Machine of Loving Grace

I have hope for Bitten.

Whomever was in charge of putting that team together and not noticing what other teams were doing? Shame. You gotta put equal talent out there. If Ottawa and Toronto and Boston are playing AHLers you gotta do the same.

Kotkaniemi will likely be our Kadri. He is right now our best prospect but once he hits his stride we need to have a Matthews and Marner and Nylander surrounding so he looks underrated. If he is our best young player for years to come he either broke out huge or we neglected a proper rebuild and will suck for another 10 years.

They allowed the most goals in the west last season so he could have his work cut out for him. 2nd worst team in the league.

Heart to Bergevin is the movie 300. You might have lost but you played so hard everyone is talking about you instead of the winners.

I just want him to quit and join the Panthers so he can run out Barkov.

Kraken or bust for me. People have already designed awesome logos.

He had a lot of outs too DSP for Matteau and getting PAP for Briere only to have to buy out PAP and watch him score 20 goals in Toronto. The Benn deal was another out which people thought was a win. He's a big part of why Bergevin thought the defence was improved from the year prior.

13: Cole for Ryder and a 3rd, Desjardins for Tokarski 14: Kristo for Thomas, Diaz for Weise, Collberg/2nd for Vanek/5th 15: Moen for Gonchar, Nevins/7th for Mitchell, 2nd/5th for Petry 16: Weise/Flash for Danault/2nd 17: Eller for x2 2nd rounders 18: Beaulieu for 3rd, Redmond for Deslauriers, Plekanec for 2nd 19: Bourque for Armia, 4th, and 7th That's his good trades.

Nine Coyotes scored more goals than Domi last season. If he scores 10+ that will be a very good sign.

We were talking about prospects the other day. There just wasn't anymore news. Of course that doesn't fit your martyrdom so

As the years have gone by and I've had some hindsight, moving Desharnais to LW in 13-14 was the ticket. He could have put up 40-50 points as a PP2 guy feeding passes for either Plekanec or Eller. Instead Therrien kept him at centre and hated removing him.

Here's the thing. We will get a good trade deadline return for him. 1st round pick, decent prospect. Maybe a decent roster player too. Now if we moved him at the draft, and he accepted an extension, we would have got more. And if we moved him with some years left, we would have got significantly more. So I don't think we will get just scraps, but nowhere near what we would have hoped once we knew we had a consistent 30 goal winger on a bargain.

Nobody thought at the time he was waiting out one stupid GM (Dorion) because without him he wasn't getting half of what he got. First thing Dorion did as a GM was tell Sakic he was interested in Duchene. You wait on a mark like that. Bergevin doesn't have a mark with Pacioretty.

7 years ago was 2011. The Bruins beat the Canucks in the Cup final. Galchenyuk wasn't drafted yet. Mike Cammalleri was still a playoff hero. The NHL only had two lockouts in their history. It has no bearing on the past two seasons.

Yeah I got my doubts it was Villardi + a good roster player but I can believe Muzzin.

Then it is still a club relying on Price to carry them, and I don't want that team. I want a team that scores enough goals that if Price has a bad game it doesn't matter, we can outscore the opponent anyway. Our last playoff series was two great goalies playing great and one allowed one more goal than the other and people blamed the goalie instead of the team that couldn't score. I don't want that to ever happen again.

The only move Bergevin made that a potato couldn't was the Erik Cole for Ryder and a pick. That move probably cost Joe Nieuwendyk his job as GM of Dallas. It was moves like that which gave Marc a lot of rope with me originally. It also unfortunately created the revolving RW door of Cole to Ryder to Briere to Vanek to Parenteau to Semin to Radulov to nothing. But at the time? It was a fantastic move by a first time GM.

That's all happened already. Talent has been squandered, development has been non existent, and the sky has fallen. Not sure what the other one was. When Bergevin is fired he isn't the only one that has to go. That front office will need to be cleaned out. Very few should remain.

I consider January of 2016 when the wheels finally fell off and the window started shutting. 207 games, 93 wins, 89 regulation losses, 25 overtime/shootout losses, 211 points: 23rd of 30 (not counting Vegas) in front of only New Jersey, Ottawa, Detroit, Buffalo, Colorado, Vancouver, and Arizona. Three teams in their division worse.

I guess I just read the wrong height at some point and it stuck with me.

Did Cale Fleury have a growth spurt? I thought he was under 6.

Agreed. And some don't get it that Bergevin walked into a situation where the Habs only had to compete with an unstable Tampa, inconsistent Ottawa, and declining Boston in their division. Their conference was a mirror New York, underachieving Washington, and disheveled Pittsburgh. 2014-2017 was a real window to make the final. In that time, Bergevin believed in Therrien. He stuck to Desharnais. He only had temporary solutions for 1RW. He didn't think Subban was good enough. He thought defence mattered more than scoring. He thought physicality was the missing ingredient. He trusted Sylvain Lefebvre in the AHL. And with the final years of Markov, he never found his heir, let alone a 2LD to play behind him. I don't expect him to be perfect. Pittsburgh won back to back Cups with an imperfect defence. But with this many issues during the Cup window, he closed it himself. Bergevin will be remembered as a GM who sat back on decisions the team needed most, and was always proactive on decisions the team didn't need to answer. And now we go into the season with a captain that reports said requested a trade, and I'm supposed to what? Ignore all this? Give Bergevin and the team a clean slate? I don't know what some expect on a discussion forum.

"As those terrible Houle teams" I agree with the late teams. 96 team was very, very good. 97 team was still pretty good but being quickly torn apart. 98-00 were garbage. The year he was fired early in 00-01, was the worst Habs team in history for season results and last year he was close to that. The current club has a Pacioretty on his way out after his worst season, an out of position Drouin with second line scoring, Domi coming in unable to score 10 goals in an 82 game season, won't have Weber for half the season, will have Petry playing 1RD again for half the season, atrocious D otherwise, Gallagher had his best season and it was only 54 points, like what else is there other than maybe Price plays like the best goalie in the league? Are we hoping for a 50 point season from Danault? Scherbak or Lehkonen do better than 35 points? Am I supposed to be impressed by Domi when nine Coyotes scored more goals than him last year? Am I supposed to think Alzner will bounce back? What am I missing? This team is as bad as those teams. We just don't have to live through skate in the crease rules. And much like back then, we have to deal with the Leafs and Bruins being better. When the only thing one can say in pride is at least we are not the Ottawa Senators, what's there to look forward to? The Houle years at least had Koivu. Drouin is no Koivu.

They made the playoffs twice, in 98 and 02. Their weakest season was 00-01 with 28 wins and 70 points. Last season was 29 wins and 71 points. 98-03 is 6 seasons, 2 playoff appearances, 2 playoff series wins. 13-18 is 6 seasons, 4 playoff appearances, 3 playoff series wins. Forgive me if I'm not so easily impressed.