The Chicoutimi Cucumber

No it doesn't. I have Thomas in my pool :puke:

Yeah, there's been a whole heap of bad luck too. Emelin and Valentenko's refusal to report to Hamilton has been huge, especially Emelin. If all the hype was to be believed, had he come over two or three years ago, he might be in our top-4 by now. Maybe Valentenko could be in our top-6. Perezhogin is another talent we lost for nothing and we'll now never know if he had top-6 potential; I thought he did. Chipchura might have evolved into a heart-and-soul guy if not for that injury. Even Grabovski: how could the Habs have anticipated that he'd end up in some sort of pissing war with Koivu and the Kostityns and thus 'have' to get shipped out of town? And now Sergei Kostitsyn has turned out to be a f*ck-up. It's a sad litany. As for overpaying, yeah, other teams overpay too. Trouble is, we're overpaying for a core that is strong but nowhere near among the best in the league - at face value, not a recipe for a championship in a cap system. BUT!!! I don't want to be mistaken for bashing the new team. I like it and think we *can* win with it some other elements go right. But it shouldn't have been this way. We should have had Mike Richards and/or Carter and/or Bobby Ryan and/or Getzlaf and/or Parise and/or Phaneuf, players like THAT developed within our system, just as other teams do. THAT's the kind of core we should be supplementing with UFAs.

I really hate to say it but I've seen this movie before: young player starts the season looking great; goes down with a nasty injury; comes back but struggles. That would be my expectation here. Hope I'm wrong.

At least I can legitimately claim to have seen it coming. Oy vey. These things will happen, especially with a new team. They can make it all go away with a convincing effort in Edmonton. If they don't bounce back strong, then the first-half crisis I predicted may be upon us sooner than we thought. Please God, no more drama!! Let's have a bounce-back effort!!!

I am not advocating Wamsley's argument. I'm saying I see its force. I also maintain that if the cap doesn't drop by too much OR if it does drop and teams nonetheless retain their franchise players, then we're probably doing all right. I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't pretend to know how it will all play out. My bottom line is that there is no substitute for developing elite talent from within, especially in a cap system. I *thought* we had an elite development system. It is now clear that we don't. Most of our problems stem from this. I've criticized Bob's asset management and I stand by it, but the deeper problem is just that the young talent has been something of a mirage all along. Wamsley may be a bit unfair in expecting the Habs' brass to have prophetic insight about how players will pan out and to deal the ones that won't. I don't think ANYONE in hockey knew two years ago that Pleks would bomb like he did, or that Kosty would flatline like he has. I don't believe the Red Wings would have been any better at these predictions. (The one area where Gainey has acted with 100% certainty in the player's arc of progression has been Price...and he's been burned). We idealize the profession of GMing when we imagine that GMs possess some secret knowledge about how players will pan out. Certainly there are more and less educated estimates, but nobody really knows. On the other hand, we *did* have a lot of good young wingers and Wamsley is fair to say that an elite GM would trade surplus in order to get help elsewhere. Higgins, one of the Kostitsyns - they might have been traded for help at C or what have you. Granted, Higgins brought Gomez. So Bob did pull the trigger. Trouble is, he waited until Higgins's value was so low that other prospects had to be thrown in. Which is Wamsley's point, I suppose. Me, I think Year 100 f*cked up a lot of things. The normal approach in a disastrous season like that would be to trade Komisarek and maybe some others at the deadline and get fully value back; after January there was never any hope of a Cup run, so this is how it should have gone. But Gainey simply couldn't do that, not in this city in that year. The result is a dead loss, all those UFAs leaving town instead of being traded for VALUE. Imagine what Bob could have accomplished if he'd been willing to purge before the deadline! Great picks, great prospects - the mind reels. At the end of the day we have a likeable nucleus that is talented and waaaay overpaid (Gomez + Gionta's overpayments = one $4 million hockey player, perhaps that missing 2nd liner). We can win the Cup within the lifespan of this core IF Price develops and IF cheap young players emerge as highly effective complements to that core. Given that, what really bugs me is that Pacioretty, D'agostini, Weber, Chipchura, Maxwell ALL look like mediocre players at this point, while two players who we KNOW can play - the Bros. Kostitsyn - are such basket cases that we cannot rely on them. Can you look at our young talent and say with ANY confidence at all that we've got a promising second line ready to blossom within the next three years? That any of these players will be top-4 defencemen in the next three years? It's, yet again, player development that's the real problem.

