Peter Puck

The Habs have since made it clear that they thought both Price and Staal were future franchise players. The scouts disagreed on which of the two to pick and Gainey/Timmons decided tht a franchise goalie is more valuable than a franchise Dman. This makes it clear they were picking what they thought was the BPA.

Lets get the facts straight at least. He showed up to camp still recovering from an injury. He played 2 preseason games and then was sent down. When did he slag his teammates in the press? Link please. And don't point to some russian "reporter" - all those guys are unreliable nd hardly qualify as press.

Sure Sergei handled himself badly. But the Habs handled him badly too. The difference is that an experienced coach should be able to deal with an immature player. Sergei has a lot of talent - he has the skill set to be a top 6 forward. He is capable of playing with grit. He regressed under Martin but still was quite good defensively. You ask "what was Martin supposed to do?" The answer is that Martin was supposed to teach him how to play in the NHL. Sergei has the skills and Martin failed to mold him into a player. What he did intead was drive him out of town. It's easy to say that its Sergei fault but there is no question Martin failed with him. We will see how the Predators do. I'm pretty sure Sergei has the makeup to be a good player. The coach's job is to develop that potential.

I'm not so sure we won this trade. Lots of people are down are Sergei but I still think he is the probably the best player among the three. Martin doesn't like him and handled him badly so I guess we had to get rid of him. But I think it will take two years before we know whether we got the short end of the stick on this deal.

Also note that neither of these teams has strong goaltending. Yet one of them will win the cup. We need to stop wasting picks on goaltenders. Lets dump both Price and Halak (neither has ever reached a cup final) and try finding some more average to below average tenders.

This is great news as it guarantees us a spot in next year's Stanley Cup final.

A lot of people (e.g. Don Cherry) seem to think that Lapierre is somehow obligated to fight. Somehow the fact that he gets under the other team's skin is supposed to mean that he being dishonourable if he doesn't fight. I don't really understand this. Briere gets the opposition mad by scoring goals - but no one thinks this means he has to fight anyone who challenges him. I understand that opposition players want to beat him up but why should he be required to give them the chance?

Here's a point I haven't heard anyone comment on regarding our goalies. Next year all goalies will have to wear pads whose size is proportional to the individual goaltender. I don't expect this to affect Price much given his size. On the other hand, I think Jaro will be forced into smaller equipment. How will this affect his play? How will it affect the play of other goalies in the league? For this reason, I am nervous about putting our eggs into Halak's basket. I note that Pang, the world's smallest goalie thinks we should keep Halak and let Price go. I don't think any team will spend $5 million for Halak. His body of work in the NHL just isn't extensive enough yet. There are too many goalies who have gotten hot for a season or less and then fizzled.

The team admitted that they considered trading Halak to Philly. The team also said that Philly wasn't willing to offer what Gainey thought he was worth. How does this translate into a mistake by Gainey? To me the bottom line is that the all players he brought in last summer (except Mara who is injured) were the key players in the victory over Washington. I don't think you will find many people who think we would have won that series if we had kept the UFA's from last year whom Gainey let go. The decision to let 9 UFA's walk was a huge risk. I think the team's play against Washington proves that we are better after changing the core especially given that we are a much younger team now. Gainey's gamble has been vindicated. Many people think we are in deep cap trouble but I am not convinced. Many teams have looked like they were screwed by the cap and suddenly they find a loophole or a trade no one thought possible and then they are fine. If we trade Hamrlik this summer we are okay.

This is just ridiculous. Just because you thought Gainey was doing a bad job and should be fired doesn't mean the ownership was about to fire him. Furthermore, the idea that he quit because he was afraid of losing his job is completely unsubstantiated. Although obviously Halak did an unbelievably fantastic job I don't know what you mean by proving he is capable of playing a 7 game series. He only played 6 games and he got shelled in one and a half games. I don't mean to criticize Halak but I don't know how any one can conclude from this that he is capable of playing a 7 games series. Furthermore, what we want is goalie who can play a regular season and then 4 series. Halak might be the guy but we still don't know. Finally, I'll say that I won a bet on the Canadiens (at 3 to 1 odds) after game 4. I don't claim that this proves anything though.

This is a bit off topic but I noticed that Hershey outshot Bridegport 34-7. At one point in the second period the shots were 23-1!!! Here's the game sheet.

Subban wins it 6 minutes into the 2nd OT!!!!

Glumac! scores with 8 minutes to go in the 3rd to tie it up 4-4. Stevenson with the assist. 3:30 left in the third now.

Yes, JoeLassiter is this year's winner. kaos is runner up. Nobody else was really close.

Wow, Mark Flood has played in the Islander last 5 games. I wonder if he can stick in the NHL?

Well the Leafs now have their backs against the wall. Their chances of making the playoffs are now 4 in 100 million (against). Time for them to pull out all the stops.

Thanks. Thanks.

What happened? I guess I'm forced to use the interweb to see if I can find out if this game was played.

Well I think a team's OT record predicts something about the playoffs. A good OT record in the regular season predicts a good OT record in the playoffs. There is a significant difference in that regular season OT is 4 on 4. Still the fact that we play especially well when the next goal wins the game has to be seen as a good sign for the playoffs.

What does it matter if Chara has to avoid shorter people's heads when he throws hits. If Gionta hits someone low the refs still call it clipping and give him a penalty because hitting people low is dangerous. Should Komisarek and Chara be allowed to high stick shorter players?

Wow. Weber finished the game +5 (and we only scored 5 goals).

Actually if you watch Laps' hit closely you'll see that it wasn't really late. Nichol's shot hits the post and bounces back to him. Nichols swings wildly at the puck as it goes by and at the same moment Laps shoves him.

Why wait for TSN to report it. I already told you what was going to happen.

To me that was much worse than the Lapierre hit. It also did more damage and drew a penalty from the ref. But given the double standard I'm going to say he gets 2 games. I think that deserves 5 or 6 games.

He got 2 tonight to take him to 50.