The Chicoutimi Cucumber
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Posts posted by The Chicoutimi Cucumber
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as my friend pierre guathier ( i think i threw up in mouth a little just saying his name) sez Mr subban needs to be carefull because if he holds out there is a very real possibility that the new cba may kick him in the ass. Lets say that for sure it will be a tighter cba and guys like him will have fewer options. I love pk and want him to sign in Montreal, BUT he has to be reasonable, i think 3 mill for 3 years is great or maybe 4 mill for 5 years just a thought.
Well, I think most of us agree that the Habs' offer is lowball. In that sense, it's only natural that PK rejected it. The real issue is what he expects to get. If he's thinking, 3.5-4 mil, then he's being perfectly reasonable.
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The biggest difference between the 08 and 09 team was puck support.
The 08 team relied on a number of short, quck passes to move the puck quickly and create transition offence.
The 09 team stopped doing the short passes and looked for way more home run passes.
The 08 team won with speed, but it was speed of moving the puck quickly... the puck is always quicker than what the opponents can catch up to it.
The 09 team wanted to beat teams by skating faster than them and going for long bomb passes. This got worse as the season went on. This can work and can create offence, but its way lower percentage of plays than the 08 team was using.
So, you're saying the team was well-coached in 08 but not 09?
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I do not have the technical eye of a Commandant, but the team I saw under Carbo simply did not seem to be a very well-coached team. There was very little structure to their game and everything relied on offensive momentum. When the players finally quit on him altogether it was even worse - total chaos out there. I still cannot believe the way he was immediately sainted as a martyr upon his firing; and that he's not been hired since is, I think, telling.
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Carbo's 'system' appeared to be to open the bench door and cross his fingers. To this day I remain puzzled that one of the all-time defensive forwards seemed to instil so little structure as coach. (I'll admit, though, this what-the-hell approach worked out great in 2008).
The retooled bottom six and eviscerated top six does make for a somewhat different team, so it'll be very interesting to see what Therrien has in mind for this bunch.
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It does seem slightly puzzling. Of course, in a normal negotiation, you do go in low and work up to a fair all-around deal. The risk is in alienating the player.
The Habs' argument must be that even though Subban has been our number one defencemen for two years running, this was an artificial situation created by injuries to Markov; that he's not yet a true #1 defenceman (which I think is correct), and that he needs to take a shorter-term deal that will cover the period of his ongoing maturtation into that. Subban, on the other hand, rightly sees himself as the team's #1 defenceman and wants a deal reflecting that.
I worry that it would be a mistake to give Subban a huge deal at this juncture. You have to be careful about over-rewarding a young hotshot with an outsized ego like that...it can become a factor affecting his development. The message a player like PK requires, over and over, is 'you have to earn what you get.' Giving him $5 mil right now completely undercuts that message.
Even worse, if the two sides are far apart, this could drag on into training camp - assuming we have a camp - and missing camp in turn tends to lead to injuries and substandard performance as the player scrambles to catch up.
So, lots to fret about here, not just the slightly remote risk of some jerk GM swooping in with an offer sheet.
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Galchenyuk will likely win the second line LW position and by 2013-2014, him and DD will likely swap positions.
Yes. This configuration makes a lot of sense. Even if Galy is NHL-ready, it might be good to ease him in via the less demanding LW position (assuming he can make the adjustment). Indeed, this scenario offers at least some hope that there is some method behind Bergevin's madness in totally refusing to upgrade the top-6 this summer.
As for Pleks+ for Stastny, this looks supiciously like a costly lateral move at C. Non merci.
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Yeah, the obvious problem with moving DD to wing is that it leaves a huge hole at C - plausibly assuming that Galy will not be ready for heavy NHL minutes - and breaks up one of the league's best lines.
One thing's for sure, line matchups *will* be very interesting this season. Unlike most years, where it's a pretty lame discusson topic IMHO.
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All my hand-wringing is premised on the idea that we will go into the season with basically this roster. If MB swings a deal to land a LW, then that's Jim Dandy with me and I withdraw all my provisional criticisms of MB's baffling indolence on this subject.