When are you guys gonna learn, McGuire is like Don Cherry: he has specific likes and dislikes and these inform everything he says. Cherry is especially obnoxious because he's just a partisan of specific teams (Leafs, Bruins) and nationalities (Canada, US, in that order). In the case of McGuire, it's more of a simple hockey bias: he has a permanent hard-on for big, strong (and preferably mean) players; and a permanent distaste for small, shifty, talented ones. It is this bias that led him to his ridiculous pronouncements on Komisarek ('Markov will be exposed' without him, dontcha know) and the Leafs in general, to his many claims that Mike Ribeiro would never amount to anything in the NHL, his non-stop fellatio of Chris Pronger, and his recent run of relentless Habs-bashing. It all comes back to the One True Profile of Player that Pierre McGuire Likes. No deviation from that standard permitted, and any deviation will be 'punished' by scorn and criticism from his microphone. Since the rest of us know better, we should just ignore him.

This game has 'POTENTIAL BLOWOUT' stamped on it in big red letters. Hungry, near-desperate Canucks team...angry Luongo motivated to make a statement...meeting a tired Habs squad on the road that was short-benched in the last game and reduced to 5 D the game before, and playing its second game in two nights. YIKES!! Price will need to have the game of his life for the Habs to squeak this one out. On the other hand, if we manage to gut out a win, I will truly start believing in this team. :hlogo: Now THAT would be a ballsy win.

Basically, your argument is that Bob had 'no choice' but to sign 'sloppy seconds' and we should be happy about it. OK. How about considering Wamsley's view that Bob would have been able to bag FRANCHISE PLAYERS if only he'd waited for the cap to shrink? In any case, your post is so incoherent as a response to mine that I don't even know where to begin responding to it, since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I was saying in that post.

Well, Wamsley's right about one thing. Bob sank the equivalent dough into Cammy, Gionta and Gomez that rivals are sinking into the likes of Crosby, Malkin, and Fleury - and he did this in a way that ties us in for years. It is certainly possible to argue that this is 'short term' thinking IF we believe that Bob would have been able to sign TRUE superstars with that money had he been willing to wait out another season or two . If we believe that, then clearly Bob was motivated by a desire to be better this season and wasn't thinking ahead. I believe this is Wamsley's argument. And it's a good argument. But it really only has force if we believe that 1. the cap is going to shrink substantially and 2. this will result in teams unloading franchise players which teams with cap space can then scoop up. Even if #1 happens it doesn't necessarily mean #2 will. (E.g., in shedding salary TB ditched Boyle and Richards, NOT Vinny). In the absence of either condition #1 or #2, then what Bob has done is work effectively within the limitations of his own very mixed drafting record. As I said, and nobody has challenged it, the Gainey regime has singularly failed to draft and develop ANY elite player at ANY position except goal. This, IMHO, is our REAL problem and has been for some time. So now what Bob has done is sign three bona fide top-6 forwards. The Gainey/Timmins pattern of drafting 'useful' midrange players should then provide him with enough cheap filler to round out the roster effectively. And Price holds the fort. The keys on this model will be, as they have been with New Jersey, great coaching/team play, great goaltending, and all-around balanced production rooted in a handful of exceptionally strong individual players (but not franchise players) and above-average and cheap 'role' players (e.g., Plekanec, Lats, Laps, Kostitsyn). That would be the anti-Wamsley analysis. Assuming no cap collapse and/or sudden shedding of franchise players, Bob's corrected for his own limited draft success and put a model in place that, provided Price pans out as expected, should make us New Jersey Devils North going forward. That wouldn't be 'short term' thinking, it would be a defensible team-building model. I don't know if the cap is going to collapse or not and, if it does, whether we could snap up franchise players as a result. But Bob's tenure should probably be judged on how that plays out.

