Peter Puck

I like Souray and would like to keep him. But he needs to be signed. If we can't sign him we should trade him. Even though there has been lots of dissing of Souray here, the fact remains that there are a few teams with a shot at the cup that would give up a prospect and a pick at least for him. Maybe quite a bit more when teams start to get desperate at the deadline. I can only see 2 reasons why we wouldn't trade him: 1) Gainey thinks he makes the difference in making the playoffs or missing them or else he thinks Souray will allow us to go deep in the playoffs. 2) We have a good chance to resign him but Gainey thinks that by trading him now we substantially damage our chances of resigning him. Given that we haven't been able to resign him all season I don't think (2) is true. Maybe Souray is willing to stay but if so why won't he sign now. If he is willing to resign but not until after the season we can still trade him and resign him in the summer. (1) doesn't seem very likely either. The way the team is playing now, Souray might make the difference in the Habs making the playoffs but I wouldn't count on it. It certainly doesn't look like we are going to go deep in the playoffs. Given his limited value to us over the next 2 months versus the value of the prospects we could get for him I think we have to trade him.

Yes!!! I was hoping he'd get at least one game in a Habs uniform. He's earned this call-up. Not expecting too much but he has been putting up very good numbers in Hamilton this year. I won't be too surprised if he turns his career around and makes the NHL. Unfortunately, I think it may end up being with another team. Woo-hoo.

I read somewhere that they watched him play one game and he was truely horrible. What they didn't know was that they watched him play the night before his wedding and so his focus wasn't on the puck.

As a (near) victim of affirmative action, I have strong views about this. When I got my current job 15 years ago there were 5 candidates under consideration. As I later found out (how is a different story) I was ranked in a two-way tie for first based upon the interviews. The 3 and 4 ranked candidates were also considered similar to one another but definitely weaker than the top two. However, the third ranked candidate was a woman. There was a lot of pressure to hire her for affirmative action reasons. I was lucky that I ended up being offered the job. My point is that I was discriminated against because of affirmative action. It's fine to talk in the abstract about AA but what it means is that real people will be discriminated against. Discrimination is bad. It hurts real people and should be stamped out everywhere. It should not be promoted even for lofty goals. I like to ask people who support AA why they don't quit their jobs in order to increase opportunites for minorities. They always seem to have some reason or other. Almost no one is in favour of AA unless its applied to other people.

The problem is that many players who deserve to be there are not. This is inevitable if you choose players by voting - especially when the ballots unfairly require some players to be write-ins. You can't even vote for 3 write-ins. This is why I think it would have been fine for Rory to play.

I have to say that I find it quite depressing. I almost feel worse than during the dark days of 2000 when we were so bad and couldn't win. I have to balance the extra disappointment of a talented team performing so badly against the uplifting hope that there is too much talent here for this slump to last long.

Nope coaches don't allow him to take draws in the defensive zone. He wins about 60% (or less) of his draws. If you let him take defensive zone faceoffs, 40% of the time the other team has the puck in your end and you have a very weak defensive player on the ice.

This is prompted by a discussion that occurred in last night's game thread. A few people complained about the many pre-game predictions of the score. The complaint was that these predictions don't contribute much and one must sift through a few pages of them to find the start of the game. The counter arguement was that people like to make predictions and so why shouldn't they. As someone who doesn't really enjoy skipping through this sort of stuff in the pre-game material I want to suggest that maybe we should split the thread into a pre-game thread and the actual game thread. I think we all enjoy Spider-Man's introductory pages but I propose that someone be nominated to officially begin a Game-on thread at the actual start of each game. I am not sure whether this will work and/or help but I throw it out as a possibility. I look forward to the savage berating I expect to receive for foolishly suggesting a change. Let the ridiculing begin.

Are you sure we traded Flood? to the Hurricanes? If so do you know what we got? I thought we just didn't resign him and he signed with Columbus? or maybe Anaheim?

Yeah, I remember Smith. He would take full two handed swings with his stick at the legs of the forwards standing in front of the crease - like he was chopping down trees.

Bob Mckenzie reported that he thought Price looked the best today. He was unimpressed with Bernier and thought Irving was 2nd best. Good news.

