The Chicoutimi Cucumber
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Posts posted by The Chicoutimi Cucumber
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Wow...I guess none of us are watching this one! I'm not either, so I can't blame ya
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Great Gumper's Ghost, there is an alarming lack of a GDT. The game starts in an hour!
The following comes from HabsEyesonthePrize:
Game 77: Montreal Canadiens @ New York Rangers
Start time: 7:00 PM EDT / 4:00 PM PDT
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Rangers region: MSG2
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+Despite Cayden Primeau having to come on in relief of Samuel Montembeault last night, Martin St-Louis is sticking with his plan to have Primeau play tonight’s game in New York City. Primeau faced 18 shots in the 30 minutes he played versus Toronto, stopping all of them, which should have helped to erase the disappointment from his outing versus the Tampa Bay Lightning a couple of days earlier.
Joel Armia is also looking to put an off night behind him to have a better performance in his 500th NHL game. He does have goals in two of his previous four games versus the Rangers, and also registered a hat trick versus the franchise back in 2019, so it is a team he enjoys playing.
New York, meanwhile, is trying to lock up the top spot in the Metropolitan Division, which it can do with three more wins. They probably see Montreal as one of the easy marks toward that goal, but the Habs could pull off another surprise in the final portion of the season — if they can manage to hold their composure for all 60 minutes.
Montreal Canadiens projected lineup
Left Wing Centre Right Wing #22 Cole Caufield #14 Nick Suzuki #20 Juraj Slafkovský #11 Brendan Gallagher #35 Alex Newhook #40 Joel Armia #70 Tanner Pearson #71 Jake Evans #17 Josh Anderson #55 Michael Pezzetta #36 Colin White #49 Rafaël Harvey-Pinard Left Defence Right Defence #8 Mike Matheson #52 Justin Barron $54 Jordan Harris #58 David Savard #47 Jayden Struble #26 Johnny Kovacevic Starter Backup #30 Cayden Primeau #35 Samuel Montembeault Injured: Kirby Dach, Christian Dvorak, Kaiden Guhle, Joshua Roy, Chris Wideman, Arber Xhekaj
Scratched: Jesse YlönenNew York Rangers projected lineup
Left Wing Centre Right Wing Artemiy Panarin Vincent Trocheck Alexis Lafrenière Chris Kreider Mika Zibanejad Jimmy Vesey Will Cuylle Alexander Wennberg Kaapo Kakko Barclay Goodrow Jonny Brodzinski Matt Rempe Left Defence Right Defence Ryan Lindgren Adam Fox K’Andre Miller Jacob Trouba Zac Jones Braden Schneider Starter Backup Igor Shesterkin Jonathan Quick 
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22 minutes ago, Commandant said:
We missed Guhle far more. And yes we missed Arber too, but more for his defensive play than for the fight.
The "momentum" of the fight wasnt the reason the Habs lost. It was what 3-0 or 4-0 when the fight happened? It was actually the Habs who were better afterwards, so im not sure how it helped Toronto.
Losing the fight didn't bother me I'm hockey terms, it's just annoying to have your player get pounded on a night when the Leafs are clobbering us on the scoreboard. Insult, meet injury.
Good point about Guhle. The D looked horrible in the 2nd especially and he surely would have helped.
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9 minutes ago, dlbalr said:
I'm not sure what Pezzetta was thinking there. Or if he was thinking. He is a willing fighter but isn't very good at it. Reaves is a very good fighter. If you want to try to pick a fight to spark momentum, why go after the guy who you know is going to win handily, handing that potential momentum to the Leafs?
With looks like those, you’d hope he has brains, but apparently Pezzetta has neither
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9 minutes ago, Prime Minister Koivu said:
Ugly period so far but that Suzuki PP was beautiful from start to finish
True. An otherworldly goal.
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Kill me now.
Clumsy rebound control from Monty there, but the D is in chaos.
Pezzetta gets his clock cleaned by Reaves.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: 🤮
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4 minutes ago, dlbalr said:
He didn't look right, especially when he had to play the puck right after. I'm surprised he wasn't pulled by the spotter.
It'd be a damned shame for him to end the season on that note. He's been like a man reborn this season.
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Very interesting observation by Bieksa about how all the playoff teams have veteran captains.
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Hmm...did Armia get concussed there?
