The Chicoutimi Cucumber

Cripes, man, either of those guys is a significant upgrade on whatever garbage we were throwing out there last season. Sign first, sort the details out later.

That does look pretty sweet, but White in the pressbox seems a little harsh to a player that many of us love. Is he on borrowed time here?

Have Allen or Rozsival gone anywhere? Hard to keep track.

I just mean, wait and see whether he is a bottom-6 guy or a bottom-3 on our team. From the salary and term, the Habs see him as a bottom-6er, but 12 minutes per night with the Rags might suggest otherwise.

I like Beef Bouillon, but you and Habs29 are absolutely right - at some point we need to bag both a top-4 defender and a legitimate top-6 LW. And that's without even beginning to think about the questionable situation at C. I'm sure MB is as aware of these issues as we are, but whether he can settle them during the UFA frenzy, or even over the course of the whole summer - that's another question.

Well, Prust is a bit of a wait and see - 12 mintues or 14? 3rd or 4th-liner? - but apparently he was highly sought-after on the open market. Presumably many other teams wanted what he brings. I think MB should get the benefit of the doubt on this one, especially as the contract is hardly crippling. I can understand people hating cheap-shot artists like Armstrong. All I know is, the Habs play team after team with arseholes like that on them. Sadly, this justifies fighting fire with fire, in my mind. EDIT: Habs29, nothing need stop us from locking up White next year. And I agree, we never should have let Lapierre go - dumb trade as, I believe, I said at the time. AK46, meh, I can do without characterless playoff drunks, while Higgins needed three years away from Montreal before he began to rebuild his career as a solid NHLer, not crying over those two.

I don't understand our lack of interest in Wizard. Or maybe he just wanted to stay in the USA. Either way, I loved him as a stop-gap measure.

\Right. As long as we don't try to kid ourselves that these moves address the most important holes in our lineup, it's been a good day.

Habs29's negativity is interesting. Certainly, if we don't add any higher-order talent - if MB is done - these moves will not suffice to make us a strong team, and in that sense he's right to be disappointed. On the other hand, these three guys do represent significant upgrades to the third (Armstrong) and fourth (Prust) lines, while Bouillon brings a blood and guts grittiness on a nightly basis to the D-corps. They will make the Habs gutsier and tougher to play against night after night. And I for one have been frustrated for some time with the Habs' willingness to throw total spare parts onto the 3rd-4th lines year after year. People lose sight of the fact that you need quality bottom-6ers to win in this league. Bergeron clearly understands that. So, these are good moves on their own terms. But we absolutely need more if we really want to be competitive. Top-4 D, top-6 LW remain musts. EDIT: importantly, Armstrong and Bouillon are short-term deals. We're not locking ourselves into dead weight. I can see griping that we haven't done more, but none of the moves today damage the club at all going forward regardless of what happens to the cap.

Always liked The Cube. Another quality depth signing...still waiting for that major move (which may not come for weeks, if it turns out that a trade is the only option).

OK, he can play LW. This signing makes more sense to me now. Useful write-up here: http://forecaster.thehockeynews.com/hockeynews/hockey/player.cgi?2526 In terms of Armstrong vs. Lats, it seems that MB went with the guy with character and with the more bad-ass nature. Both are injury-prone but only one is noted for 'leadership abilities.' I'll take it.

Is he really a LW? That makes me like the signing better, if true. Between Borque and Armstrong, we have two of the dirtiest SOBs around. Add Emelin's crushing hits into the mix, along with Cole and MaxPac powering their way through defences up front, whatever else we think of this configuration, Smurf time is over.

F*CK, Dallas signs Whitney - 4.5 per for two years. Damn. Right off the bat, my Whitney/Lats combo is off the table.

This is a league in which dirty play is rewarded, and not having dirty players just means your own guys get clobbered while you can't reiprocate. I've long said that until the NHL finally decides it does not want to be indirectly responsible for players getting permanently crippled and imposes adequate suspensions for vicious hits, the Habs are stupid not to have a couple of dangerous players in their own lineup, just like 75% of our competitors. I'm very disappointed we didn't sign Lats, but Armstrong is dirt-cheap, short-term, and boosts our bottom-6 depth. Hard to object to this deal. I just hope it's not all MB has up his sleeve.

