tomh009

20-25-4 would be 44 points, not 48, would it not? Which would mean that the Habs are on pact to finish with 7-8 more points than last year.

A good team but ... they are playing in the Memorial Cup because they are the host city, not because they qualified for it.

Quite. happens in other kinds of businesses, too, and it's far from rare. And some exec egos go far enough that they need to send rockets into space ...

I think Hughes sees more potential in Xhekaj than that; otherwise he would have accepted a trade for a young top-6 forward that was apparently offered to the Habs.

Four excellent games, one very bad one. If he can bounce back, he is still a very good signing. Let's see what happens in his next few starts.

That's a really good point: longer average shift length can also be a symptom rather than the cause of the problems. It would probably be more instructive to look at the median shift length rather than the average, but I don't think anyone is providing such analysis at the moment. This is the best I have, the shift report from naturalstattrick.com. Note the highlighted ones, for players who had the most long or extra-long shifts:

And Flyers sure could use a goaltender, although I don't have any good ideas about how to make the cap work. Is there a contract on the Flyers that the Habs could (and would be willing to) take back? Neither Ersson or Petersen (at a $5M cap hit) seems to be the solution to their goaltending puzzle.

100% agreed on that.

Yeah, trading Slafkovsky for Anderson is not going to improve things. But Suzuki and Caufield were also playing against Crosby and Malkin, and that would have contributed to their crappy xGF% stats as well.

I suspect he needs some downtime to get his energy levels back up.

Holu cr@p, I had not seen them before, but the Jets' baby blue sweaters are even worse than the Habs'! 😮

So, if the Rangers really need a C, what would Hughes be able to extract for Monahan?

Philly dropped a 6-2 game to Boston this afternoon in spite of outshooting them 37-28. Ersson 10 saves on 14 shots, Peterson 12 on 14. They might be looking for goaltending sooner rather than later.

Or he takes a pay cut and stays, to finish his career in Pittsburgh. Much less likely, but possible. And it would still help start the rebuild.

In a single game, anything can happen, but unfortunately fans expect it to be repeatable. Just as with Poehling, too.

Taking a contract back is another option, though ... might work for some teams, not for others.

Based on naturalstattrick: Dvorak 57.9% (52.5% last season) Stephens 56.2% Monahan 55.5% (54.0%) Evans 54.2% (54.1%) Suzuki 54.0% (47.0%) Dach 37.5% (38.2%) Newhook 33.0% I don't know who is giving our centres face-off training, but it's working. Dvorak, Evans and especially Suzuki are far better at this than they used to be--and the Habs are now sixth-best in the league for face-offs, up from 25th last season.

Agree that he can't be taking penalties every night. However, two games is an awfully small sample.

He's not usually THAT dumb. But this time ... wow.

Three PPG by the Islanders, on a dumb penalty by Evans, and an even dumber one by Gallagher.

A valid point about this game. But isn't this Ylonen's third straight in the press box?

I think you got your wish! 😂

Apparently Pezzetta is in as Ylonen gets no love from St-Louis.

Caufield - Suzuki - Anderson Slafkovsky - Monahan - Armia Gallagher - Evans - RHP Pearson - Condotta - Pezzetta Matheson - Savard Struble - Guhle Xhekaj - Kovacevic Montembeault Allen

Right. Hughes decided that Ruzicka did not fit into the Habs' plans.