The Chicoutimi Cucumber

Well, I've been speculating for a while that there were serious chemistry problems on the team. When almost every important player on a team under-performs that is usually the case. It could be that Cammy was a key component of all that - certainly the evidence is pointing in that direction. This doesn't mean that we should deny that the return for Cammy was distressingly low. I may be in a minority, but the Bourque I saw looked motivated but unsettlingly slow. He's just a fraction away from being a plodder, I suspect.

Commandant is right. Players generally need time to find their sea-legs. Give Gomer a few games before organizing lynch mobs; but for the record I thought he looked OK last night.

Trust me, if we rack up a pile of first-round picks at the deadline, I will happily eat that crow and his entire family. I just have trouble seeing it.

Come on, man. Jim Nill is THE best candidate. Whether he wants to leave Detroit is another question, but that's an organization fundamentally on the downside, so he might be amenable to a change. I heard Francois Gagnon on the radio a while back arguing that, from his point of view, the Habs need a bilingual coach because the coach deals with media and fans on a daily basis; but a bilingual GM is less important. This seems like a reasonable PR compromise to me. Hire Nill, have him bring a bilingual coach on board, and Bob's your uncle. Here's an eccentric choice for head coach by the way - Rick Bowness! Dismal coaching record overseeing horrible teams, but did pretty well with a strong Bruins club in the early 90s, has worked under Vigneault in Vancouver for years so has done very well as an assistant, and is (I believe) bilingual. Just spitballin'.

See, the same folks who on this board deride Gill as barely even a 6th defenceman, one who cannot take a regular shift, are expecting other teams to surrender a first for him. This way, of course, they can be outraged when we finally do move him for less than a first. I agree that it'd be nice to move him for a first round pick and that sometimes hungry GMs do dumb things. But REALISTICALLY you cannot assume that teams are gonna surrender a first-round pick for Hal Gill. As for Price, hoo boy, $7 million? Yikes. Sounds like he's got the Habs by the balls and is going to squeeze for all he's worth.

Rivet was a much better all around player than Gill is. There's a certain surreality to fans' wish list here. It's like the Cammalleri trade. We all feel Gauthier should have gotten more. Now that may be true, but it also may NOT be true. I also find it funny that posters who relentlessly rag on certain players as glaring pieces of crap nevertheless expect Gauthier to trade them for quality value. It's hard to get an honest, objective reading on just how much the players on your team are worth on the open market. Frankly, I think most of our guys could be moved for 2nd or 3rd round picks. More than that seems optimistic. -Gill is not worth a 1st-round pick under any circumstances. I can see him commanding a 2nd-round pick from a higher-end team looking to complete its roster for the playoffs, but even that's a stretch. 2nd round pick'd be great return. -AK46 *might* command a 1st-round pick if he gets super-hot leading up to the deadline, but again, I don't see it. Think 2nd-rounder. -Weber: the kid has potential but zero record of achievement. Maybe a 2nd rounder if you're lucky. More likely a 4th rounder, or a player swap (team that wants a young PP specialist trades a young potential FW, something like that). -Moen: 2nd rounder. In some ways, I think he will be out hottest commodity at the deadline. Cup winner, has produced in the playoffs before, adds grit and leadership, won't alter your 'core' or disrupt chemistry - a perfect deadline pickup. -Campoli: will be desirable, but his value's low. 4th-5th rounder. This is why I was counting on Gauthier to PACKAGE Cammalleri with some of these guys. Because I can't see any of them, taken in isolation, yielding a return that is sufficient to make a real impact on the future of this team.

Well, they played a spirited game last night, and against Boston. I'd expect some energy in the first half followed by a big sag in the second after the usual array of missed open nets, crossbars and posts, and assorted bad luck that follows this team along night after night like a cloud. I say, 2-1, going into the 3rd, final score 4-1 Rangers.

Good. Molson needs to learn two lessons here: 1. You max out your profits when the team wins. 2. The team wins when you leave hockey operations ALONE.

Carbo had one great year and two horrible ones. His teams played seemingly without structure. He probably learned a lot from that experience, but nothing in his track record as coach indicates that he's the guy to hire if you want to WIN.