I suppose the analogy between our current holes at LW and last season's holes on D is a bit exaggerated, inasmuch as we *do* have forwards (Leblanc, Moen, Desharnais, Bourque, even that jackass Gomez) who could conceivably be slotted into the LW position. So some sort of crazy, wing-and-a-prayer game of musical chairs may be able to get us through the season. We didn't have this luxury on D last season. But as luxuries go, this is pretty piss-poor.
We'll see what happens. All I'm saying is it doesn't look good, and could have been made to look somewhat better with fairly minimal cost.
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Of course, our focus on the center position it should be noted that a few of them will likely move to the wing and it's up to our development to encourage a few guys to move to the left comfortably.
DD on the LW is the right way to go with the right line combination. I'm just now starting to wonder if Bergevin looked back at Moen's play on Plekanec's line and wants to try him there. His numbers were decent before the injury.
My bad on Meuller. But the wider point still stands.
I agree that Kostitsyn is an idiot, but my argument is that 25 goals and 25 good games per season (along with a bunch of hits) is better than zero. And as for Huselius - absolutely. We need warm bodies that can plausibly be slated to play a heap of games in the top-6.
If Bergevin thinks Moen is a top-6 forward, then our new GM is officially a moron.
Assuming this not to be the case, Commandant probably has the right idea; MB is looking at the glut at C and calculating that between Leblanc, Desharnais Eller, and Gomez 
one of our excess C will have to shift over to LW eventually.I can see the sense in this, but unless Galy makes the team out of camp it still doesn't help us much this season. And I don't understand why you wouldn't try to ice the best possible team provided it doesn't muck up the rebuild by tying you into bad long-term contracts (hi there, Doan). It also raises concerns about mucking up the development of guys like Eller and Leblanc who are not naturals at that position. (Desharnais will be fine no matter what happens).
This situation gives me very much the same feeling I had last September about our defence. We'd subtracted Wiz and Hamrlik and added nobody except Campoli. I was briefly able to convince myself that with a healthy Markov we'd be OK, but by and large I was very, very concerned about the vacancies back there. Now we have almost an exact replica scenario at LW, having subtracted Cammy and Kosty and added only Bourque who is not even a 'true' LW. You can see the trainwreck coming a mile away.
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The habs have the revenue streams, and the players coming off their cap in the near future (Gomez, Kaberle, Markov, Gionta contracts all end in 2 years), to match any offer and then retaliate with a similar offer to that team’s key RFAs.
It is not a strategy that makes sense.
As I said in the article I wrote on the history of offer sheets. Historically the offer sheet happens in one of 2 scenarios.
1) a team is vulnerable, either you heavily front load the offer to hurt the recieving team’s ability to match as they are small market… or B you put a big cap hit on a player with a team who doesn’t have cap space.
2) Retaliation after someone messed with your players.
Thats it… those are the two reaasons the offer sheet is used.
PK doesn’t fit into situation 1 as the Habs have cash and cap space to match any realistic offer. Situation 2 is the reason you don’t mess with PK, you don’t want retaliation from a big market squad like Montreal.
Great post. In a well-ordered universe it would pretty much put paid to all subsequent speculations and arguments about the Habs making offers for RFAs.
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I have to say that I find the last few posts mordantly amusing. Now we realize that Bourque is not really a LW at all, that his best success has come on the right side. Well, MB had several opportunities to add short-term depth to our LW position this summer and either refused to pursue them or failed to sign them.
This is a problem that never should have been created in the first place - Gauthier's fault for making an absolutely abysmal, Houle-like trade for our best forward- and never should have been allowed to fester - MB's fault. What I'm afraid of now is that, having finally solved our ongoing soap opera at C, we have created a new one at LW.
Of course, it's conceivable that MB will yet find a solution before the season begins and it really starts to hurt. Problem is, he's given no sign of being particularly worried about it. If he were, then at a bare minimum a Fatendresse would be signed here, and we'd have heard serious rumblings about Whitney, Semin, etc..
He still has a few UFA options. Andrei Kostitsyn is one. Then there's longshots like Mueller. These guys aren't The Answer, but they'd represent patchwork depth who could conceivably step into a rotating top-6 role with a Bourque, who presumably will have to play on LW a good chunk of the time. Better these guys on short-term deals than a big vacuum.
