The Chicoutimi Cucumber

In the glory days, the Habs' position was always that they would choose the best player, but if two players were comparable, then all other things being equal they would pick the French one. I don't think anybody would have a problem with that.

Doh, I knew that Clearly my brain has gone into 'Summer Cucumber' mode. Carry on.

Ya know what? You make a good case. And if they move Gomez this season, I won't cry about it, that's for sure. However, the lack of any good internal replacement (there might be no surer way of ruining Eller in particular than asking this of him at this stage)along with (perhaps) a desire to be perceived by the room as having been fair to Gomez, as well as his actual take-home salary this season as opposed to next summer when it drops, all lead to a move next summer as being more realistic. This doesn't mean that dumping him know wouldn't be better, though. As for Spacek - his salary is conceivably more digestable for Molson; why has sending him to the minors not been more discussed?

A lot of this particular round of Gomez talk stems from analysis of the cap crunch we are likely to face in 2012 when Price et al. are up for new contracts. I expect that people will flip out when I say this, but for my money this is an abstract future problem and should not really inform decision-making today, nor should fans get worked up into knots about it. I say this because of my wider philosophy of cap management, which, as may be familiar by now, is to sign who you want NOW and ruthlessly purge as necessary later (C.f. Chicago, Philly, even Vancouver). Habs29 is absolutely correct that Gomez's production would be easy to replace, so in a way we will be in a good position by next season - able to move heaven and earth to ship him out and toss Eller or Desharnais or some mediocre/cheaper UFA into the vacuum. Meanwhile, keep him around for next season; if he recovers his game, so much the better, because when he is playing well he is a very useful player. In short, his contract is crippling longer-term but not apt to be a franchise-crushing millstone THIS season. I was encouraged to read that Gauthier has been negotiating with Wisniewski. Although the likelihood is that it's just exploratory, this shows that management has its head on straight - not just dismissing options out of hand because of the cap, as some fans tend to do, but willing to diligently explore every avenue to sign and keep the players we need. Conceivably this is even a signal that Gauthier is willing to exceed the cap in the summer and make the murderous choices to get back under it by fall, which is exactly the attitude I support. It's a long shot...but imagine if we had Wiz, Markov, Gorges, PK, AND Emelin, along with Weber and whomever? Holy crow. If Emelin pans out that's a Cup-worthy D.

It's too bad we missed Claude Giroulx. But other than that, yeah, you're spot-on; and I fear it's sadly typical of Quebecois commentators to blame the Habs rather than look inward for reasons as to why Quebec talent has dried up. The real issue for me is not the lack of francophone players (although I'd love a francophone star as much as the next guy), it's the pressure the organization faces to have francophones in key managerial positions (specifically, coach and GM). That we could no longer hire Scotty Bowman seems to me pathological. Then again, one could argue that anyone can acquire adequate language skills to answer a few media questions with a little effort; and I do sometimes wonder why the idea of learning a bit of French is simply ruled out of court for would-be Habs coaches/GMs. It probably has to do with the anti-intellectual jock culture of hockey. In any case, when people point out how far the Habs have fallen since the glory days, they should remember that those glory days occured because the Habs were able to hire the best people in key positions instead of being an affirmative-action program for French Canadians. Everything now hinges on sheer luck, such that the small number of francophone GMs/coaches out there just happen to be among the best in the business.

http://www.hockeyinsideout.com/news/boivin-tells-it-like-it-is Just to rekindle some old controversies! The signal is pretty clear: the requirement that the Habs hire francophone coaches/GMs puts the organization at a serious competitive disadvantage. I am surprised to find Boivin, a vigorous advocate of the 'francophone' principle in Habs' management, stating this so bluntly. Interesting.

Well, that's as you'd expect after a season in which several key young guns came up and made the club. Nobody should be too concerned about this ranking. It just means that - as usual - the scouts have to succeed at the draft.

I don't really get fans sometimes. 'Jagr is a cancer...' etc.. Like we were all there in the dressing room. I'm with BTH. IF Jagr can be had affordably - a big 'if' - and if he has something left in the tank, then we should add him to our roster. Cup rings, massive experience, chemistry with Pleks, size, and (potentially, at least some of the time) world-class skills. I'll take a chance on that, thanks.

