tomh009

PK is a killer, yes. But Allen is .900 on 4v5 PK, compared to Price's .841. On 5v5, it's .952 Allen and .920 Price. There is a difference in both cases.

An improvement in Suzuki face-off skills would be very good. At the moment we are losing offensive zone PP faceoffs and OT faceoffs. We need Suzuki for his skills but since he plays C he needs to be credible in the faceoff circle, too. Let's hope that the new team will work on improving this for all three young centres. Hiring a coach would be ideal but, really, there are not so many different things you can do in the faceoff circle. Video, training, strength, repetition ... it will come.

Thanks. Will you post the results manually at the end?

Yeah. But it's a choice of four centres. Let's rule Evans out immediately. Suzuki has really struggled on face-offs this year, around 40%. Kotkaniemi is closer to 50% but has not been in Julien's good books. So, Danault it was. Again. It will be very interesting to see the Ducharme approach. I am hoping for not only earning (goalie) starts and (skater) ice time, but also earning key assignments -- like the OT faceoffs.

I fully agree that 12.8% is unsustainable. But the super-low 5.6% is partly driven by Julien's heavy reliance of low-percentage shots from the point. This is not how the team was playing in the first ten games. Did Julien adjust the game plans because he thought this would work better? Maybe. But, regardless, the scoring (even 5v5) has fallen off a cliff as a result. My point is simply that while the power play is completely inept at the moment, there is work to be done 5v5 as well.

Since the slump started, the most drastic difference (apart from us losing games) has been the lack of scoring. And that is a result of the shooting percentage dropping from 12.8% to 5.6%. That's a huge cliff! Arpon Basu pointed out that in the slump, five of the Habs' top seven shooters (by the number of shots) were D-men. Shooting everything from the point is a low-percentage game, and the Habs have no longer been driving for the net.

At the moment, 5v5 play has been suffering as well, with Julien getting everyone to (pass to and) shoot from the blue line. The shooting percentage has plummeted. There is work to be done in both areas.

Short and to the point!

I honestly don't like either one of the Tkachuk brothers. If he had been drafted by the Habs I might have a more positive opinion, it's true, but he's still not the type of player that I would want to draft or trade for. But that's just me. Stutzle, on the other hand, I would love to have that kid.

Ducharme has a particular interest in PP, and there is certainly nowhere to go but up on that front. Burrows spent two years as an assistant in Laval before moving to the parent team for this season. He's not an addition as such, but I think they see promise in him for the future. (And, yes, he speaks French, too.)

It’s quite true that the Price/Weber window is closing. My question is whether it’s closing faster than the Suzuki/Kotkaniemi/Romanov window is opening. And in reality we don’t know yet. Yes, this could be the year. Or maybe next year. But, 12 months ago, how many of us would have thought that was even remotely possible?

I agree with your views, CC. I'm not convinced we are a Cup contender, even with new coaching. Promising young players, but certainly not experienced. Maybe more so next year or the year after, but I really expected this year to be too early. And then they had the hot start ... As for inexperienced coaching, Keefe has done well in Toronto, but he does have Hakstol for support. We'll have to wait to see what Ducharme's team looks like.

Oh, I don't disagree. I don't love every Habs player. And I do have opinions about who I would love to have wearing one of our sweaters. "Character", although maybe not quite the same as Bergevin's definition. 🙂

Except that Therrien used the blender approach for setting lines and defence pairings, there was no stability. Julien, on the other hand, was reluctant to make any changes at all.

It's not that Julien had lost the locker room. It's that his game plan was not working, at least not with this team, and the current league. And I will assume (with high confidence) that Julien and Bergevin did not see eye to eye on this, and Bergevin no longer had confidence in Julien being able to get the team back on track.

I agree. This is not a job security move. Bergevin, too, wants to win. And he came to the conclusion that it was not going to happen with Julien.

In the end, Julien makes all the final coaching decisions. Muller was responsible for special teams but under Julien's direction. If Julien had been unhappy with Muller's PP direction, he would have fired Muller. A few days ago I posted some stats comparing the first ten games with our current slump. I'll quote a bit here: Coincidentally, in this morning's article in The Athletic, Arpon Basu pointed out that since the beginning of February, five of the top seven shooters on the Habs have been defencemen. And even forwards are shooting from the point. Consistently. This certainly helps explain why the shooting percentage is way down, those are low-percentage shots. A quote from Arpon: This was Julien's solution. And it clearly was not working.

Quinn Hughes, sure. But I have no desire at all to see a prick like Tkachuk in one of our revered sweaters. Even if he would make us a better team.

I thought the offensive zone entries were bad but they couldn't even exit the defensive zone ...

Yeah, good point!

Polite company, you know!

That's supposed to be his responsibility, yes. Which surprised me. I recall the PP looked significantly better, even if the percentage was roughly the same.

Does Tkachuk's "A" stand for "Ass"?

Muller actually did pretty well in the postseason last year, especially considering he had zero prep time. He even had the PP working reasonably well.

I wonder whether Torontohab still has the bus and the rope he was saving for Bergevin ...