Whitney got 77 points this year. There is no reason to assume he can't get 50+. Sign him on a 2-year deal as a stopgap solution at LW.

I suppose it all depends how the deal is structured. In one sense, if he gets a cap hit of (say) $8 mil per season, does it really matter whether you pay him some ludicrous sum up front? We should also keep in mind how the economy of the cap has worked up to now. Deals that look horrible often end up being quite reasonable as the cap bloats. Whether this will remain true under a new CBA is unclear, but I suspect that it will. All that being said, I have absolutely no problem with an NHL owner passing on that. $24 mil in a single year for a single player is a pretty big pill to swallow.

Holy crap Much as I'd love to have Parise, I couldn't blame Molson from saying 'non merci' to that.

Another good contract.

Forget Parise. Why would he sign in a pressure-packed market on a 28th overall team with a coach who is not among the most universally loved, especially as we will not be able to outbid other teams for him the way we did with Cammy? But I see no reason why we can't attract Whitney - just offer him more $$/term than anyone else - and we're surely Lats's first choice.

I want Parise. I'll settle for Whitney/Lats - preferably both - to shore up the LW position. And, absolutely, Allen or Rozsival to raise out D-corps to another level. That'd be an excellent UFA period to my mind.

His kid lives here. He's from here. He'll be motivated to sign here. We'll be able to sign him, and we should sign him, as long as he is inexpensive (say, $2 mil or less). We need LW, he is an effective big-body presence on the bottom-6 when healthy and showed himself capable of playing on the top-6 in Minny - again, when healthy. He's also the type of kid Therrien would probably love to try to turn around. Frankly, I'll be surprised if this doesn't happen.

This is pretty much spot on. You're absolutely right that the loss of Cammy - our only elite-level forward - leaves the biggest hole, a real key to a turnaround. You're also correct that we just don't have the depth of talent that will allow us to make a major trade without losing treasured young assets (PK, MaxPac, Galy, maybe Beaulieu) or creating massive new holes in our lineup (Pleks). I'm among those who has absolutely no problem with swinging for the fences on a gigantic, bank-busting contract for Parise, who would transform our team by filling its biggest hole in a spectacular way. Unfortunately, nobody sees us as realistic players in the Parise sweepstakes, and this is probably correct. Trouble with Doan is he's a RW. That doesn't replace Cammy in terms of roster spot. He'd still be a great acquisition, but not the solution to the deeper problem. I think Ray Whitney as a stopgap - probably on a deal with a longer term than anybody likes - is a much more plausible scenario. And while Latendresse is no Cammy, picking him up on the cheap and hoping he stays healthy might offer a touch of extra insurance, since he can, I believe, play LW. Whitney + Bouque + Lats gives us enough depth at that position to run a platoon in the top-6, as necessary. Along with imporvements on the back end, that's a configuration that should see us back in the playoffs and competitive.

Well, the Mara parallel fails to inspire confidence... I haven't paid much attention to Hannan. It's the 20 minutes per night that caught my attention. This would seem a better option, than, say, Rome - assuming he gives 20 effective minutes and was not overtaxed on a crappy Flames team. But I agree with your prioritization. Allen first, Rozscival second, maybe a Hannan as Plan C.

And on another note - what about Scott Hannan? 20 minutes per night with the Flames, tough SOB. Just a thought.

Fascinating graphic from the Financial Post (courtesy of JT's excellent blog: http://habsloyalist....6/tax-tilt.html): http://business.fina...ily-tax-havens/ This really underscores the fundamental competititve disadvantage the Habs face when trying to seduce UFAs. A contract like Moen's, for instance, actually pays him around $200 000 less annually than he'd make in Florida. And the bigger the contract, the bigger the tax hit. It's simply bad business to sign in Montreal unless the Habs are prepared to 'overpay' you relative to low-tax markets. A Parise-like deal yields a differential of over $700 000 per year. Imagine that over the life of (say) a 10-year contract - you're talking $7 million in foregone revenue for the player. JT's proposed solution - adjusting the salary cap to compensate for taxes - is of course perfectly sensible. But, rather like the excellent idea that fines and traffic tickets should be charged as a % of income rather than a flat rate, or the equally sensible idea of drug legalization, it won't go anywhere. Too bad.