xXx..CK..xXx

Although the skeptics will argue, we weren’t actively shopping Subban. Poile was the one who approached Bergevin about Subban and mentioned the name “Weber”. The timing of the trade does indicate they may have wanted him gone since his no trade clause was about to kick in, but that’s what we were told. It wouldn’t surprise me, based on the fact that the talks originated at one of those NHL meetings and something as simple as “Nashville” and “Montreal” being next to each other at those meetings due to their alphabetical order makes it seem like something that may have happened. Bergevin and Poile sit next to each other at all those meetings.

Terrible play by Drouin

Of course it’s Pageau who getsbthenopening goal of the game. Sens have been the better team so far.

I agree that the fact the game is outdoors makes the game a little more of a coin flip. Seems to be good timing for the Sens and they also did quite well on their "unique" trip to Sweden, so in an odd way they might have he right mindset heading into this type of event. As for the trip in general, we often seem to have difficulty on the Canadian western road trip, so it's difficult to be optimistic. My prediction is that they will however fare better than the Western Californian road trip, as they often do and does not say much.

NHL 100 CLASSIC 2017 The NHL celebrates its 100th year anniversary with this 100 Classic matchup between the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators. The Senators are coming off of a 3-2 victory against the New York Rangers, but have been struggling as of late with a 2-7-1 record in their last 10. The Montreal Canadiens look to kick off their seemingly never ending road trip with an outdoor victory at Landsdowne Park. From personal memory, the Habs have fared pretty well in outdoor games and I expect a positive outcome tomorrow. MONTREAL CANADIENS PACIORETTY - DANAULT - BYRON GALCHENYUK - DROUIN - SHAW HUDON - PLEKANEC - GALLAGHER DESLAURIERS - FROESE - CARR BENN - WEBER ALZNER - PETRY MORROW - SCHLEMKO PRICE NIEMI OTTAWA SENATORS RYAN - DUCHENE - STONE PYATT - BRASSARD - DZINGEL SMITH - PAGEAU - HOFFMAN BURROWS - THOMPSON - PAUL ODUYA - KARLSSON PHANEUF - CECI CLAESSON - CHABOT ANDERSON CONDON

Hudon’s Clutch

My boy Pleky

Still a lot of hope going into the 3rd. We're at home, prior to a long road trip and should put forth a solid effort to finish it out.

I had a good feeling about Shaw as well heading into this game. I should have mentioned him in my players to watch! 1-1 with 5 minutes left in the 1st period.

NEW JERSEY DEVILS @ MONTREAL CANADIENS - DECEMBER 14TH, 2017 - CENTRE BELL The Montreal Canadiens have had 4-5 days rest and face the New Jersey Devils after the long layoff. On the New Jersey end, Taylor Hall is out with an injury and it should be interesting to see how newly acquired Sami Vatanen fits in with his new team. Brian Boyle is also a nice story for them as he continues to play through his battle with cancer. On Montreal's side, look for a strong outing from Carey Price and Jonathan Drouin. Victor Mete is away from the team on loan to team Canada for the World Juniors. MONTREAL CANADIENS PACIORETTY - DANAULT - BYRON GACHENYUK - DROUIN - SHAW HUDON - PLEKANEC - GALLAGHER DESLAURIERS - FROESE - CARR BENN - WEBER ALZNER - PETRY MORROW - SCHLEMKO PRICE NIEMI NEW JERSEY DEVILS BRATT - HISCHIER - STAFFORD COLEMAN - ZAJAC - GIBBONS WOOD - ZACHA - NOESEN HAYES - BOYLE - LAPPIN MOORE - VATANEN GREENE - SANTINI BUTCHER - SEVERSON SCHNEIDER KINKAID

With this specific team, coaching is not the number one issue. Personally, I even stated that in one of my posts. When you proceed to talk about how the real underlying issue is not having fired Therrien at a convenient time, this is in effect (potentially) a by-product of having a limited pool of options to replace him with. That's where coaching becomes an issue within the organization. I find it to be no coincidence that Therrien got fired when a coach of Julien's pedigree became available. The issue? We had to keep Therrien for longer than he was welcome (although I slightly liked him). Some argue that "Therrien was chosen over player x" and others state that Therrien was simply Bergevin's "rear-end buddy" (I hadn't even noticed you did as well) but perhaps a coach like Therrien gets a longer leash within an organization that hires only French speaking coaches. If it’s hard enough to find a competent coach in general, it’s sure as heck hard to find a competent French speaking one with perfect timing.