???? Wamsley is one of the very best contributors around here and doesn't deserve that. Chill out.

Nice game for the most part, from what I saw - too bad about the outcome. No biggie, but what worries is me is tomorrow night. I expect a tired and overworked Habs team to face an increasingly desperate Canucks lineup and a Lungo hungry to bounce back from a disastrous outing. It has 'BLOWOUT' written all over it. (The Vancouver media are already framing this is as a 'Gimme' given the Markov injury, saying that you couldn't ask for a better opponent when you're on a 3-game losing streak etc.. That's all crap, BUT the two games-in-two-nights thing will probably kill us). Weber looked fairly pathetic tonight, so we can't get Bergeron and his bona-fide Big League point shot into the lineup fast enough. Whatever Spacek's credentials as a PP QB, I'm not seeing enough effective shots from the point from anyone at this stage. Hard to judge Pacioretty because the French commentators have universally decided that he's not top-6 material, so you have to try to evaluate him through the fog. But in fact NONE of the young guys impressed tonight. The 'depth' is looking pretty shallow. Quit pickin' on Gill! He always looks awkward but usually manages to get himself out of his own jams. Pleks is getting the mojo back - Bob, lock that puppy up! (OK, wait until the second half) and Kostitsyn finally showed signs of life. We need Pleks to be all that, but if Kostitsyn can actually break the mould and be a highly-touted Habs pick who actually PLAYS like he warrants the hype, then we will become a very difficult team to stop offensively. The Big 3 are money in the bank; but it's Kostitsyn and Pleks who hold the keys to the season in some ways.

I echo the prevailing view around here. Sensible acquisition and a legitimate PP threat. Enhances our ability to replace Markov by committee. Cheap. And thus, unobjectionable. As for what happens to the cap when Markov returns, geez, just send Bergeron down, no biggie. I'm sure no promises were made.

I love all the eyebrows raised at the Halak start Martin is doing what everybody said they wanted, using Halak for about 30% of the games, giving him a fair chance. Good on them.

Hmmm. It's a good, fundamental question. In many ways the rebuild has already fallen apart: Higgins, Streit and Komisarek gone; its veteran anchors (Koivu, Kovalev) disposed of; its defining coach gone. We also threw away a lot of draft picks on Schneider, Lang, and Tanguay - all gone. So there can be no question that Bob sacrificed a lot for short-term goals in 2008-09, and there's no question that core components of the rebuild have now been tossed overboard. Bob has thus rebuilt on the fly via free agency. Two ways to look at it. One is that he's replaced a declining, aging, and inadequate core with a younger, superior one, and that this will provide a better platform for the up-and-coming young talent as well as the 'young vets' like Kostitsyn, Gorges, Price and Plekanec to succeed. So the 'plan' - building from within - continues, just with a new veteran core and minus Higgins and Komisarek, who were never that great anyway. (Well, maybe Komi). The other is that he's failed to lock up core players (c.f. Komisarek) and has fatally locked us into bad contracts for years to come in order to field a competitive team in the short term. In this case, everything has indeed fallen apart because of short-term logic. Time will tell. I do feel we're in good company in spending to the cap, and if the cap doesn't collapse then I have no beef with this. For me, Year 100 has to be viewed as an aberration. If Gainey wants this to be our new core I have no problem with it, but I emphatically don't want us throwing away further picks/young players, especially not to address temporary problems. What I want is two things: 1. Better development of young players. We've tossed away too many talented youngsters because they were 'immature' (Ribs, Grabovski, and coming soon to a TSN update near you, at least one Kostitsyn) and we lost Komi (and perhaps indirectly Higgins) in part because of questionable contract policies and in part because of a lack of internal mentorship. There's a sense that Gainey is bringing an old-school logic to new-school young players and that a more proactive approach would have helped. (Martin over Carbo is a good step - maybe the crucial step - in this direction). Instead he's scrambled to repair problems that, ideally, would have been anticipated. 2. Better drafting. Sorry, but the Great Gainey Rebuild simply failed to yield elite talent except in goal. Not slagging Timmins here, but Higgins, Lapierre, Komisarek, Pacioretty, D'Agostini, Plekanec, the Kostityns, O'Byrne, Gorges (acquired through trade but still young)...NONE of these players has yet shown any convincing, consistent signs of being elite players. Not one of those forwards is unambiguously a top-6 forward in the NHL. I have no problem with the idea of four balanced lines, and I agree that these are all useful players...but the idea of the Habs as an elite drafting/developmental organization has to be questioned at this point. Other teams seem able to find convincingly strong players with some regularity. Our young guns, meanwhile, have turned out to be more like pop-guns. So that's how I feel. Rebuild 1.0 didn't work out and it's partly Gainey's fault. Whether 'short term thinking' has fatally ruined us will be an open question until the future of the cap is resolved.

