The Chicoutimi Cucumber

Yeah. Give him a chance to rehabilitate his game but exactly as you say, on the 4th line. Tell him to focus on solid D, physical play, hard in the corners and on the puck, don’t worry about offence. If we start to see the re-emergence of Steamroller Josh then you can move him up. If he starts to flatline as a 4th liner, and if you can persuade Molson to eat the salary, you send him down the minute a more promising kid needs the roster time.

It brings to mind what happened to Luc Bourdon, but this is even worse (if such a thing were possible) because it’s two young men killed by a drunk driver. Horrible, horrible, horrible news, and as a father I don’t even want to imagine what the boys’ parents are going through. Unimaginable.

I agree with all of this. His terrible hockey IQ is the main reason he’s not a stud 30-goal, 50-point power FW. My only point is that prior to last season he was still a useful if overpaid member of the team. We can dwell on the limitations of ‘good’ Anderson but we shouldn’t ignore his merits. The problem is that last season he was a complete boat anchor.

I touched on this earlier, but Kordic - > Courtnall - > Brian Bellows while hardly the greatest trade chain of all time, was a pretty tidy bit of business. I was always impressed that Serge Savard built the entire #1 line of a Cup-winning team (Damphousse-Muller-Bellows) through trades within a fairly short span.

I have no idea, but from the outside looking in, it really seems to have been a result of MSL trying to change his game, and JA losing the plot as a result. Unlike many around here, I do think that the Josh Anderson of previous years - not last season - does bring some value. He's not worth his contract, of course, but he's a useful contributor. Hopefully he finds his way back to his proper game.

He scored 50 twice and was an absolute beast of a player - superstar calibre - when he did that in 1989-90. The problem was, he never came anywhere close to that level again. He could never be counted on to bring his 'A game' from night to night, let alone from year to year. That's why I say he was a second-line W. We now know that he had mental health issues, so I'm not blaming him, but the fact is, he was not the player he could/should have been and could not be relied upon to drive an offence. He was a supplementary piece. Muller, on the other hand, was the best non-goalie on the 1993 team - the key to the entire engine.

Regarding Richer: trading a flaky 2nd-line W for a tough-as-nails, all-situations, #1 C who was our MVP after Roy in 1993 is a pretty good trade if you ask me. That said, Muller did age out relatively quickly. We then traded him with Schneider for Turgeon and Malakhov, of course, and the rapidly-declining Muller then played several seasons as a bottom-6 checker. Interesting that he was involved in two blockbusters by Serge Savard. That second trade was a pretty good one too, notwithstanding Malakhov’s character issues.

Now this is a great topic! Some good examples already given. From my time, Corson and Gilchrist for Damphousse was a hella trade, as was Richer for Muller - an absolute home run - and of course Courtnall for Kordic. Off the top of my head, I’d say the trade that got us the #1 overall pick, yielding Guy Lafleur, is probably the greatest trade in Montreal Canadiens history.

Good ranking.

The Gomez trade was bad, for sure, because McDonagh blossomed and because Gomez aged out early. We took all the risk in that deal and got burned. I agree that the Roy trade was world-historically bad - trading an all-time great player (plus Mike Keane, FFS) for an inferior goalie and mediocre forwards. God help us all. Gomez was merely a terrible deal; Roy was catastrophic. Interesting take for sure. In terms of ‘professionalism,’ it seems to me that Gainey was very much like Hughes *stylistically:* businesslike, professional - a serious man who commanded respect and accorded it to others. He restored an organization that had been shattered and put it back on a professional footing (building on the foundation lain by the forgotten, but underrated, Andre Savard). On the other hand, for whatever reason Gainey seemed at a loss when it came to player development and he made the Gomez and Ribeiro trades, both major, terrible moves. HuGo seem to be avoiding these traps - so far. Goat and MB acted like egomaniacs. Very different types of egomaniacs, but egomaniacs nevertheless. And - as is usually the case when the boss lets his ego get in the way of business - the organization suffered in consequence.

The exception might be Guhle, who is heading into his third season. He'll still have lots of learning - there's an old theory that it takes D-men five years to really solidify at this level - but perhaps we can start thinking of him as past the 'neophyte' stage. Re: Mailloux, it's a balancing act. He may have an absolute howitzer, but if he can't cope with the other aspects of the game, then he can't take a regular shift. Let's keep in mind that the Habs actually want to be competitive this year. That doesn't mean stapling kids to the bench, but we're unlikely to see a repeat of 2022, when raw rookies were thrown out there night after night irrespective of how many mistakes they might have been making.

Well, at least that would mean he wasn't bananas. Just a victim of a deal that collapsed at the last moment. I recall being brutally disappointed we didn't get Hossa at the time.

Right right right. Once again my memory is fuzzy. However, the basic critique still applies; in fact, it applies doubly. He KEPT Souray when we had no chance (07) but TRADED Huet when we did (08). He managed to get it exactly backwards. I remember a presser where he quite strenuously defended trading Huet on grounds of asset-maximization. I was like...huh?!?

Yes indeed. This is what bugs me about tankist/asset-management-obssessed fans sometimes…I mean, NO organization that had just finished 2nd overall the previous season and had a strong first half and was viewed as an emerging contender would trade away key players at the deadline. Gainey Rebuild 1.0 had been predicated on contending in the 100th Anniversary Year. And until Markov and Lang went down, it looked as though we had a chance. Like any GM, he tried to paper over those injuries, but it didn’t work out. He let most of the impending UFAs walk without making a serious push to re-sign them…I’ve often thought that was because, once he went behind the bench, he realized that the core was rotten, that player development had been a total bust, and decided to “rebuild” (I use the term advisedly) with UFAs. Personally, I think of that as Gainey 2.0, the astonishing reconstruction of the entire core via a big trade (Gomez, sigh) and running the table on UFAs. This was a decision that infuriated me at the time. Souray was at peak value - king’s ransom stuff - and we had a borderline team that, even if it made the playoffs, was not taken seriously by anyone as a potential contender. Now THAT is when you trade a guy at his absolute pinnacle of value for maximum return. Instead, bafflingly, he traded Huet and basically threw Price to the wolves. Yeah. That was weird.

Well, a deeper problem is that all those prospects who were supposed to be stars mostly turned out to be duds. Only Price and Pleks really delivered.