The Chicoutimi Cucumber

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.

Fair enough, but of course you have to assess a player based on his total body of work. For all we know Moen was playing through a groin pull or something. On balance, he is full value for the mere 1.8 mil he's getting paid.

He had a bit of an off year the season before last. That doesn't invalidate the fact that he was beast last season and perfectly good for us in 2009-10. The guy is proven.

I'd be willing to lose DD and take a gamble on Eller if it meant acquiring Yandle. It's definitely a high-risk move - Eller has potential but his play until now has not particularly impressed me - but it's also probably easier to lay hands on a passable #2 C somewhere down the line than it is to get a player with Yandle's profile. And who knows, Eller could blossom.

Oh yeah, I wanted to add - this is a step in the right direction in terms of locking-up quality bottom-6 guys instead of treating them like disposable asswipes (also known as the 'Gauthier' method). Moen is a quality grinder who, like Mike McPhee, sometimes comes up with big goals. No reason not to lock him in. Nice to have a GM who won't be scrambling desperately to assemble his supporting players every season.

I mostly remember his hideous playoff beard, he looked like a sasquatch. If Big Bird stays in Jersey, then this is fine with me. If Big Bird signs somewhere else, then I'll want to know the reason why.

This is the sort of deal I like. We gave a little on term, he gave a little on salary. Fair and it won't cripple us if he declines.

A wise man. Factor in Markov's propensity for catastrophic injury as well as his possible decline, and there's no way we should feel comfortable with Markov/Subban/Emelin/Gorges as our top-4.

Interesting speculation, that the Habs are positioning themselves at the front of the line for players other teams may not be making their Plan A. Yandle would be a tremendous acquisition, provided neither PK nor Patches are involved in the deal (I could live with losing DD even without an immediate replacement, for that kind of return); Doan, more the sort of shorter-term move I'd expect from a team trying to patch holes until help can come from the system. Either'd be welcome, but also long shots...and we'll have to overpay Doan, of course. Ah, UFA season, always fun.

Blech. Can't gripe about the cost, but talk about a blah player. I'm sure we'll have more interesting stuff to talk about pretty soon, though.

Good post. We have major holes right now, thanks mainly to the loss of Cammy and Kostitsyn (and Bourque's failure to show any sign of top-6 worthiness, just as Habs29 predicted) - pretty huge losses considering that our top-6 wasn't terribly intimidating to begin with. In all the excitement over the draft, the new management, etc., it's easy to lose sight of the fact that our team as presently constituted is basically crap. MB has some serious work to do in terms talent on the ice. I don't care how he does it, as long as MaxPac, Price and Subban are not part of any deal.

Well, 'hate' is much too strong. Metropolit became a lightning rod used to zap Carbo, who was roundly condemned for being sooooo idiotic as to use Metopolit on the PP. Similarly, Darche became a mechanism to attack Martin, because JM used him on the PP as well. In both cases, the criticism was stupid. These coaches wanted their players to drive the net on the power play, and rewarded players who actually did that with power play time. Simple as that.

Well, I'm a big believer that an elite defence corps is the royal road to winning. I'd accept a stop-gap solution at C if it meant bringing in an elite (and young!) defenceman like Yandle. Small price to pay. I have trouble believing that the price won't be significantly higher than DD, though, as you say.

Very interesting. But Desharnais for Yandle is a trade we win hands-down. It does leave us with a painful hole at C, though.

Too bad. A useful player, wrongly maligned by some Habs's fans because he was the ONLY guy willing to drive the net on the PP. But he was always on limited time and at 35, it might well be time for him to look to go play in Europe a la Metropolit (another grinder who was hated by some fans, for much the same reason). One nice thing about this is that it suggests Bergevin's talk about 'francisizing' the team is just that, talk.

Ha ha, well, it depends what you mean by 'biased.' As a fan, you can have an irrational liking or disliking for a player/coach/GM, or whatever - or you can have a reasonably well-founded liking or disliking of them. The first, I would call 'bias.' The second I would see as a defensible opinion. For instance, I thought a lot of the loathing of Jacques Martin was rooted in a focus on irrelevant factors, like his lack of personal charisma. Sheer irrational 'bias.' But some people offered more thoughtful criticisms (of his bench management, whatever), which I might have disagreed with but I thought more in the way of 'defensible opinion.' I'm definitely a Therrien skeptic, based on his track record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. (I am also extremely leery of his apparent hate-on for Subban - if we end up trading PK because Therrien can't work with him, that will be an inexcusable sin). That said, I always add the following qualifiers: first, Therrien might be older and wiser and better; and second, I think we'll have a bounce back year no matter who is coaching us, just because everyone will be so relieved and energized to have a fresh start after last season. So hopefully this is not just fuming unreasoning dislike, but defensible skepticism. Fundamentally, none of us really knows how Therrien will perform. We hope we get the guy who coached Pittsburgh as all those stars rounded into form and went to the Finals (assuming he was more than a cheerleader for a stacked squad); we fear getting the guy whose antics helped to ruin the Carolina series and who was so disastrous that Pittsburgh management felt they had no choice but to fire him with three years left on his contract. Anyway: I didn't invent that 'boring defensive systems' stuff. That's Therrien. Personally, I don't care about that - I endorse any system that helps a team win - but there's good reason to doubt that he is the man to get Gomer 'I wanna play freewheeling hockey' Pyle back on track. Hence my remark in this thread. OK, carry on!