Peter Puck

I guess. But this seems very fishy. We are now 2 points behind Boston and they have a game in hand. With almost half a season to go, it is clear that we are battling the Bruins and also the Penguins at least as far as a simulation goes. As I say, all we have to do is finish ahead of the Bruins to qualify for the playoffs. Since they lost to the Penguins instead of winning, it seems we are quite a bit better off.

Hi Brian, I am confused about the Penguins/Bruins game in the opening post. How is it possible that the outcome of this game had no change on our playoff chances. The Bruins were behind the Penguins (but with 2 games in hand). Most importantly, if we catch the Bruins we are basically guaranteed to make the playoffs (and finish top 3). Catching the Penguins obviously helps our chances but it doesn't assure us a playoff spot. P.P.

This whole size thing is a red herring. Any of the bigger guys we have are dismissed as "playing small". Any big guy on another team is automatically considered as physical. Sure, we would all like to have a team of quick, fast skating, skilled, huge players with good hands and great hockey sense. The fact is, every player lacks something. We happen to have a number of forwards who are not overly big. Should we trade Plex or Gionta for Ponikarovsky?

I agree with The C. C. and tend to subscribe to theory #4 (plus a major loss of confidence in many players). Theory #1 (our early success was purely a product of Price overachieving) is clearly wrong in my opinion. Price is playing just about as well now as he did in October and November. In October/November we were were giving up only 3 or 4 quality scoring chances per game. Now that number is up to 10 or more. Price is still stopping 60% of those chances. In Oct/Nov we went whole periods without making any serious defensive errors. Now we commonly see 2 or 3 errors within 40

rer There is a reason why we can name some many forwards (and goalies) who suddenly emerged as stars in the playoffs and we can't name any Dmen. The reason is that goal scoring stats (or goaltending stats) make these players easy to recognize and they get lots of publicity. Any dman who similarly raises his game will not be noticed by the vast majority of people and so we never hear of them. This doesn't mean that they don't exist, just that we can't name them. I can name one: Subban, although his performance last year wasn't really the same sort of sudden emergence you are looking fo

It's fun to list the overall rank but I won't be counting it as a tie-breaker.

I'm saying 43-29-10 for 96 points 6th in the East and 14th overall.

5th annual HabsWorld points prediction contest. Hall of Fame: 2006-2007 Jean won with a prediction of 92 points when the Habs finished the year with 90 pts. If only we could have won that last game. 2007-2008 Adirondack Bud exactly predicted our final total of 104 pts. 2008-2009 Zowpeb won by predicting a strong start followed by a slower 2nd half ending with 99 points. The Habs finished the season in 8th place with 93 points. On September 22, 2008 Zowpeb predicted "I think we'll see a rough patch just past the mid-year point... " Wow. 2009-2010 J

Yes, he is small but I think he has the attitude and style of play to make it. Admittedly, I haven't seen much of him -just clips.

21-42 look pretty good to me. But I would have Brendan Gallagher up around 15.

I would like to see the PQ try the following. If the province is going to contribute toward a new arena in Quebec City then the new team needs to be a real francophone team. The PQ should try to require that the only players allowed to play for the new Nordiques are francophones from Quebec.

Maybe but I think they want to keep Janus in Florida not the AHL so that he'll get more starts and so they need an AHL backup.

We got the better player in this deal. It is a bit of a risk because he may not come back from Russia. As far as I can tell, Tampa needed an AHL backup for 1 year. Desjardins will probably do this job quite well. After this season they have other prospects to replace him. That works well for Tampa since he will be a UFA. So they gave us a better player who is unavailable for use in the AHL this year and who doesn't fit into their plans anyway. I am also not sure that Desjardins fits into our plans. He looks like he may well be a career AHLer. Of course he may continue to develo

Personally I think it clear that Ramo has the higher ceiling. However, I think the big advantage here is that Ramo will not be a UFA until 3 years from now. Desjardins will be a UFA at the end of this season (unless he somehow plays 28 NHL games which will never happen). We have 3 years to convince Ramo to come back.

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

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 w

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 pro

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 serie

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.