tomh009

A good point. I guess we need to wait and see what St Louis decides to do.

Agreed. But then most teams do have massive misses in drafts from time to time.

I think the guy did a masters' degree thesis on this, so there is some real stats work that went to it. But as with all models, there are more variables than can be managed by any realistic model, so there are always some issues. It's also strictly an offensive stat, so less useful for D, especially for non-offense-oriented D. For example, Guhle is quite low on the PNHLe ratings. As for Roy ... if the #150 pick turns into a top-six forward, almost like Gallagher, I would be super happy with the pick.

A start for Primeau, since Montembeault played last night?

So it is ... the standings must not have completely updated when I looked at them before (they did show the Habs' streak as OT1 already though).

However, the power play was pathetic, I think the worst that I have seen under St Louis. 11:26 of PP time, and we barely outshot the Kraken, 4-3, during that time. Oh, and the Kraken of course did outscore us there, too.

Yeah, once we were down to Pezzetta ... Anyway, we're three points back of both Arizona and Seattle now. And that's a good thing.

Yeah, Wideman really had little chance to do anything, I'm sure he was not expecting the puck. The quick move made sense for Montembeault but not checking behind him turned out to be costly. Of course if Anderson hadn't lost the puck in the offensive zone we wouldn't be analyzing this. Oh well. The 2-1 and 3-1 goals both had Seattle forwards wide open.

It's a never-ending parade of injuries this year. But, I suppose, better this year than in a year where we might actually be in with a chance.

I'm not quite sure how to assign credit for that. Montembeault made the save, saw Wideman and handed the puck to him to keep the power play going, but wasn't aware of Gourde behind him. Wideman took the puck, but either didn't see Gourde or didn't have time to clear the puck. And then almost a second SHG on the same power play ...

Playing Lehkonen next to Poehling and Armia is not likely a move intended to increase his trade value ..

Three goals on six shots -- ouch!

Maybe conditional on a medical?

Trying this again ...

At the moment it looks like we'll still have Drouin, Dauphin, Perreault and Montembeault on the roster. I think that's more francophone players than we have had in a long time.

Ignoring streaks, Drouin has still been averaging about 45 points/82 games, so I do think that counts as an impact (though not elite, clearly) player, on average. What he can do with St Louis is still to be seen.

I suppose that could be his ceiling, but it surely is not his floor.

Dvorak 2C, Evans 3C, Faksa 4C?

He was close in 2019-2020, pace of 23g+20a, but that was a career year, at least so far. I really think he has the tools to do more, but somehow the execution is not there, whether it's a matter or effort or something else.

Even if he is, he's not going to substantially reduce Suzuki's PK time since Lehkonen is already the Habs' most-used penalty killer.

You would also lose Lehkonen on the PK (118 minutes TOI), so I don't think you would be reducing the load on Suzuki any.

And Carolina has not really improved the situation. In the 24 games in 2022, he has 4g+5a, and averaging just 12 minutes on the ice. More recently he has dropped below 11 minutes TOI. There may have been entitlement with the Habs, but handing him a $6M contract certainly would not fix that.

A win for Arizona, a loss for the Leafs and a point for Seattle, that counts as a good night!

Lehkonen is a quiet guy (he's a Finn after all) so there is very little to indicate what he wants. He could possibly love the city and the team and sign that deal. Or maybe he can't wait to leave. He's said so little publicly that there is really nothing to go on to predict that.

The only way the Habs will know the answer to that question is by having Hughes pick up the phone ...