The Chicoutimi Cucumber

If they come up with another listless effort after Therrien's pyrotechnics, is it fair to infer that he's losing the team? Just asking.

Interesting thing about Cole...he's on pace for about 42 points, and has 7 goals in the last month. Sure, $4.5 mil is an overpay for a third-liner, but that big body would look damned good in our top 9 right about now. That trade looked clever at the time, but has quietly morphed into a mistake if you ask me; basically we dumped a player who went through a bad half-season following the lockout, even though he was the perfect profile given our team needs.

Big-name UFAs are almost always a rip-off. That has become pretty obvious over the years. Clarkson is just the latest in the long line. That said, the Canadiens will need a player of that profile if we ever want to contend, and when the time comes, if we overpay, I won't cry in my beer about it.

Hmm. Well, again, I didn't see the game; my post above could well be an over-reaction. It's difficult to know how to react, because, first, Therrien's credibility isn't all that great (like I said, he's basically a generic contemporary coach, nothing special or impressive); we're in the position of having to trust the judgement of this basically disposable shmoe in handling our best asset since Roy. A second, there has been so much BS discourse around Subban (bad in his own end!! bad team player!! not good enough for Team Canada!! etc. ) - to which Therrien himself contributed while in the media - that separating a legitimate "benching" from that wider Subban-bashing discourse is hard to do.

Well, this is another game I missed and one I'm glad I did. But the benching of PK Subban sure is a head-scratcher to me. Would LA bench Drew Doughty for a dumb penalty? Would the Islanders do the same with Tavares? TB with Stamkos? I don't quite get this. When is Montreal management going to accept that PK Subban is the most explosive defenceman in all of hockey, an outright superstar, and stop treating him like a "questionable" player or a rookie whose game needs "fixing?" Perhaps if Therrien had a track record of accomplishment this would be easier to accept. But he's not Mike Babcock. He's a middling coach who was mediocre in his first run with us and drummed out of Pittsburgh after they concluded that, despite a stacked roster, they could not win with him. The name of PK Subban will endure long after all memory of Therrien has faded from the minds of hockey fans; he's basically a nobody. I'm sure PK will do what he's always done, i.e., quietly swallow his medicine, file it away in his memory, and keep being awesome. But I'll tell you one thing - Patrick Roy wouldn't have tolerated the analogous treatment from a nothing like Therrien. If we're looking at a battle between the best position player we have had since Guy Lafleur and Michel Therrien, there should be ZERO doubt as to whose side every last Habs fan should be on.

I feel really badly for St. Louis. All this guy has done for 20 years is prove every doubter wrong, but that wasn't enough for the doubters on Team Canada. Still, you can't argue that it wasn't a principled decision, since obviously Yzerman would have desperately wanted to include him. You can quibble over this pick or that, and Nash over Giroulx or even Neal could come back to haunt us, but it really is a situation where no matter what you did, great players were going to be left off. They avoided the big howler of excluding PK, which was may main concern. I think Hamhuis was a devious little pick. He is a fine, understated defenceman who will likely log useful minutes on that team. My question is: did we pick the right squad for the big ice? We have a terrible track record on the Olympic-sized surfaces, and that's why I'm ultimately not confident in our prospect for gold.

I'd like to see Leblanc up. I know current management seems to hate his guts (did he insult Bergevin's wife or something?) but he seemed like a promising third-line type to me in his various stints with us. I'm also leery of us throwing prospects away. It's now-or-never time for the kid, let's give him every chance to prove himself.

Crap!!

Oh man, I could not agree more that we cannot bring up both Tinordi and Beaulieu at the same time. Despite the endless optimism from fans about what rookies can do, rookies are almost always inconsistent and unreliable over an entire season, and throwing two of them onto the backend is a recipe for bottom-feeding. You know, for all the talk that we need an impact forward, there's this fella called Alex Galchenyuk who was supposed to be an absolutely elite offensive prospect. I guess it's implausible to hope that he can put it all together within the "Markov window?"