There has been lots of discussion about how to shift the top two lines (and the fourth line) around to get various people (Samsonov, Kovalev, Ryder,...) producing again. Carboneau basically never juggles the lines. If he is going to make a change he tries it in practice for 2 days first. (Although I believe I did notice some shifting around of the top two lines a few games ago for half the third period). My question is, wouldn't it be good to do some line juggling to see if we can get some players clicking together. I presume Carbo tries this at practice but I think I would like to see him experiment more during games. After all, if it was good enough for Bowman it's good enough for Carbo.

He is still one of our better players even dogging it. There is no point in dropping one of our top players unless we can get something quite valuable for him. I don't see that happening. As has been pointed out, he will show up in the playoffs. Even playing the way he is, he is worth more to us than any forward except Koivu, Higgins and Bonk. Sure we would all be happy if he worked as hard as Koivu but he doesn't. That's Kovalev's main flaw. All our players have flaws: Koivu's would be better if he were bigger (and less injury prone), Ryder would be better if he could handle the puck better and were faster, etc. People find Kovalev irritating because his main flaw is attitude not physical skill. While that is frustrating, that the way he is.

I disagree stats do show everything - the right stats with the right analysis illuminate everything. This article is great in that it goes a long way to explaining lots of misleading stats - for example the high number of shots per game we've been allowing this year.

I Tampa crushes Toronto tonight the Hurricanes will be in serious trouble on Friday!!!

I'm surprised to see that Milroy is significantly ahead of both Grabovski and Kostitsyn in goals scored: Milroy has 12; both Grabovski and Kostitsyn have 7. I suggest bringing Milroy up but I think it is better for Grabovski's and Kostitsyn's development to keep Milroy playing with them.

Its their goal tending. Gerber is not very good. Emery is okay but not great. The other players they lost hurt but having a good goalie is vital. The Sens don't play a trapping style and so they need consistent tending to win. When they fall behind in a game their opponents usualy trap and the Sens often end up losing a close game. When the Sens get ahead, the opponents open up their game and this often leads to a Sens blowout. IMHO this is why their goal differential is better than their record indicates.

Two of the three will be resigned. I expect Markov will resign. Gainey will make that a priority and I don't see any major reason why he would go elsewhere. If Souray want to be closer to his daughter he won't be back. Probably if that's the case Gainey will trade him arund the deadline. Souray has said he loves it here but if you listen carefully he is careful not to give the impression he is going to resign. If Souray (or Markov) doesn't resign then I think Rivet will for something like 1.8 million. But if we resign both Souray and Markov then I don't think (apologies to Maca) that we can also afford Rivet. Too many young guys will be looking for raises and Gainey will want some cap room in case he wants to make a push for the cup in February '08.

This analysis is correct as far as it goes and the scenario presented is better dealt with by the current system. The problem is that there is a much bigger problem with the current system. Suppose team A has a very strong PP. But it also has many powerplays cut short by penalties or games ending. Now team B has a weak powerplay but almost none of its powerplays are cut short except by goals by team B. The many unsuccesful 20 second powerplays by team A will make it seem like it has a weaker PP than team B. I think this disparity is in fact not uncommon. Teams which play a chippy style tend to have many more brief powerplays. This makes the current PP rating system unreliable.

Ferland is 21. Milroy is 19. I watched the game tonight and would say that Milroy was the best Bulldog out there. It is however clear that Grabovski and Kostitsyn have more talent. Still I was very impressed by the improvement in Milroy's game. He made a few great setups from around the net, worked hard all night and made no real mistakes.

You seem to have interchanged Streit and Niimimaa.

spoiler alert Your number is 2 digits: say xy. So your number is 10x+y and the sum of its digits is x+y. Thus the difference (10x+y)-(x+y) = 9x is divisible by 9 (and is less than 100).

Boy, they must have high standards in Sarnia, all this and Kostisyn was only awarded 3rd star.

Thanks for this Dan. I always appreciate hearing your opinion. I have another quick question. If we trade Huet or Aebischer or if one of them is injured do you think there is a chance we might call up Halek before Danis?

... and Emery returned from his injury. Coincidence, methinks not.