It's very frustrating to have seen a problem be created and then watch as the organization does absolutely nothing, nada, zip, to try to address it. If we go into the season with this lineup, we are almost guaranteed to regret this oversight.
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TSN says that Doan wants 4 years at 30 million. Wow. Pass.
Pass - I agree.
He'll get that, though.
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Brunet is an interesting comparable. He was quite a valuable player when healthy.
The thing about Brunet is he'd go on these little offensive tears. I remember when he was still young, thinking, 'gee, if this guy ever puts it all together, he could be a good top-6 winger'
Eventually I figured out that he was just a good third-liner who got hot periodically. But still, if Leblanc turns into a healthier version of Brunet, that'd be OK. I think he has it in him to be somewhat more than that. But I could be wrong. -
Red is right about one thing - the Devils are probably reeling a bit from the loss of Parise and may be looking to add talent up front. The likelihood of them adding Gomez is, as Elvis Costello said, less than zero, because one thing that organization is not is stupid; they might take Gionta back but only on the cheap. Certainly they're not going to damage their core to get an aging Gio, who even at his best was no Parise.
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Gomez is done. It's puzzling because he still has the wheels. What he seems to lack is the willingness to take any degree of physical punishment whatsoever.
But let's say he isn't done and just went through a rough patch, like Ernie Els. What would constitute acceptable performance?
Gomez's points totals will always be depressed because he can't shoot his way out of a paper bag. At his best he was an elite playmaker. You have to look at assists. I'd need a minimum of about 45 assists from him to be able to say he is delivering value. Add to that his traditional 10-15 goals, you've got the 'real' Scott Gomez.
But even then - does he bring anything that Desharnais does not? And DD is infinitely cheaper and younger.
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Don't forget the misconception of Detroit simply buying cups. When in fact you look at the line-up and the majority of the key players were all home grown.
What happens without a salary cap is that the same cluster of rich teams vacuums up all the top UFAs.
This is certainly a different matter from winning Cups, but it still sucks. Imagine knowing with near-certainty that Subban or Price are going to decamp to New York, Toronto, or Philly once they hit the necessary age, because your team doesn't happen to be a 'big market' or have deep-pocketed owners.
Besides that, who were the teams that contended reliably in the pre-cap era? Colorado - huge UFA player; Dallas - always able to sign the desired UFAs; Philly - ditto; Jersey - not a big market, hence the outlier; Detroit - able to sign UFAs as needed. You can't 'buy' a Cup, but being a rich team means that you can add UFAs to fill roster holes as needed and you can sign and keep your own home-grown talent. People say Detroit has a great organization. True, but they could also add missing pieces at will, while an equally good small-market team could not.
Otherwise put, a Minnesota could never have added Suter and Parise in a non-cap system. Nashville could never have matched Philly's offer. And I think it's a lot more fun as a fan knowing that your team has a chance to add star talent through methods other than the draft.
So there are plenty of reasons to favour a reasonable degree of fiscal parity. It could come from revenue-sharing or from a cap or both - doesn't matter to me - but I prefer a league where an Edmonton has a chance to keep some of its players rather that automatically lose them to TO or NY, thanks.
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For sure team is better without a Semin, you really think he is a character guy to help buld team chemistry, or would be the difference between playoffs-or not?
I also dont see a need for a top six, nor do i see cap space to do it once Subban is signed, unless it is through a big multi-player deal.
I like Bourque and think he will do fine, and worse case Gallagher/Leblanc may have to line up next to Plekanec, which may be a good thing in long run?
But i really dont care what Semin cost, we just got rid of one soft overpaid cull to Calgary and dont need to add another clown.
But if we had of signed Semin, i might at least want a salary i could dump/bury if he turned out as i expect him too.
Best of luck Carolina, the gamble may pay off but i have my doubts.
The cap space would come from burying Gomez in the AHL where he belongs.
I don't get why you hate Cammy and Semin, but like Bourque or Kostitsyn, who have just as bad a rep as unrelieable headcases. They just produce far less than those other two guys.
And yes, if Semin gets 70+ points he could well represent the difference between playoffs and not. It's the difference between having two good lines and one. We saw how that worked out last season.
