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No to Marchant. We don't need another smallish, speedy player who struggles finishing around the net.

What gets me is the following quote: "At the moment, not one of the D-men is off to an impressive start." WTF???? Do the people who compile these rankings watch hockey?

Not sure if there is a thread for this already, I didn't see one... http://www.sportsline.com/nhl/story/9017071 Habs #5. Nashville #9 - I totally agree. Toronto #15.

It's hard to worry about a team who's best D-man so far is Jiri Slegr (no offense to Slegr, but he shouldn't be your #1 D-man!). I just hope the Bruins make the playoffs so we can beat them again. The Bruins have Brian Leetch. Among others like Nick Boynton. Boynton and Leetch are better than Slegr (or should be) but haven't shown it so far this year. Boynton is in all likelyhood just rusty. Not sure what Leetch's excuse is. Age?

Please, no more expansion teams! I don't think I could stomach the Oklahoma City Jaguars or the Albuquerque Alligators or any other new US Sun Belt team. The only expansions team I'd except would be Winnipeg and Quebec.

It's hard to worry about a team who's best D-man so far is Jiri Slegr (no offense to Slegr, but he shouldn't be your #1 D-man!). I just hope the Bruins make the playoffs so we can beat them again.

http://www.tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=141598...98&hubName=main Pavel Bure will be Russia's GM for the Olympics. Not to be dismissive... and perhaps I'm not aware of ... but ???? I don't know, Bure never seemed like management material to me. Interesting.

That was huge. I think Theo is back on track, remember he played great against Ottawa before that putrid 1st period on Saturday.

Tucker is also on pace to finish -82. I'd LOOOOVE to see that happen.

Obviously. I don't think anybody disputes that. But the odds of Theo finishing with a .877% average is nil. He WILL improve. Hopefully we'll start scoring more, we definitely have the personnel in place (I think, anyway). If Theo is still stinking it up five games from now, and if the scoring doesn't pick up within 5-10 games, THEN I'll be concerned.

I understand the stats. But I'd be more concerned if we were firing on all cylinders and still only winning games by one goal. But we're NOT firing on all cylinders. Our No. 1 goalie needs to smarten up. Our power play needs to improve. Some of our defenceman need to play smarter. We need to score more goals. I would be concerned if these problems were insurmountable. They are not. I am confident that Theo will snap out of it. I am confident that Souray will concentrate on sound D play instead of trying to make the highlight reels. I'm confident that once we settle on a point man (i.e. Markov) that the PP will improve. I'm confident that we'll bear down in front of goal and start scoring more goals. This is NOT the best we can play. I think we can play much, much better. That +1 seems to me to be an aberration, it's not indicative of how this good this team is, or more importantly how good this team will be once we get those issues straightened out.

What did Ribeiro do that Rangers fans want him cheap-shotted?

Wow... I'm shocked that Bonk is scratched. Perhaps because of the the Rangers' speed. But that doesn't explain why Dagenais the sloth is in the lineup...

I hope not. It's not like Perezoghin threw an Eric Boulton-like elbow at Primeau... it just kind of happened.

I agree that Théo needs to play better, and that we need to start cashing in a few more chances in front of the net, but I don't think that we're lucky to be in this position. Of our 7 wins, in how many of them were we outplayed? The opener in Boston, maybe. And we deserved to win that game at home vs. Toronto, too. Maybe we've only been outscoring opponents by one goal... but I think this is down to poor finishing and good opposing goalie play rather than luck. If someone came up to me before the year started and asked me what the Habs' record would be 11 games in... 11 games in which Theo played like garbage... I would have guessed 2-9, 3-8 maybe. The fact that we've won so many games, outplaying the opposition in most of them, without having our goalie steal any games for us indicates to me that we're a pretty good team. Sure there is plenty of room for improvement, but I don't think that this team will be struggling to make the playoffs if we continue to play like this.

Pavel Patera I don't think has any connection to Montreal. He's in his mid 30s now and it's unlikely that his rights are owned by anybody. He had a cup of coffee in the NHL with Dallas and Minnesota, but he never adapted well to the North American game. But he's a really good player, I remember him from '98 when he was the only European-based player in the Czech gold medal Olympic team. Good playmaker.

Is anybody going to try and make it to Torino for the Olympics? I'm going to do my best... I figure that watching Olympic hockey in Vancouver in 2010 will be damn near impossible, so I might as well go this year. I'm not sure about the ticket situation, but if these Olympics are anything like Athens, it will be fairly easy to get reasonably-priced tickets.

I can't wait for the Kostitsyn Bros. to crack the Habs' lineup. For the people who've seen Hamilton play this year: how does Andrei look? I know he's starting to score with more frequency, but how does he look comfort-wise?

Mario's stat line from that year: 43 GP, 35 G, 41 A, 76 PTS. Unbelievable. The guy misses 3 years, then comes back and tears up the league. If he would have stayed somewhat healthy over his career, he could have taken a run at Gretzky's records.

Interesting that nobody has mentioned that guy who wears #60. For me, Kovalev. I love the fact that he WANTS to play in Montreal, and has proven to be a hard worker, a good influence in the dressing room and almost a mentor to Markov and Perezoghin. He's basically everything that everyone told us he wouldn't be when Gainey made that trade. Oh yeah, he's pretty good at hockey, too. I can see myself growing to love Perezhogin and Komisarek in the next few years. Also, I found myself mesmerized by Kostitsyn at the World Juniors last year when he basically single handedly beat the US.

The Sens play Emeryor every 4th game. It just happened that they played us for their 4th and 8th game this year. Even if they were playing Detroit in Game #4 Emery would have played.

That's the nice thing: we still have plenty of room of improvement, despite the hot start. And it's not like we've been fluking out - we've been full value for pretty much all of our wins. Barring a complete catastrophe, we should continue to get improve (scary, huh?).

While I agree with you in principle Bulis, it must be said that Bettman is just doing what every other pro sports league in North America already does...

The Leafs stink.

8-0 Sens now.