Neech

I think you have successfully proven your point. Yeah, I like Carbo. He seems like a thoughtful guy, but he's also the same person who was a captain of multiple Cup-winning teams. And I kind of feel bad for him, after each Habs penalty he knows they'll show him on RDS, and he's just standing there pulling some sort of face or shaking his head. We rarely see any of the positive reaction moments.

Plus we gotta keep Streit around to maintain our league lead in captains of national teams. We've got three, and Komisarek might be USA captain material in a few years (maybe even as soon as 2010), and maybe even Hamrlik will take over for the Czechs.

Maybe Vinny thinks Montreal's too slutty.

It sure would have been nice to have him already extended. Where's the clairvoyance, Bob? Nah, I'm kidding, but Streit is an important cog in our powerplay. He's not the main man, but he keeps things together. The reason we have such good PP unit is because everyone on the ice is versatile and can pass well. Streit has played well enough that there is a good chance there will a GM or two who will make him a big offer, like 4 years 14 million. I would hope to sign him for something along the lines of 3 years 7.5 million.

After last season, I'd say that's in the upper range of what he would have gotten.

He would probably want to stay, but players rarely go for the hometown discount. Especially guys whose hometown is six thousand miles away. Markov was up front about wanting to stay from day one, but he didn't accept less than market value.

Our D was terrible, but how can you say that we were dominated all night? In a game where most of our blueliners were pylons and our goalie was rattled, we were in it until the final minute. Yeah, there were three or four very weak penalties against the Devils that game, in a game where our only two goals came on the powerplay. I think that could have contributed to him getting rattled. He might have felt he was alone out there, since the Sharks were running into him with impunity. He was getting angry at the refs instead of focusing on the game.

The difference is that Lucic is a damn good enforcer, with good hockey skills. That's a pretty rare combination, and it's exactly what we lack. Maxwell is another smallish skilled centre. He's not a bust, though, and I hope he reaches his potential. It's my opinion that if Lucic were in our system, he wouldn't be far away from making the NHL because of the hole he fills.

The difference is that Lucic is a damn good enforcer, with good hockey skills. That's a pretty rare combination, and it's exactly what we lack. Maxwell is another smallish skilled centre. He's not a bust, though, and I hope he reaches his potential. It's my opinion that if Lucic were in our system, he wouldn't be far away from making the NHL because of the hole he fills.

Yeah, most GMs wouldn't have traded Penner straight-up for all those picks, especially not a top 5 pick in a deep draft, which is what Edmonton's pick might turn out to be. I don't see why we wouldn't resign A. Kost before July 1st. I hope Gainey makes it a three year deal. More than that would cost a bigger cap hit, although it might be good in the long run. If it's three years we could probably get him for 2-3 million cap hit.

Touchy touchy, now. I pointed that out because there was a response to your comment in the part that you deleted. So maybe the re-hash could have been of benefit to you.

You conveniently deleted the rest of the post. 'Win and you're in' wasn't working before, I don't see why it would now. We gave Price the number one job so he won't be riding the pine after every bad start.

Sit and think about a poor performance, that'll be great for his confidence. Better to put him right back in so he can redeem himself. Neither Price nor Huet benefited from the 'win and you're in' system, that's why Huet is gone now, so Price can be our number one goalie who won't be afraid of being benched if he has a bad start. Halak will get one of the weekend games.

Well, Price sucked. He made a few big saves early on, but three weak goals will kill you any day. The one at the end of the second was what really broke us, it canceled our hard-earned tie. He might have been tired, this is the third game in four days for him. I also think his annoyance with the reffing might have cause him to lose his concentration. The officiating was terrible again tonight, and we came up on the short end this time (unlike Saturday, when we benefitted from many weak calls). How could Marleau not get a penalty for literally diving into Price? No one pushed him into the goalie, he barreled him over. Although it would have been tough to win with a goalie as rattled and shaky as Price was, our defense sealed the deal. Komisarek and Gorges were pylons on a few rushes, we let them skate around us to go in alone on the goalie like five times, which is ridiculous. And Markov needs to be smarter sometimes, I hope it will come with age and experience. He attempts the stretch pass in all sorts of impossible situations, and at horrible spots in the game, like when we're changing or in the final minutes. He made a few brilliant plays in the offense zone, though. But all in all we were right in this one. The Koivu line looked dangerous on several occasions, and Higgins had one of his best games in a while. The Plex line was great again, I liked A. Kosty's game tonight. Lapierre has been playing his best hockey over the last few weeks, and it continued tonight. Poor Lats, he's frustrated. But goddamn Smolinski, what a useless fool. He's either invisible or screwing up, like knocking our goalie over. Our best line was the Grabovski line for the second game in a row. Ryder was strong again, he's actually earning powerplay time but oddly not getting it, and Grabs himself had his best game in the NHL this season. It was a crappy loss, but none of our rivals gained points from our poor performance. We should put Price back in for the next game and give Halak Saturday.

You're better than this. You know what else is possible? The Leafs winning the Stanley Cup this year. Gainey's going nowhere, least of all Toronto. He's built his career on loyalty and leadership in MONTREAL, the last thing he would ever do is bolt and sign with our oldest rivals, with whom he has no history.

Seeing as you're English you'll probably be staying around Crescent Street and west of it. There are plenty of bars there. Also, Sharks is a pool hall, but it has a few big screen TVs, it's just west of Guy on St. Catherines.

I don't know where you got the idea that I was making a negative comment about him. Lucic was drafted right after Maxwell. He's exactly the type of player we need and don't have: a good hockey player who can fight, and fight well. This isn't a big deal at all to me. Of course we were going to sign our second round pick.

All that can be said is I agree with the people who say it should be Julien.

It's rarely sung when the going isn't good, unlike GO HABS GO. I see it more of a roll-with-it type thing, the crowd is loud and pumped up so it does the Olé song - it's an expression of confidence, like singing at European soccer games. The crowd does GO HABS GO even after the other team has just scored and we're down by two, they don't do Olé in those types of situations.

I hope he turns out to be better than Lucic.

You don't see many of those types of player playing into their 40s. Shanahan is one I can think of, he's 39.

This is a really good point. What makes the situation even better is that Halak is a great puck-handler as well. What impressed me was that the crowd had the confidence to do the Olé chant when we were short-handed with four minutes to play in a one-goal game.

Good game, I can't really believe that we're on top of the conference. Price was huge. Great poise, in and out of the net. The one Jersey goal was pretty fluky, but he didn't let it get to him. The game was pretty evenly matched in terms of chances, and there were so many weak calls in the game (of which we were the beneficiary of the majority). Glad to see Big Jugs get one, he deserved it. Kovalev was a bit off tonight, he was probably tired. Koivu and Higgins weren't great either. In fact, I think it was our fourth line who was the most consistent, especially Ryder. Our D was pretty good, but I might have to start calling O'Byrne the iceman, he always ices the puck. He made some big hits though, and I'd say he had a stronger outing than Hamrlik. Our bottom pairing was strong again. New Jersey plays a lame style and I'm glad we stuck it to them.

I don't see any reason at all to believe this. Perezhogin was not a success here, and was benched for most of the second half of the season. Andrei has had a good season playing on our top line, and he also has his brother on the team here.

Playing into his 40s? I doubt it.