And I love how someone arguing that the French language situation isn't an issue when it comes to our hiring of coaches brings up something that hypothetically happened behind closed doors over a phone. Let's see the article where it says the Habs contacted Gallant, or do I need to talk to one of your close buddies? Having hired Cunneyworth temporarily is a better example than some brief talk the Habs apparently had with Gallant. Then we have your argument that we aren't apparently hiring the best French candidates available anyway and yet you don't think there were any English speaking candidates who were better than Julien? Or is your argument only specific to the AHL where apparently the best AHL coach is Tampa's AHL coach? I don't understand your point. Just because we have a limitation when it comes to the language our coach speaks, this does not guarantee that we should be a shoe in for every "best available" French speaking individual, for every position in the organization. This only furthers the point that there is an issue. If you can have English speaking coaches on your team, then we can decide, do we want the best available English speaking coach or the best French speaking coach? "Who's the better candidate?" If you think the Habs had a chance at hiring Babcock if they wanted to when he was available, okay keep thinking that. I'm sure the Habs reached out but couldn't afford him. As it stands, we are limited to the French contingent, and well, that doesn't make us any more special than any other team when it comes to hiring them either. All 29 other teams might want that "best available" French speaking coach. Tampa Bay is just as much allowed to have that AHL coach as the Habs are, and so is every other team.

That could just be to say they did. It doesn’t matter since he wasn’t hired. As for best coach available, I’d say Paul MacLean but he WAS born in France. It’s hard to compare any coach to Julien and say they are better since he has won a cup in the NHL but let’s not kid ourselves in thinking that we didn’t hire him because he also speaks French. We’ve had him, and fired him before. He truly did not feel like a “new voice” for the organization, which is what we needed. Coaches like Ralph Krueger, Dallas Eakins and Dave Tippett will never get a sniff of a chance in Montreal and it wouldn’t matter if they were in the upper echelon. All that aside, I’m not one that thinks coaching is our main issue even though I don’t love Julien.

Exactly. I guess we should also be looking in Paris for the best France has to offer as well. Not that I like Julien but it’s not exactly like he hasn’t been a cup winner in the past with a high pedigree. The Habs hired him because he was the “best” French candidate available at the time, in their opinion and it limited us/them from really thinking about many other options. There are only two or three teams in recent memory who have rehired their coaches after a tenure elsewhere (Hitchcock and the Stars) and it’s no coincidence that the Habs have done this twice in a row. The “best” Quebec has to offer is a personal opinion and to say that Julien wouldn’t have been sought out by many teams as one of the best available isn’t correct. The Habs, on the other hand, are extremely limited to the options and “had” to time their firing of Therrien based on the reality of their limited pool. Julien was the choice because of reasons. In this case, the argument could be made that while he was the “best” French Canadian candidate available at the time, he wasn’t the best available coach period. That’s the point. As for Elite, the Habs have Carrie Prix.

That's fine, but he also claimed that the NBA's system is so exciting due to the player movement. In my opinion, it is nice to see stars move around the league, but it doesn't change the fact that in the current NBA, there are still less than three teams who could actually win. Your claim that any team can win a 7 game series in the NHL is precisely why I am fine with "how exciting" the NHL is, especially the playoffs, and I think the NBA could use a little bit of that spice in the playoffs, as it stands.

It depends how one looks at it. In the past 10 years, these are the NBA champions as well as their (Seeds) Warriors (1) Cleveland (1) Warriors (1) San Antonio (1) Miami (1) Miami (2) Dallas (3) LA Lakers (1) LA Lakers (1) Boston (1) The NHL in the same timeframe.... Pittsburgh (2) Pittsburgh (2) Chicago (4) LA Kings (6) Chicago (1) LA Kings (8) Boston (3) Chicago (2) Pittsburgh (4) Detroit (1) While there have been more different cup winners in the NBA, the seeds of the championship teams have varied to a much greater extent in the NHL. It seems as though in the NBA, you can predict with some degree of certainty that the championship team will literally be a top seed. In the NHL, although less teams have won, there seem to be more close playoff series, as well as upsets. The NHL playoffs are tough to beat when it comes to entertainment, especially the first round.

