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I vote for Havlat. That team was a joke last year, and how they're a legit threat to make the playoffs. Havlat is definitely the most compelling reason for this turnaround. It's hard to pick someone from Buffalo, because they have so many guys who had been incredible so far this year. Any one of Briere, Afinogenov, Vanek or Drury would be good picks. Kari Lehtonen and Dwayne Roloson deserve consideration, too.

This has nothing to do with Bledsoe at all, but Aaron Brooks was poised to become one of the better QBs in the NFL at the beginning of his career. He led the Saints to their first ever playoff win in his first year (it was his second year, but he spent the first backing up Favre in Green Bay and never got a snap), on the road no less, and against the defending Super Bowl Champion Rams. That was a monumental accomplishment, considering that how downtrodden the Saints franchise was and how dominant the Rams were from 1999 to 2001. I would have bet the bank on him becoming a pro bowl-type QB, but it just all fell apart to the point where he's one of the worst starting QBs in the league. Funny how things work sometimes.

Batch, Brian Griese and Brooks are absolutely valid comparisons. Batch was a starter for four years in Detroit, Brooks has been a starter for his entire career, Griese was a starter for 4 years in Denver and 1.5 years in Tampa. But you're right about Holbombe and Huard; they're unfair comparisons because they haven't been starters for long enough. Yes, QB rating is a bad tool to compare QBs from different era. Griese, Unitas, Bradshaw, Theismann and Tittle played during a time where completion %s were low, QBs threw a decent amount of interceptions, and the passing game was geared toward getting big gains by throwing down the field. Hence, their passer ratings are lower than guys who play now. But I'd bet if you compared those guys ratings to other guys who played at the same time, they'd stack up pretty well. QBs since the popularization of the West Coast offence and other sophisticated short passing games, QBs have been expected to complete high percentages and limit their interceptions, thus inflating their passer ratings. Elway started his career playing the "old" style of QB and finished it playing the 'new" style of QB. If you look at his ratings from the later years of his career (92.8, 85.7, 86.4, 89.2, 87.5, 93.0), they stack up pretty well to anybody else playing at that time. Simms is an in between case because he started playing in "old" style of QBing and by the time the game changed, he was more or less at the end of the line. QB rating is only useful when looking at QBs who played in the same era. And Bledsoe does NOT stack up well to his contemporaries. Bledsoe's career passing rating ranks 18th out of among active QBs with 1,500 career attempts. Some of the guys ahead of him include: Drew Brees: 85.7 Mark Brunell: 84.4 Jake Delhomme: 84.4 Trent Green: 88.1 Brad Johnson: 84.2 Byron Leftwich: 80.5 All of those guys are decent-to-good, and all of them rank stastically ahead of Bledsoe by a fair margin. I know a lot of people don't put a lot of faith in stats, and believe that a QBs true worth is based on wins, and play in the playoffs. But here too, Bledsoe doesn't really distinguish himself. Bledsoe's teams have finished a combined 108-108 in the regular season (I'm counting this year, as well as the two games he lost that year Brady replaced him and the Pats won the Super Bowl). That is very average. His playoff performance is very bad: 129 for 252, 1,1335 yards, 6 TDs, 12 INTs. Passer rating of 54.9. In his only Super Bowl appearance he was 25 for 48, 253 yards, 2 TDs, 4 INTs, rating of 46.6. Give him credit for making the Super Bowl, but no too much considering that teams QBed by Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson have win the Super Bowl, and guys like Kerry Collins and Chris Chandler have made it there too. I honestly cannot see the argument for Bledsoe as anything other than an average QB.

Bledsoe = average QB. Look at his QB ratings: 65.0, 73.6, 63.7, 83.7, 87.7, 80.9, 75.6, 77.3, 75.3, 86.0, 73.0, 76.6, 83.7, 69.2. Career rating: 77.1. That is very average and doesn't stack up very well with other QBs career rating. Charlie Batch: 78.7 Aaron Brooks: 79.6 Brian Griese: 84.9 Damon Huard: 82.4 Kelly Holcomb: 79.9 Tim Rattay: 81.6 Give him credit for playing tough on the field, and for being classy off the field. But other than a big arm, he brings very few skills to the table. He's not mobile, he's only average at reading defences, he's prone to interceptions... wouldn't want him on my team.

Perhaps a better question would be why he joined the NDP to begin with, considering his views are more centrist than leftist. He was a Liberal until the mid 70s... Unfortunately, in our system of government, a political party's ability to exact change is directly proportional to the amount of seats they have. More seats = more power = a better chance to influence policy. The NDP are no more or less hypocritical than any other Canadian political party, every single other party would have done the same thing.

I don't care how many wins Buffalo has strung together: this is a beatable team. Remember, we had them down 4-2 with 5 minutes left in the first game of the year. And that was IN Buffalo. Habs 5-3.

Come on... obviously that goal shouldn't have counted but Dallas was up 3 games to 2 and probably would have won anyway, they were clearly the superior team in that series.

