The Chicoutimi Cucumber

I heard it from a lifelong friend of Timmins that Timmins was in disbelief that CC was available at #15. So no risk there - he was the BPA, in the Habs’ judgement. Mailloux was also BPA by some distance, since his value had been deflated due to issues not related to his on-ice work. I don’t think MB, as old-school a dinosaur as any brontosaurus, had much idea of the sh*storm that pick would generate. He probably thought other GMs would be mad at him but probably did not anticipate that it would become a #MeToo-style media scandal and PR nightmare for the organization.

If you ask me, everyone has basically moved beyond Mailloux’s crime. He put in the work to rehabilitate himself as a human being and a hockey player, and - more importantly - we now know that his was in no way an isolated case. Rather it was one instance of an endemic culture of misogyny, up to and including sexual assault, in junior hockey and probably the pros as well. Surely, if the goal was to unload him because of his off-ice issue, that would have happened long before now?

Wait…Shanahan was the Saviour, wasn’t he?? No wait, Babcock was the Saviour. Hang on hang on, Matthews was the Saviour. No, no, that’s not it - Tavares was the Saviour. No, hold it, Keefe was the Saviour. Wait, I mean, Ryan Reaves was the Saviour. No, no, I mean to say, Craig Berube is the Saviour…no, just a second…

Well, unless locals standardly refer to the big lug as “Yeti,” it’s an excruciatingly stupid choice - and therefore will likely be the winning moniker.

I can report from Van that the possibility of Montreal trading down is definitely one of the major talking points around this draft, well outside of Montreal and Calgary. Everyone knows Montreal has young D up the Wazoo and has little use for one more. One surreal scenario that comes to mind is that the D-man available at #5 might be ranked even more highly than Reinbacher by the Habs’ braintrust. In which case, could they draft that guy and then look to move Reinbacher? 🤯 (Not a serious proposal, just a bizarre theoretical possibility)

It should be “Outlaws” but it won’t. Please not Utah HC. I don’t get “Yeti”…I thought that was a Himalayan reference?

TBH I always thought the metric of “comparing two players’ production at the early same age” was a bad one. Lots of years separate Barron from his future. He has a ways to go before he even establishes himself as an everyday NHLer, let alone the #1A defenceman Petry eventually grew into at his peak. That said, if he eventually becomes as valuable at Petry, that would be awesome, because peak Petry was one hell of a defenceman.

I thought Van was totally outclassed in the first, but actually outplayed EDM in the second despite surrendering two goals, and completely dominated the third. That team has a lot of resilience and just enough offensive depth to be able to score crippling goals. Hella game by JT Miller, who is one of the league’s more underrated stars. Edmonton is lucky that Demko is hurt. If he’d been in net, the score would not been nearly as close IMHO. Silov was OK but did not impress. (I would not be surprised at all if the Canucks go with DeSmith next game). Interestingly, McDavid was pretty much a non-factor all night. I’d have liked more analysis of that - was it that Hughes was skating with him and able to contain him? Was it something else Vancouver did? Was it the Dreiseitl injury that allowed Van to focus on McDavid more relentlessly? Of course McDavid will break out soon, and that’s where not having Demko is apt to really hurt the Canucks.

I am no Bergevin-lover, but I'll point out here, as I've done before, that this board was nearly unanimous that the Habs should NOT sign Danault to a long-term deal with that cap hit. We should remember that he had 5 goals and 25 points that season. And most of us thought that Kotkaniemi would grow into being the type of C Danualt now is. So moving on from Danault seemed like sensible cap-management. Were we wrong? Absolutely. But I don't think it makes sense for us to get in high dudgeon, retroactively, that Bergevin refused to sign a deal that almost none of us wanted him to sign.

Plus, you have to admit that a New York-Boston semi-final would be epically old-school. Not that I’m cheering for Boston. Now that they’ve dispatched Toronto, I want them to die the most excruciating death imaginable.

Agree with every word of this The NHL couldn’t give a whoop about player safety. If they did, they wouldn’t have a guy running that department whose entire living was hitting guys in the head.

On another note, this is a golden era for Leafs ridicule. This meme is especially crushing:

We’ve been over this…I think it was dlbalr who pointed out that the habs really don’t have room for him at C, and that he has not shown much effectiveness at W over his career. So he’s not really a roster fit. For my money, the past shouldn’t be relevant to the specific question of whether KK can help us in some way. That would be purely a question for the pro scouting department: is there truly untapped potential there that MSL can perhaps bring out? Or is KK basically just a flop? If the former, and if you think he can fit on the roster, then why not take a flyer on him, assuming a buyout? Whether KK would want to come back is another question. Like you, I doubt it.

Hey, I was open to bringing him in on a cheap deal, but point taken. Just another in a long line of disastrous high picks from the Habs in the pre-Hugo era. This time, though - just for a change - Carolina paid the price for our managerial incompetence rather than us. And that commupance could not have been more richly deserved for an organization that acted like a bunch of trolls.

🤪