No one compared Drouin to Sergachev in the innitial comment. That's the way one person interpreted it but it doesn't look to me like that was even the intention. We could just as easily say Drew Doughty, Alex Pietrangelo or Kris Letang all have more points than anyone on the Habs and that would have nothing to do with Drouin. But it's also less unexpected. As for the minutes, Will Butcher also receives less ice time and zone starts than other elite veteran defenseman, and yet it is still impressive that he has 19 points as well. Those two rookie defensemen are doing well.

As for how he'd be doing on the Habs, who knows? Sergachev has more points than Victor Herman. On the Habs, Weber has the highest PPG. Gallagher has 19 points and if Weber had been healthy, he'd have roughly 21 points. While the point was that a defenseman we traded has more points than anyone on our team, an indication of our offensive struggles, it's entirely plausible that had he been paired with Weber, and given some power play time, he'd be up there near the top in terms of points on our team based on how he is performing. Of course, perhaps the team would have been tentative with Sergachev but considering that Mete made our top pair, it seems unlikely.

Sergachev is a defenseman. Ding, ding, ding. No matter how one spins it, it's a bad stat for the Habs.

If winning isn't life or death for the Montreal Canadiens, it isn't life or death for any team in the league, so the point is relatively moot. As if the teams in the league that aren't as rich as the Montreal Canadiens are having so much more success. Bergevin specifically stated that he wanted players who hated to lose and sure this can be twisted into portraying Bergevin as a man spewing BS, but then there's no need to have a conversation at all. Therrien may have been an issue but he wasn't a huge one and of course the Montreal Canadiens will have a tougher time canning a coach compared to other teams when the requirement is that we hire another French speaking one. It's no coincidence that he did get fired once Claude Julien got fired and was available himself. The post could have been summed up by stating, as some had already alluded to, that the French speaking policies may put the organization behind the 8 ball in some respects. Moves like Subban for Weber didn't catastrophically damage the team and if we are going to include them in our posts, the Sergachev for Drouin trade should be mentioned as well. Sergachev is a rookie but we traded him at a time where we also let Markov walk. Subban was traded for another top pairing defenseman. Far from a catastrophic move that portrays a team who "doesn't care about winning".

I sincerely feel it's more Habs fans who have such negative thoughts about the team and management than the players themselves. I should hope this would be the case, especially in times of difficulty. Price knows he can't control who Bergevin puts on the ice and I don't personally believe he would necessarily have any doubts about Bergevin doing he best for the team, like some Habs fans would question. The Habs are coming off a playoff year and while there are better options out there, there certainly are worse as well. Furthermore, even if he were to dislike management, which I don't believe, it certainly is easier to stay in one place. Price is on the most famous hockey team in the world, and certainly has many positive memories in the city. As has been mentioned by a few posters, it probably is a large factor in him having potentially not even considered leaving to another team. I then again hold a personal viewpoint that the team who has had a player should have some type of inner lane in regards to resigning them. This was part of the reason I was disappointed that we didn't take advantage of having tried to encourage Radulov to resign during the season. Although I've seen it mentioned that he was never going to consider resigning in the middle of the season, I also saw similar comments from Bergevin's side stating that it was "too soon" to see if this was the "real" Radulov mid- season. As an owner, manager, fellow teammate, I would have certainly tried to plant some seeds in order to make him look forward to resigning. I think I tend to prefer the parity in the NHL. The playoffs in the NBA often result in sweep after sweep. It would be nice if the Habs were the Warriors in such a scenario, but if the Habs were stuck in the middle, they'd literally never have a chance. In the NHL, most playoff teams have a chance.

Some people really like Montoya as well and might not want Niemi to show well, but I agree.

I'm rooting for Niemi. Probably in the huge minority there.

So without risk of sounding like Commandant, I would have scored that Edmonton 3rd goal.

Not sure what the announcers are smoking saying that Cammalleri hasn't scored since January 2017... You know that thread about not enjoying the presence of ex Habs? He deserves to be there as he has been a Habs killer and scored on us while he was with the Kings. (Twice)