The parallel with the Ballard Leafs is unsettling. We should all be worried. It's too soon to panic, though. The organization was thrown into an unexpected situation, when a proven team in a position to improve instead took a huge lurch backward. When that sort of cataclysm happens, weird stuff follows - look at 2009 and the whole Carbo circus. There was nothing wrong with Gainey's operation, widely viewed as top-flight. It was just that the operation was thrown into the hopper due to extreme circumstances. Now, the situation at the top clearly needs to stabilize. If the problem is Gauthier rather than Molson, then that's great news. We can, as Commandant has proposed, begin a comprehensive, rigorous and determined search for a GM - and I hope Jim Nill is the guy standing at the end - and hit 'reset,' with a team that is in vastly better shape than the one Gainey inherited. But even if we don't unload Gauthier, subsequent years may show this season's chaos to have been a big aberration caused by disastrous results. Remember, his hockey decisions have been in the main sensible, he did lure Cole and Emelin, and he *was* GM through our generally successful season last year. Gauthier has clearly failed to distinguish himself as the coolest, steadiest hand at the rudder in a crisis...but that's true of a lot of general managers. What absolutely cannot continue is the strong sense, felt by everyone from fans to players, that management is not in full command of events (as with the confused messaging around Cunneyworth) and that they are just reacting, reacting, without a plan. PG needs to make up his mind about what to do now that the original plan, which was to compete, is in the toilet, and proceed decisively, smoothly and competently in the new direction. That will settle everyone down and is his best chance of not being fired - unless Molson has already made up his mind, or is an idiot.

Yeah, scanning through past draft results, there is a lot of variation, but on balance it seems that only the top 2-3 picks can be relied upon to yield heavy-duty impact players. In other words, I'm not so sure that a #5 pick is all that much greater than a #10 pick in this regard. (Of course it's not as though I've crunched these numbers so I stand to be corrected by statisticians; but consider that we took Price at #5 and LA took Kopitar at #11). In terms of probabilities, I suspect we need to draft no lower than 3rd overall to have a reliable shot at a franchise player. And even going to 3rd overall, the record from 2005 to 2010 is -Jack Johnson -Jonathan Towes -Kyle Turris -Zach Bogosian -Matt Duchene -Eric Gudbranson I see one clear cut 'franchise' player there (Towes). The rest aren't exactly garbage, but I dunno, I don't see myself hanging on the edge of my seat pulling for the Habs to lose so we can draft the equivalent of Turris or Bogosian. So I still think the odds are against us coming out of this with a franchise player. Sorry, guys.

I agree that we should be amassing picks. The usual list - Gill, Moen, Kosty (if he can't be signed), Campoli, etc. - should be shipped out for picks or prospects. Unload Gomez in the off-season and suddenly you've got mountains of cap space and a lot of future assets. As for 'hoping the Habs lose,' even if brobin is right and we're well-positioned to bag a top-3 pick, I think we can trust these jerks to lose enough games without our psychic encouragement. When I watch the team play, I want them to win. Period.

Too bad the odds are heavily against us getting him. Get real folks.

I can't sit there hoping the Habs lose. Goes against every fibre of my being. Besides, we have no guarantee of picking in (say) the top-3 at the end of the day anyhow. No one is going to catch Columbus in the basement, first of all. Secondly, the random lottery factor could work against just as well as for us. I haven't studied the upcoming draft pool, but unless there are half a dozen 'franchise' players waiting to be selected we cannot assume that we will be all set to bag a player of the calibre sufficient to change the future in a big way. Take the 2008 pool. http://www.nhl.com/ice/draftsearch.htm?year=2008&team=&position=&round= Of the top-10, only the first two have proven to be that kind of special player (Stamkos and Doughty). Sure, I'd take Bosogian or Schenn on my team, but I don't know if those guys are transformative players vastly better than you can find at, say, #15 in the draftng order. The Sabres got Myers at #12; the Rangers, DeZotto at #20. I doubt that those teams wish they had 'tanked' and finished, say, 3rd or 4th last that season. So basically, we have no chance of finishing last overall; the prospects for doing so rely purely on lottery luck. All you're wishing for is for the Habs to lose. Period.

It's not complicated with Kosty. You try to sign him. If he is not interested, or asking anything over, say, $4 mil, you trade him for whatever you can get and move on with your life.

Carbo for GM. Outside the box, sure, but he has administrative experience with Gainey in Dallas and has leadership credentials. I could live with that choice.