+1

We have a quiet crisis unfolding on the wings. With the loss of Higgins and the de facto disappearance of both Kostitsyns, this team has overnight gone from having seeming surplus talent on the wings to having only two top-6 wingers. This thread is a symptom of this underlying problem. IF Kosty pulls his head out of his ass the situation improves considerably. But I wouldn't count on that. Interesting to see how Bob will address this problem. But a problem it is, and it (incidentally) could cost us Pleks, who presumably will go elsewhere rather than renew with a team that's not giving him any wingers to work with.

I normally don`t indulge in this sort of thing, BUT... The Habs' secret weakness is at the wings. With both Kostitsyns seemingly going AWOL, and Higgins gone, we suddenly have glaring holes there - 2 1/2 regulars effectively subtracted with no viable replacements barring a surge by D'Agostini or something. So maybe BTH was going somewhere with the Patrick Sharp idea. Since he'd be a salary dump by Chicago, presumably they want picks/prospect(s). I don't think we can lose any more picks, but could a package combining Sergei with someone like Chipchura tempt them - ? If it did, we'd have a huge cap problem once Markov returns, given Sharp's $4 million salary; but were we to then flip AK47 for some sort of cheap defensive help (a decent young/cheap D, in the mold of Gorges) we might come out more-or-less manageably. The net result would be we acquire a legitimate top-6 RW in Sharp and lose a player who seems to have soured on Montreal in Kosty. This doesn't really 'fix' the D, but I don't believe we can replace Markov anyway, and I also think we are in fact weaker at wings than on defence if you look at our team objectively. Use A. Kosty to upgrade our overall youth/depth on D and cross your fingers that the 'committee' system works. Meanwhile you've given Pleks at least one decent winger. Just thinking out loud.

A poster on H I/O (OK, this *is* a rumour thread) reports that Scott Morrison of Hokey Night in Toronto expects John Michael Liles to show up in a Habs jersey. I don't grasp the cap logic but one assumes the Kostitsyn Bros' salary would come off the books in return... Probably crap.

Call me Cuke. :hlogo: Yes, I know what it rhymes with. It's just too bad Markov won't be around to be "exposed" by his absence. Right, Pierre Macguire?