Leafs have zero answer to the Suzuki line so far. Soooo great to finally have a legitimate first line.
EDIT: good first period from the Habs. They were the better team, but it's too bad they couldn't bag one to show for it.
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4 minutes ago, dlbalr said:
Trust me, the hype is still there. There's plenty of talk about how he is playing his best hockey in a long time (he had one whole point last month) and how he's a must-play player to start the playoffs.
🤣
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11 minutes ago, GHT120 said:
To make any difference in terms of the Leaves not getting pushed around, Reaves would have to play so many minutes that he would help the Panthers win without their having to push TO around.
And that right there is the reason why goons no longer have a place in the NHL.
Remember the hype around Reaves at the start of the season? 🙄 It seems like WiFi's ragdolling him and his subsequent suckage put an end to that pretty quick
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Boy, look at Morgan Reilly's numbers. I always liked his game - my kind of defenceman. For a guy in TO, where they pump the tires of every bum who cycles through the lineup, he seems almost underrated.
And that's the only nice thing I'm gonna say for the next 12 hours. F**k off, Leafs. I hope Boston or whoever takes a leaf-blower to you and sweeps you in 4.
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22 hours ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:
I don't remember being overly excited about that team but that's what fan's do (short for fanatic). We hope and dream because we long for the day when the Habs are on top again so we sometimes become a little unrealistic in our outlook. I am a Habs fan and will continue to hope and dream and pray that HuGo makes all the right moves to get us back where we belong.
Well - I remember most Habs fans being pretty excited about the Gainey rebuild, and a lot of optimism on this board about it. 🤷♂️ (It wasn’t just us, BTW. A lot of commentators saw guys like Higgins and Kosty as future stars, Komisarek as a menacing shutdown D-man etc.).
The difference between Gainey Rebuild 1.0 and a lot of what followed is that it was a genuine rebuild, i.e., an effort to build patiently through the draft, and supplement those pieces with shrewd UFA signings and trades. Most of what we saw after that rebuild went bust in 2009 was closer to a series of improvisational patch-ups - hence the whole “make the playoffs and anything can happen” ethos.
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1 hour ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:
Yup, Armia is now 3rd on the team in goals. Just like I predicted at the beginning of the year. LOL
The bizarre truth is that Armia has had a hell of a half-season - ever since he was called up.
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2 hours ago, Commandant said:
I think we have the bottom six pieces especially since its unlikely we can find trade partners for Dvorak, Anderson, Gally, and Armia so im not in favour of looking for third liners right now.
Yhe focus has to be on a game breaking winger. A true first line caliber player who will fit with Dach/newhook and elevate that line.
The floor here has to be what they did in 2004 in acquiring Alex Kovalev or what they did in picking up Radulov years later. Thats the level of talent we need to inject
Fair enough. I agree with your priority - I want an impact FW above all.
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30 minutes ago, Habs27 said:
Yeah I am hopeful but realistic. I know going from a bottom 5-10 team to a top 10 team is tough to do. But this is the first time in a lot of years I can see a direction and a competitive window. Bubble playoff team is how I see them if they continue this growth and asset management.
When I try to calculate cap it seems like they have 19 million (with price on lite)to use. It already has me looking at a potential fit on the wing from the ufa pool. Think marchessault could be a short term option at wing? Toffoli again?
And the options of young talented players that could be available seems interesting. Zegra Rossi Necas and Johnson. With the assets we have and management doing a nice job of buying at the draft I could see us grabbing one of them.
We are very close to being a 3 line team. And two goalies that can win games.
This is a bit out of left field, and certainly reflects my Vancouver exile from civilization, but Dakota Joshua might be an intriguing UFA option at W. A lot would depend on term (he's 27) but he's like a more consistent, game-in and game-out version of Armia - or maybe the guy MB thought he was getting when he re-signed Armia: big, physical, goes to the net, can score. (15 goals this season). He wouldn't be a big fish UFA signing but he could be a nice secondary piece.
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50 minutes ago, GHT120 said:
It was the classic wildcard/playoff-team roster but almost impossible that they would win the Cup ... like the Canadiens of the last 3+ decades ... hope to make the playoffs and PRAY
That was the magic Kovalev year. It was widely perceived to be the coming-out party for the Gainey rebuild, with the expectation that all that young talent would push the team into conteder status for the 100th anniversary season (2009).