I'm still confident that Kostitsyn will make a huge impact in Montreal. There was a grand total of 1 forward spot available this year, and he lost out to Latendresse; there is certainly no shame in that. He'll get his chance eventually, hopefully he makes the most of it.

To be honest, who cares? If Janne or anybody else on the team doesn't think they'll win against Buffalo, then they don't deserve to play on the 2006-07 Montreal Canadiens. This team is good enough where they should expect to win every game, and be pissed off if they don't. And if any Buffalo players require extra motivation to beat what appears to be their closest division rival, then I'm guessing Lindy Ruff doesn't want them on his team either.

Exactly! I'm not worried about the Habs PP at all, and that reason is Andrei Markov. Souray gets a lot of credit for the Habs PP success and rightfully so; here aren't many players in the league that can cleanly score on an NHL goalie from the blue line. But the QB and key to the PP is Markov. If teams key on Souray - and Colorado did just that after his second goal on Saturday - then that will simply create more space and passing lanes for Markov to find guys down low. Remember that pass he snapped across to Koivu on Higgins goal on Saturday? We'll just be seeing more of that if teams decide to take away Souray from the point.

Why are they renaming Bleury as well? That's what makes the least sense of all... why snuff out two street names that have been around seemingly forever? On second thoughts, I'm indeed signing that petition.

Speaking of Carbo's influence... was I the only one who heard on CJAD last night that Saku was #1 in the NHL in faceoff %? Or was i imagining that?

Agreed. Nice gesture by Liles.

This is an interesting topic for me since I used to live on Ave. du Parc, but I feel weird signing the petition because I don't live in Montreal any more. http://www.urbanphoto.net/blog/2006/10/18/...ling-my-street/ Interesting take on it.

Yep, born and raised. I'm here only temporarily though, I'll be gone by next September and my family will follow soon after. If you like camping, there is no better place to be than the NWT in July.

Marc Crawford seems to be quite taken by Mr. Cloutier's skills. Well, either that or Cloutier is blackmailing him with incriminating photos or something.

Lol, my entire territory has a population of 40,000. And it's as big as Quebec.

Basketball: Raptors Baseball: Blue Jays CFL: Alouettes NFL: Patriots Soccer: Liverpool, Olympique Lyon, Barcelona, Livorno, Werder Bremen, Panathinaikos, Aris I also support Canadian and Greek national teams too...

Pujols is batting .324 with 2 HRs in the playoffs, including .318 during the NLCS. Considering the fact that he gets nothing decent to hit, he's not playing nearly as bad as the media has been reporting. Still, Tigers in 5, for four reasons: Verlander, Bonderman, Robertson, Rogers.

I think the original dog question asked to MacKay was funny... after him and Stronach broke up, MacKay staged a phony, sappy photo op back on his farm in Nova Scotia with his dog... actually, MacKay's reply was funny too. I'm not sure how much the uproar over this can be attributed to PC attitudes... for me it's just a simple case of one party trying to score political points at the expense of another, and a bored Parliament Hill press corps over-reporting it. Things like this have been going on since 1867... we look back at guys like Trudeau and lament the loss of a "different" time in politics, but we forget that Trudeau got a lot of shit in the press for pirouetting behind the back of the Queen, for calling MPs "nobodies" and a bunch of other things. The only difference is that those episodes happened 20 or 30 years ago and nobody remembers them anymore, just as nobody will remember this ridiculous episode 20 or 30 years down the road.

My ID story: I'm really bad coming up with ID names, and one day I had to produce one for something or other (I don't remember what anymore). I was looking around my desk, and saw some "option+" brand scotch tape. I thought that wasn't any worse than anything I had come up with, so it has become my user name.

Perezhogin has hit the post three times, it's only a matter of time before those start going in for him.

I dispute the assertion that Huet has "never" been a #1. It's only his fourth year in North America! He spent most of the first year in the AHL getting his feet wet, was the Kings #1 by the end of his second year, and was the Habs #1 by the end of his third year. If anything, his career is one of proving he's anything but a career backup, and taking other people's jobs as #1. We're not jumping off the Huet bandwagon yet, are we? Obviously Aebischer has been the better of the two so far this year and I'm all for Carbonneau playing the hot hand, but it is way too early to write Huet off. He's had a mediocre start to the year, but so have a few other guys. Huet: 3.16 GAA, .886 SV% Brodeur: 2.96 GAA, .897 SV% Lundqvist: 3.57 GAA, .878 SV% Kiprusoff: 3.01 GAA, .901 SV% Vokoun: 3.72 GAA, .878 SV% Career statistics, coming into this year: Huet: 2.35 GAA, .917 SV%. Aebischer: 2.39 GAA, .914 SV% We have two #1 goalies until proven otherwise.

It's not Lateralus or Aenima, but it's still a damn good album.

Come on... I agree that Tanguay isn't the answer in Calgary, but he's certainly an NHL-calibre top six forward. I don't like the "he played with good players" argument. Most guys in this league need to play with other good players in order to put up good numbers; there are very few players in the NHL who are capable of consistently creating their own offense or making other people better. Just look at our team - of course a guy like Ryder wouldn't have scored 30 if he wasn't playing with other skill guys.