We'll never know how Pacioretty would have done in the series. Given the exuberance, robustness and skill that he showed, I believe he could well have made a difference in a series of close games. One goal is all it would have taken - this from a guy on a 40-goal pace. I'm not sure about the deterrent value of guys like Pronger and Lucic. Consider that it was the Bruins who lost their #1 C to an outrageous cheap shot; where was the deterrence there? For me, the real issue is simply whether you're going to lay down and let the other team take out your guys, or whether you're at least going to respond in kind. They drop Patches? OK, a few games later, Emelin or whoever drops Bergeron. Suddenly the series takes on a different complexion, because the Bruins have not been allowed to remove a top-line player from the equation with absolutely no ramification. Wamsley is absolutely right that as long as the league wants to reward vicious cheap shots - which is what they do when they allow a player to injure an opponent without suspension - we are simply suckers if we DON'T add a dangerous player or two to the roster. Remember: Chara got exactly the result he wanted. And players like him will continue to do so as long as the league is as criminally negligent as it is.

Yeah, I'm beginning to wonder whether we've been led up the garden path YET AGAIN regarding Mr. (Y)Emelin. Look: Boston deliberately ended the season of our best goal-scorer AND laid two deliberate attempts to injure upon our players in Games 6 and 7 of the first round. All three incidents came from different Bruins. That is a ridiculous ratio and a testament to their being a team of scumbags as opposed to one loony tunes nutter like Cooke. Philly has Richards, Pronger, and a couple of other notoriously dirty guttersnipes. So the rep of those two franchises is well-deserved. I don't think anyone is arguing that you need a mix of players to win. Still, it IS possible to characterize certain teams as fundamentally 'finesse' teams (Detroit, 1970s Habs). I've never heard of a team winning without any grit, although only the Broad Street Bullies seem to qualify as a team that won without any finesse element (and even they had Barber and Leach). If you ask me, two mean SOBs added to our regular roster would probably suffice.

Ha ha, I've seen this movie before. Expect Eller to return to the lineup two steps behind everyone else, lose confidence and consequently struggle for the entire season. All the optimism surrounding him after the playoff will dissipate and it will become questionable whether he has a future with us. You heard it here first.

Detroit is a finesse team. But of course you're right, NO team wins with 100% finesse, and 1-2 mean mofos on the Habs would indisuptably help.

Ha ha, well consider me abashed In my defence, though, all I'm really saying is that I'm not sure this configuration is an improvement. You're right that if the young players continue to progress and Markov stays healthy, who knows, we could make a run (and as I recall you and I agreed that the team should have been rated an outside contender even this season). Recalling that my previous (possibly cap-naive) candidates for addition to the blueline were Bieksa or Wisniewski, though, you can see where adding Emelin is a slight come-down. And note that IF the goal is Rebuild 2.0 this is an impeccable move. Ultimately, though, I think we're better than that. Contention next season is not out of reach if management is deft enough and we get a few breaks. So I'm not content just to see this as a rebuild. In any case, Gauthier is just getting started so it's waaay premature to draw any conclusions. If Emelin yields cap savings sufficient for us to add a useful extra forward, for instance, suddenly this looks like a superb piece of cap management. I prefer to think of my attitude as 'cautious' rather than as paranoid pessimism

No question that if everything goes right, we will contend. But to me that is not a winning recipe. Things will go wrong. Look at Vancouver. They have 6 legitimate top-4 defencemen. THAT's Cup-worthy depth. As for Bieksa, the Canucks are capped out, aren't they? They won't be able to afford his raise.

No question, they will re-sign Markov. I have every confidence that they intended to do so regardless of the outcome with Emelin. This is an interesting development, though. I've been fairly relentless in saying the Habs need to add another top-4 guy if they want to contend, whether it be Wiz or someone else. Instead it looks as though they're going Markov-Emelin Subban-Gorges Gill-Weber Spacek Whether this is an upgrade depends on Emelin. According to Bozo MacGuire, he is a legitimate top-4 guy 'right now.' But I think BTH is correct, we have to be realistic and expect him to serve more as a #5 guy at least until he finds his feet. For all we know he will end up benched, like Subban was. In any case, this seems to me a somewhat risky strategy; it banks on Emelin becoming a top-4 guy in short order, and on PK continuing to progress, and most crucially, on Markov not getting seriously injured again. Subtract his name from the D listed above and behold: only one guy who has shown he can impact a power play, and that guy is an NHL sophomore. Yikes. It appears that the Habs's pro scouting has serious faith in both Weber and Emelin. If they're right, then we have a cap-friendly, highly effective D corps. If they're wrong, we're counting on things breaking our way and will likely pay for our optimism. Or else contending this season was never the objective and this is more about quietly rebuiling. In short, I could be happier with the strategy they appear to have chosen, but at least it's interesting and looks promising for the future.