I'm liking Gill, actually. He's always been clumsy-ish, but he somehow finds ways to be mostly effective AND he offers a genuinely crease-clearing, big body presence, as well as obvious leadership. He'll never be pretty, but he had a good game tonight and may he have many more. There's some substance there if not style. I agree on Gomez. But part of his problem may relate to your third point above. The answer to your question, I think, is mostly chemistry. These players are learning a brand-new system AND learning about each other. Nobody is sure where anybody else is going to be, which is why you see all those muffed passes, garbled breakout attempts, and broken offensive-zone plays. This particularly affects a guy like Gomez who is a pure playmaker and has shown in the past that he needs time to get sizzling with new linemates (c.f. his slow start in 2007). It's going to take a while for this team. I remember 1993; having integrated a few new high-end players, a few games into that season we were shellacked something like 8-2 and everybody was in a panic. Turns out it was just part of the process. The key is patience, and being good enough to eke out enough wins until the chemistry does start to coalesce. So far so good. But that's a further reason why the Markov injury is so disastrous. We REALLY needed his all-around excellence for this crucial phase when the team was trying to gel. Still, I loved the character, goaltending and opportunism I saw tonight. These attributes have traditionally defined the Montreal Canadiens and may yet enable us to survive the most unlucky start in memory.

Thanks. Meanwhile, apparently, the RDS Antechambre nitwits are crapping all over Gill and Mara. I guess they were watching the game through their patented Parallel Universe Vision-Goggles. Those guys were warriors tonight - all our D were.

That, my friends, was a real character win. Tremendous effort from a shorthanded and overtaxed defence corps, from Gorges who took about three crushing hits to Gill who ate up minutes and got the job done (albeit awkwardly). Then there was Moen's heroics and, of course, Gionta's lethal and eye-popping game winner. This team looks like it has no quit, opportunistic scoring, and character to burn. Not to mention GREAT FRIGGING GOALTENDING. Having said that, we were obviously outplayed for large stretches. :puke: My advice, for now, would be not to flip out about that. Gomez and the rest will not look this bewildered all season. These games are chemistry class - the advanced tutorial - and the great news is that the Habs are pulling out wins even with a team whose players have no idea where the others are going to be. But (apart from the Markov disaster - and Cherry further freaked me out with his comment that Markov will NEVER be back) the comments here have been right about one thing. Kostitsyn HAS to wake up. He is a crucial component of the Habs' plans for secondary scoring and right now he is absolutely pathetic. Unfortunately, this is a team in crisis mode with Markov down and we cannot afford to carry passengers. I can't believe he doesn't realize this...or maybe doesn't care. I would not be in the least surprised if he's shipped out of town in the next little while, perhaps for a blueliner, but more likely for help at RW. Before that, though, I'd have a little chat. And I'd also tell him that I have no intention of packaging him with his brother. (Might be a bluff, but it might make Andrei think twice in the event that he's just pouting over what happened to his little punk mini-me). I am soooo tired of players like this. Put your f***ing head down and BE A MAN, goddammit.

Anything is possible. For all we know, the players will come together and battle like crazy in Markov's absence and be well-positioned...only to suffer a letdown when he returns. It happens. Realistically, though, I think we'd better downshift our expectations and fast. I will approach the next 20 games with attitude I brought to games during the dark Houle years: watching individual players (especially young or unfamiliar players) to track their progress or lack thereof...and generally looking for interesting sub-plots within the larger story of inevitable Habs' defeat. (Like I said, I'm in full panic mode ) My biggest regret is that this random accident has about a 50/50 chance of costing Gainey his job. Bergeon makes the most sense to me, provided he understands that he's being hired as a PP specialist and won't get many even-strength minutes. The guy is widely understood to be death in his own zone, hardly a trait we can absorb given what we saw last night. Then again, maybe you could ask the same of Weber (or Carle?) for cheaper.

Why Brisebois and not Dandenault? I just don't get that. Frankly M.A. Bergeron might be better than either - a cheap PP specialist. I might do that if the 'replace-Markov-by-committee' approach is a bust.

No, in the interview Sergei says it was BOB who told him there was a place for him. In no way am I blaming Martin (or Bob...like I said, 'misunderstanding' might be the issue here). As for Grabovski 2.0...that's kinda my point. When I see that little pisspot buzzing around in a Leafs jersey, I see a talented player with lethal speed and skill who seems to be maturing into a bona fide pro and a quality 2nd-line C. I'd like us to find a way to enable these childish and immature hotheads to grow up IN a Habs' jersey, instead of out of town and to the benefit of other organizations.