Why do you think we drafted Alfie Turcotte? :monkey:

Dont remember Turcott, but bio says he is from Indiana?

But the french battle is only reason you dont want another Canadian franchise? Dosent seem a good arguement for hoping Phoenix/Florida/Carolina/Columbus and other shakey teams all stay afloat?

I remember the battles they used to have on the ice and would welcome the rivalry again.

And losing fans/$$ i dont think has ever been an big issue for Habs has it?

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