I think the Habs under Gainey were something approaching an exemplary organization in terms of how they ran their operation, if not always in terms of on-ice results. That's how we became a desirable UFA location and generally regarded as a strong franchise (the 'crown jewels,' to quote Ferraro a while back). Habs29 is absolutely right that we now look like a team in disarray at the highest level. It's not so much, to my mind, that the specific decisions have been so bad - it's not like Houle in that sense - but that the manner in which they've been made has seemed totally classless, scrambly, and mickey mouse. I notice that a lot of media types - including former players - don't seem to like Gauthier much on a personal level. Which'd be OK if he were brilliant, but brilliant he hasn't been. PG may be one of these 'bright' types whose mind impresses but who simply does not know how to manage people (akin to Stéphane Dion, a politician with lots of good ideas but who couldn't 'lead' a party to save his hide). Or else, Molson is the source of the problem and we have a new Harold Ballard at the top. This is even worse, because unlike Gauthier, ownership cannot be replaced. We'll know more by the end of the summer, I think. This whole season could be an aberration, with the weird behaviour caused by a team that unexpectedly hit the skids and drove the GM to extremes; a little good luck, some wins, and things stabilize. Or, the Goat could be fired and we start afresh. Or, Molson is the cause; and we are in for a long, long decade or two ahead: the new Toronto Maple Leafs. Interesting times.

Well, I suspect for Cammy it was -JM + -no Markov for the forseeable future -apparent confusion at the managerial level = get me the hell out of Dodge. But he seemed pretty clearly to sour here not just this season, but last season. There were a lot of comments then about how he didn't seem to be bringing the same enthusiasm. So maybe the combo of no Markov plus Martin were sufficient to curdle his milk.

Actually, zumpano's criteria describe Bob Gainey to a 'T.' He brought EXACTLY those qualities. Which just goes to show that there's no magic bullet. Montreal will not tolerate a rebuild. Cripes, we can't even tolerate an extended slump without firing coaches: no one has lasted more than 2 1/2 years in what, 15 years? Meanwhile, I still don't see PG as terrible, although he certainly has set the team back in terms of organizational culture by doing weird things like leaving Cunney out to dry, firing Pearn then Martin, trading Cammy during a game, etc.. Vancouver radio legend Don Taylor was on today defending the trade from Montreal's standpoint, but mocking the organization for acting like the Columbus Bluejackets. 'Are these the Montreal canadiens??' he asked, aghast. Which shows both how well regarded we've become and how badly that rep is being damaged by the chaos at the top. Nonetheless, his moves remain mostly sensible. The problem isn't that he's made huge mistakes, it's the lingering sense that he could have done better, But it might be worth sweeping clean just to kind of restore order and hit 'reset.' I don't trust Roy not to immolate in the job, but at least he'd bring immense presence and stature. But I still want to know why nobody mentions Carbo as a GM (not coach).

His role is to boost the dangerously low Alaskan content on that line.

I think it was Boone who yesterday floated an old rumour that Gainey had targeted Cammy as his top off-season priority but was told Cammy wouldn't sign if Koivu was our top-C. Hence the trade for Gomez. IF this is so then in some sense Cammy did come here because we signed Gomez. The other thing was reported as fact by Arpon Basu, which was that Cammy saw his game as being based on scoring off feeds on the PP. He signed here because he'd heard Markov was a 'stud' - Joe Thorton's word. One of the sad ironies in all this is that Cammy hardly played at all with Markov, as Commandant pointed out in the other thread. Commandant's post above is a good reminder of something everyone seems to forget, namely that the Gomez of last season was nothing like the Gomez of every previous year. Gomez Mach 1 was indeed an elite playmaker. Everyone has forgotten that of course and acts like Gainey consciously went out and got a 35-point C for Macdonagh and 7 mil per.

? Is this really the proposed line???

It shouldn't be taken as gospel that players' numbers are bound to decline up coming to Montreal. This was partly true under JM's system (although not for Cole). But Cunneyworth is NOT JM. It's reasonable to budget Bourque for 25+ goals.

Yep.

If Subban is moved we had BETTER get monster value back. GRRRRRRRR. As for Pleks, he's a fine player, but not an 'unotuchable' player. Getzlaf/Desharnais/Eller is a significant step up on Plekanec/Desharnais/Eller, so in principle I could live with that.