tomh009

Hopefully they remember the Red Wings debacle last year and take the Sens seriously.

Thanks for the comments. It'll be interesting to see what the Athletic says in their prospect assessment for the Habs, maybe later this week or on the weekend. P.S. I did mention Vejdemo in my previous post! Would you consider him more 4C capable than Poehling?

We drafted Kotkaniemi (in first round) and Evans (in seventh!) which helps our C strength. And traded for Suzuki. But is Poehling a write-off? Behind him, I only see Hillis, Stapley, Ikonen and Olofsson. Hillis is promising, but is he all that we have in the pipeline? Is 4C Poehling's ceiling now? I thought he might have the possibility to become a middle-six centre.

A six-year contract ... we could then potentially be spending $20M+/year by the end of that on our top three centres (if I have my math right, both Suzuki and Kotkaniemi would be UFA-eligible in 2026-2027).

Given how close we are to the cap, there is not much we would be acquire at the deadline, apart from possibly filling in for an injury at the bottom of the lineup. I'm not a huge fan of Poehling, but I do think he still has potential for 4C. And Vejdemo might, too. And, in the longer term, certainly Ikonen, if he has recovered from his rash of injuries (too early to tell whether he will actually get signed in the summer).

This is the question. Danault is a very good two-way centre, there is no doubt about that. But depending on how he plays this year, how much money he demands, and how well Evans develops, decisions need to be made. If he wants $5.5M (with term!) and his and Evans' performances are as they have been so far, will Bergevin lock him into a long-term contract? Or move Evans into the top 9, and bring up Poehling or Vejdemo. That would free up close to $5M of cap space, and would allow Bergevin to either retain Tatar or Armia, or trade for/sign someone else. In the end, it's not so much the question of whether Danault is worth $5M+, but whether that $5M of cap space is best spent on Danault or somewhere else.

One game is a really small sample, especially when the lines get matched: the opposing centre's performance will also impact the percentage. Here are the percentages for the season to date: Danault 55.56% Evans 50.60% Kotkaniemi 44.00% Suzuki 40.75% Work needs to be done. But Evans is very respectable at over 50%.

Petry leads all D with 12 points after 10 games. Toffoli leads the league with 9 goals. And the Habs lead the league with 16 points from 10 games (only the Panthers have a better percentage). OK, hands up, who saw this coming?

5-3 win and 36 saves on 39 shots. Four solid games for us already. I'm very, very happy with Bergevin having signed him.

Mete + Kulak tonight much, much better than Mete + Romanov last night.

A nice shot by Danault, hit the centre of the crest on Demko's sweater! 😁

No points for Ikonen in a 4-1 loss to Liiga-leading Lukko. Playing 3C again, about 13 minutes on the ice.

It's like Anderson started to give him a hug and then realized, "oh yeah, I might get called for this!"

I don't that was a defensive faux-pas. Now, need to take the game to the Canucks for the rest of the period.

Naturalstattrick.com has xG as 1.45 for Canucks and 1.51 for the Habs. I'm very happy to see 4-1 on the scoreboard. But can we really keep this up once we are playing not-the-Canucks?

I just have bad memories of the Red Wings ... 😲

Yeah, the team did not look very good before the penalties, the Canucks really had the upper hand. Very happy to be coming out of this period with a 2-0 lead.

Arpon Basu confirms that Allen and Mete are in, Price and Romanov have the night off.

Unless it's actually Romanov sitting out a game.

It really looks like it was Mete's agent, not Mete himself, that was making those demands.

I'm hitting F5 every few seconds hoping to see the recap pop up ...

And this, gentlemen, is how you score six goals on 36 shots.

Three stars were Petry, Suzuki and Perry. I would have really picked Lehkonen ahead of Perry even if the latter did get a milestone point, the fourth line really did a yeoman's job again tonight.

Yeah, that's about right.

While he has not had a good game (and neither has Romanov), I don't think it's "want". He has not played an NHL game since February 18 last year, almost a year ago.