It sure would be fun to take a flyer on Jagr, assuming he would sign for cheap. Ah well.

Well, there was clearly an issue with player development under Rebuild 1.0. Only a couple of the heralded young guns we brought up amounted to much. That Gainey fired the entire Hamilton Bulldogs operation in addition to the Montreal coaching staff that had been charged with overseeing the rebuild was a pretty blaring admission of this problem. Mercifully, the early indicators are that we've turned the corner in this respect.

I disagree. Both Grabs and L'il #### were/are fiesty players. The issue with them was whether they are good team players. Clearly they weren't, at that stage in their development. As for Latendresse, meh.

I dunno...how did they react when Cooke ended Savard's career?

Yes, we should keep Weber. I understand why guys like Grabovski, fatendresse and S. Kostitsyn are playing (with great success) elsewhere - the Habs had a deeply poisonous team culture that had to be radically expunged - I too have had enough of shedding young talent. However, considering that O'Byrne was something like -18 (!) in the second half, I'm not sure there's much to learn from that particular departure. If he'd had those results with us you'd no doubt be howling for blood.

Just to be clear - this has gotten me in trouble before - I absolutely despise dirty hits. And I despise the NHL for rewarding teams that deliver them. But I have no desire to martyr the Habs to the NHL's unconscionable folly. Back in the heyday of goon hockey, the habs played with class, but also had enough physical toughness to be able to kick the sh*t out of the Flyers when necessary. In an era of vicious hits, we similarly need to have one or two guys around who can respond in kind. Otherwise we condemn ourselves to dropping line ninepins while our opponents laugh all the way to the next round - while attacking us for the henious sin of 'diving' in the process.

No kidding! That sucks, man. If Yemelin lays dirty hits, that's OK by me. We're competing against teams like Philly and Boston that have made deliberate attempts to injure an integral part of their success. Having one guy like that around wouldn't hurt us one bit.

Skepticism is the appropriate response. (It's depressing to ask how much better the Gainey Rebuild would have been if picks like Perezhogin, Yemelin, etc., had actually stuck around). How good is this guy likely to be at this point, anyway? Hasn't he missed the window to fully maximize his development by competing against the best on the planet? Just asking.

If the Habs tie up money in the back end, it would have the virtue of FORCING them to boot out Gomez in order to be able to lock up Price and Subban when the time comes. That's how the Phillys, Bostons, and Chicagos of the world do things. And that's what we should do. Like I keep saying: sign the guys you want, deal with future cap implications when that future arrives. If Gomer has a good year next year, then you should be able to trade him to a low-salary club looking for a boost. If he has a bad year, then you cannot justify keeping him around anyway. I agree, though, PK and Price should absolutely be locked up loooong term. None of this 3-year-deal stuff.

Obviously, Boucher is a good coach. He also has some seriously high-end talent to work with, which helps. None of that means that JM is not a good coach. That's the false logic of this whole debate. I don't hear anybody arguing that the Habs should have had much better results this season; the general assessment is that we got everything we could have gotten from our injury-decimated lineup. Indeed, Martin has delivered all you could ask for in terms of results for two years running. So whatever Boucher is doing has no bearing on whatever we're doing or did. I too hate Tampa Bay - I despise teams that suck ass for years and years, accumulate no-brainer draft-picks and then get endless unwarranted praise for their suppsoedly brilliant management. I also hate the French factor on that team which leads to Quebec media love-ins (like this is the team the Habs really 'should' be). Boston, meanwhile, is at least a real franchise with a real fanbase that has truly paid its dues. I hope they win. EDIT: I'd also like to know how the media squares its assessment of the Habs as mediocre with the fact that we took the Prunes to OT in Game Seven while the Flyers couldn't even make a series of it. Hmm....which team sucks again?