If Therrien thinks he's gonna make a 36-year-old Briere a "better player," then his ego is roughly the size of the Big O. As for the loss of the Nordiques being the bane of the Habs, I totally disagree. The Nordiques intensified the pressure on the Habs to "frenchify" by explicitly playing the nationalist card ("the Nordiques are the true Team of Quebec," etc.) and therefore ratcheting up the urgency of winning the PR battle. People forget that there were millions of dollars in beer sales at stake in that rivalry - compounding enormous pressure on the Habs to play this noxious language game. The Nordiques were bad for the Habs, and personally I don't want them back.

Did MB even want Lecavalier? I seriously doubt that he was interested in signing any long-term contracts at all. That's the thing with Bergevin, he has avoided tying his own hands with any long-term commitments, and this is why none of his mistakes are very significant. Personally, I think Molson was behind the Briere signing. He showed himself to be prone to panic on the "French" file when he cut the feet out from under Cunneyworth. He probably see signing Briere as a great way to recover from the PR debacle, and Bergie had to go along. The alternative is to think that MB was unable to see what everyone else on the planet saw, i.e., that Briere made no sense as a fit for this particular team.

brobin pre-empted the point I wanted to make about our D. Emelin is our #3 defenceman, and you can't look at our blueline at a moment when Emelin playing the absolute worst hockey of his career and take that as representative of our defence corp's overall abilities. That said, while Machine's analysis above is excellent, I continue to doubt that this is a "contending" blueline. The main problem as I see it is less with Subban-Markov-Emelin than with Gorges, who would be one of the league's top #5 defencemen but is not a #4 defenceman on a truly strong team IMHO. One injury or slump in the Big Three and our D suddenly looks dire; and that's not sufficient depth to win a Cup. I'd love to see us acquire a solid all-around guy who can bump Gorges a notch down the depth chart. Of course, this might not be the TOP priority - a boost at FW probably is. But I really feel that if we win a Cup with this D is will only be because everything went exactly right - which is the definition of not being a true contender.

Like it or not, this site is easily the best around in terms of the quality of fan discussion. H I/O has a larger quantity of contributions, and can often be pretty funny, but the calibre of analysis there is considerably lower. You need to keep in mind that this is a game thread and that postings to these are generally made in the heat of the moment.

"Forcing the French issue" is a good way to put it, Habs29. And my feeling is that the average francophone fan is much more knowledgeable, and much less irrational in their nationalism, than prominent segments of the French media and a certain cohort of East End knuckle-draggers. Everybody with any soul wants to see great French Canadian stars playing for the Habs - that's part of the mystique of the franchise. But I think most French-speaking fans can tell the difference between a has-been or a pretender and a genuine French star, and I think they can see the hollowness in all this marketing BS pretty much as well as non-francophones can. It's like the big kerfuffle over Cunneyworth's inability to speak French. I remain convinced to this day that if Cunneyworth had openly,emphatically, and repeatedly committed to intensive French-language training in the off-season, and been willing to risk a little verbal embarrassment now and then after taking the training, most fans would have responded as they traditionally have - i.e., generously. Unfortunately, the Canadiens seem to have gone from being somewhat imperious in their attitude to these matters in the 60s, 70s and into the 80s, as well as under the Goat, into being completely craven in their quest to achieve good PR and to avoid bad on the "French" file. The result is a sort of kowtowing to a lower denominator than that of the average fan IMHO. They go for the cheap and easy PR score with embarrassing consequences, like the Turgeon captaincy or the Briere debacle. They are too cowardly to hire the best coach/manager and then provide him with intensive language training. Lame.

I get that Gorges stunk it out tonight, but...he also made several crucial game-saving plays against Dallas and is generally a solid contributor. All this talk about him being a "massive liability" etc., etc., seems way out of proportion to me. First game back from a road trip is often a bit of a dog's breakfast. They got a point, let's see if they can solidify their game going forward.