But hey, if Bourque steps up, then it's all good. Where I come from, though, you want to see depth and competitions for roster spots. As it is, we're handing Bourque an unearned top-6 spot and have zero fallback plan if he gets hurt or fails to deliver. Dumb.
Even Kostitsyn would represent some much-needed insurance for that spot. But I don't anticipate MB lifting a finger there, either.
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Tim Thomas.... Shameful
Aw, that's nothing. Can't hold a candle to such atrocities as PK Subban daring to yap at his elders or MaxPac daring to give Chara a little shove.
But I know we can count on the Bruins-hating HNIC crew to take a courageous, principled stand and call this bigot out night after night, just like they did with PK for all his unspeakable abominations.
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I wouldnt pay 1/2 that for that floater and to say the Habs missed out, is not how i see it. More like dodged a bullet. Now if want to resign Kostitsyn for 1 year, i am all for that.
I don't know why you care what he's paid. It's not like he'd be eating cap space we need for other reasons. Right now his salary is being spent on Gomez. Your argument is basically that we're better without Semin than with him, or that Gomez is a better use for that money. On a team that's short at least one top-6 player, the argument makes no sense.
Now, that leaves Kostitsyn as a possible cheap UFA pick up. I never hated Kostitsyn - never loved him either - but I'd be all for re-signing him now, especially given that his bargaining position is arguably pretty low. But seeing as he's missed the chance to get super short-term deals for Whitney, Jagr, Semin, and even Fatendresse, I have a hard time believing MB bothers with this option either. He appears to have all the faith in the world in that slug Bourque.
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Right. The NHL needs to contain the spread between richest and poorest. In other words, the issue is fiscal parity. I don't know why, when the Flyers made their play for Weber or Carolina blows the bank on Semin, the media reaction is to pour scorn on the NHL's 'crying poor.' No one ever denied that some franchises have money to burn. The problem is the 70% that don't. Whether Philly or Carolina overpay for some UFA has absolutely no bearing.
Unasked in all of this is why it falls to the players to bear the burdens needed to create fiscal parity. Seems to me you could just as easily achieve the same via a really aggressive program of revenue sharing. Teams making above a certain margin would have to funnel profits into other franchises. Of course that never, ever comes up. Far better to exploit players than ask big-money teams to settle for less than obscene profit margins.
Semin's a great, no-risk signing for Carolina. It really beats me why MB is sitting on his ass with a lineup that looks like swiss cheese.
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For one season, with no other particular use for that $7 mil?
Not crazy at all.
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He will be all over the ice.
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Damn. We should have signed him, given that term.
We can only conclude that MB really is content with our situation at wing. Baffling, but there it is.
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The overall tone of this thread is pro-Semin, offering many good reasons for his low points totals. It sounds as though he is a victim of four factors:
-participating in a rebellion against Boudreau. We know how this can deflate a player's numbers (c.f. Cammalleri).
-erratic playoff results (he did have one playoff where he was a PPG player, I believe)
-poor linemates leading to depressed numbers
-being Russian, which automatically pegs you as a 'headcase' if you show inconsistency
He could be just what the doctor ordered for Plekanec, a fellow victim of crappy linemates.
It's a tempting proposition...I guess it all comes down to term. Perhaps his expectations vis-a-vis contract length will moderate as the summer moves on. If I were MB, I would certainly stay in contact with the Semin camp, making it clear that a Gomez-like salary is possible, but not lengthy term. If Semin truly believes that he has a bum rap, then why, ultimately, wouldn't he be willing to prove himself once and for all over a lucrative two year deal?
Permanent Trade Proposal Thread
in Habs & Hockey Talk
Posted
It's an interesting idea. And I think that, in the medium to longer term, that trade probably could help our team become a real contender (imagine Yakupov and Galy down the middle).
Problem is, as you guys note, it would decimate our defence for the short- to medium-term, probably making our team substantially worse for this coming season and maybe 1-2 seasons thereafter. So - unless you're willing to suffer a true 'rebuild' for the next couple of seasons - if you make that deal you absolutely must make a further deal to bolster the back end. You can see where this very quickly becomes unmanageable.