So I disagree with your assessment. That season was a rebuild supposedly coming to fruition. Only in hindsight do we realize that the rebuild was a failure and that most of those young pieces were mediocre or just plain garbage.
As I say earlier in this thread, that team is a standing reminder to us about the perils of over-estimating young talent in a rebuild.
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32 minutes ago, Habs27 said:
The end of this season has me hopeful for next year as we are competing with some top teams and only 1 or 2 lines going. With Dach Dvorak Roy possibly 1 forward ufa and one potential Dach/Newhook trade. Our forward lineup looks very deep and matches our def depth. Anyone else hopeful for playoffs next season?
I want to believe, but I think we have to be careful about getting too excited about "competing with top teams" in the final third of a season in which we are bottom-feeders. It's notorious that bad teams sometimes look pretty good down the stretch, when they have zero pressure and when their opponents are often in snooze mode playing against them. (Even that bum Galchenyuk scored 30 goals one year playing in those conditions).
The X-factor, as you note, is how HuGo will use our hoarded assets to add impact pieces over the summer. IF he makes the right moves; and IF Dach can stay reasonably healthy; and IF one of the young D (Hutson/Mailloux/Reinbacher) can make the jump; THEN we can be a bubble team.
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9 minutes ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:
That is true, still think it was the right decision. Signing Danault would have made us better in the short term but still well short of being a playoff contender. He is 31 now, we needed to rebuild.
Yup, losing Danault was one key link in the chain reaction that led the Habs to bottom out. We lost Weber (#1 d-man), Price (franchise goalie), Danualt (best C), not to mention important supplemental pieces like Lehks and Perry.
I'd thought that KK could replace Danault. But then we lost KK too. And subsequent history has shown that KK is barely an NHLer, let alone a replacement for Philip Danault.
In retrospect, it seems truly incredible that management thought they could lose all those pieces and NOT need to rebuild. MB tried another patch-up job and this time - unlike his brilliant efforts over the summer of 2020 - it blew up in his face.
Would keeping Danault have sufficed to staunch the bleeding? Probably not. And then we could have flipped him for a nice haul of assets. So in a way, signing him would have still been the right move, unless we gave him a NTC.
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4 minutes ago, Prime Minister Koivu said:
I guess I’m considering the player Gallagher is now as compared to what he was.
Danault was an underrated centre here.
He was. Although it's worth remembering that he had an absolutely horrible season, offensively, in 2020-21 (his last year with us). The playoffs were really his coming out party, where he established himself as an elite shutdown C, despite contributing little offensively. We should remember that nearly everyone on this board preferred to let him walk than to have Bergevin sign him to the contract that he got with LA.
Such a shame about Gally's bloated contract. (Although I'm sure he's not crying about it). In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of sports fandom, it does tend to overshadow his heroic efforts of the previous seven or eight seasons.
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31 minutes ago, Prime Minister Koivu said:
Ok these are the best lines combos since 2007 season. I was shocked that the Habs made the list but even more shocked at which line it was.
Was that 2021? I always said that team was seriously under-rated…
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31 minutes ago, hab29RETIRED said:
Both had cracked riibs. The difference was the B’s made it more public when they were knocked out, while Koivu didn’t say anything and it didn’t come out until well after the playoffs.
not much different than the story about Gainey playing with TWO separated shoulders in the playoffs. Difference between players like Koivu and Gainey was that they never used their injuries as an excuse.
Ahhhh, thanks. That makes sense. In fact I have vague memories of regarding Thornton as a douche at the time for making an excuse of it, when the guy who ate him for breakfast had a similar problem.
The Gainey feat was insane. Before my time, but what a legend...
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12 minutes ago, alfredoh2009 said:
I am sure that with the innovation in knee re-build/care now Koivu would be as good at Suzuki is turning out to be. Long health and many ppg season to the captain.
Probably true. Sadly.
Saks went and carved a great career for himself regardless. I just wonder whether he looks back sometimes and wonders what might have been. (Then again he always struck me as the "no regrets" type).
Two players it's a great shame the Habs could never win a Cup for: Saku Koivu and Carey Price. They deserved rings, each in their own way. But at least Price got to the Finals.
Game 77 Habs @ Rags
in Habs & Hockey Talk
Posted
Is this the least-used GDT of all time? I wouldn't rule it out.