Rutherford is desperate. I meant in terms of player profile. If Eller becomes Jordan Staal II, is that, first, realistic, and second, satisfactory?

Without knowing much about Stafford, I suspect he'd be the second coming of Rene Bourque. But that would still be an upgrade on the Hero of the Quebec Nation.

Habs29 never suggested getting Kane for spare parts. He always had Plekanec as the centrepiece of a package deal. We'd be giving Peg one of the best two-way players in all of hockey. I agree that he alone wouldn't be enough, but yeah, something like Pleks + Gorges (whatever) would instantly stabilize their roster and probably vault them into the playoffs. So I don't see Habs29 as falling into the usual trap of XBox GMing. Anyway, it ain't gonna happen. Briere for Stafford is a vastly more believable scenario. Eller: how about thinking of him as a potential Jordan Staal? Does that seem realistic?

Stogey, we just have to hope that Emelin has not suddenly forgotten how to play hockey in the prime of his career. Lord knows, his decline has been preciptious, and there have been players - e.g., Theordore, Gomez, Mara - who plunged from excellence to mediocrity very suddenly, and never recovered, right when they should have been in their primes. If this happens with Emelin, I can't wait for all the retroactive condemnation of Bergevin for signing him But I think it's much more plausible to believe that he just hit the wall after returning from a long absence with no training camp, and this then ate into his confidence. He needs a few good shifts, then a few good games, to rebuild - just as Desharnais did earlier this season.

Karlsson is a stellar offensive defenceman. He'd make my Olympic team any day. PK is a more complete package, able to destroy opponents with skull-shattering hits and (usually) very strong down low, as well as bringing a formidable offensive game. I'll stick with my label of "most explosive defenceman in hockey," because it seems to cover all of his attributes nicely. The guy is just a beast. I wish all the know-it-alls would get off his back and just let him play the damned game, so we can all enjoy it.

Ray Ferraro once commented that UFAs sometimes "go home" to big markets like Montreal or Toronto when they're on the back-end of their careers and aren't especially hungry any more, but just want to sentimentally play out their career in a romantic setting (my words, not his). If this applies to Briere, then he isn't particularly driven to win a Cup and is more interested in being comfortable; in which case, Buffalo might well suit him. He knows the town, he'll get lots of ice time, he'll be a big cheese, won't have to compete for a roster spot like he's had to do here, won't be asked to play W, etc., etc.. So I wouldn't rule this out at all.

Lots of good points made in this thread. I agree, for instance, that Yzerman is overrated - the halo from his playing days has transferred over to his GMing, without any particularly good reason. And I couldn't agree more with Lovett that there is a ridiculous amount of overthinking going on among these national team managers, or else it's sheer insider politics (connections, who is pals with whom, etc.). They are talking themselves out of making common-sense decisions. One of which is including THE most explosive defenceman in all of hockey on their roster. I think USA was dumb to leave Byufglin (sp?) and Ryan off their teams as well. The point about trading Desharnais is an interesting one. He's hot, now's the time to move him. Conversely, his chemistry with Patches is unreal, and looking at them out there last night, I found myself actually believing that a team could win a Cup with a line of Patches-DD-Gallagher in its top-6, provided it could add another powerful winger to complement Pleks/Eller/Galy. It would not surprise me if this is Bergevin's thinking as well. The question is whether the Desharnais we've seen over the past 20 is the "real" Desharnais. He is a significantly faster player now than when he came up. He MAY actually be the 60+ point guy he was two years ago. I dunno, he's turning into a surprisingly tough player to evaluate offensively (he'll never be very good in his own end, of course). I still don't know what to make of a guy who does nothing for 20 games and then morphs into a PPG player.

If 24CH is any guide, he is much more comprehensible than Therrien, whose English is pretty iffy and probably leaves the Euro players kinda confused. It's a good thought.

He's a superstar, brother. The only people who don't know it are, apparently, the geniuses who run Team Canada.

I hope the rumours are true. Buffalo is desperate, Briere is dead weight, and we need a shake-up - it's a perfect storm.