dlbalr

He's getting deployed as the number one defenceman right now which, frankly, is terrifying for a team that's trying to make the playoffs. But to his credit, he has found some offence lately and he has been pretty steady in his own end.

Belzile has himself a three-game point streak since being recalled. I truly did not see that coming.

Updated heights/weights for the players in the CHL Top Prospects Game for anyone interested:

All in all, they've had a decent effort so far (and even got a power play goal). Montembeault has been sharp so far to help keep it close.

When the Habs were on the power play, I thought for a moment they were struggling to kill it off. You know things aren't going well on the power play when you forget they're on the power play and somehow think they're shorthanded (and struggling).

Could it be to make sure the surgery goes well? The last thing they'd want is to do the extension and then find out there were 'complications'. There was some speculation when the injury came out on Saturday that they might do a double-announcement, 'We've signed Caufield for ___ years and by the way, his surgery went as anticipated and he's expected to be back for training camp'.

Message boards are largely becoming a thing of the past so we don't typically get a lot of newcomers. We also had a long stretch where technical glitches were coming up in registration and I'd have to go in periodically to manually validate new accounts and then email the user to let them know they're able to post. (I wasn't great at doing that on a timely basis, admittedly.) Good news is that's fixed now so hopefully we'll have a bit of an uptick in newcomers moving forward. We also have guest posting which I don't think has ever been used since we put that in years ago but the hope there was to spark some new registrations.

Yep, we've been around for a while. The forum turns 20 in mid-May, mid-October for the main site.

The ownership situation makes that a little tricky. Until that gets settled, I don't expect much in the way of big changes. The new group should have the right to decide what direction they want to go with their front office and by extension, the coaching staff. Their ownership situation is one to watch from a Montreal perspective as well. One of the Habs' minority owners (Michael Andlauer) is considered the frontrunner for the Sens but he'd have to sell his stake in the Canadiens first. I've heard that one of the others that has shown interest in the Senators might be interested in Andlauer's stake in the Habs if he can't land Ottawa.

That was an ugly third period but I'm not going to complain about a win with what the Habs ran out there for a lineup. And, somehow, the decision to play David Savard in OT paid off.

I know I didn't see that coming. An impressive bounce-back for sure.

Well, that went pretty much as expected. I foresee a lot of low-scoring games in Montreal's future as this is really a pop-gun offence now.

They lost in a shootout but with the lineup they trotted out there, them getting to that point against a strong Toronto team is still impressive.

I can think of one reason it wasn't made a lot sooner, Caufield would have wanted to get to Game 42 for bonus purposes and it wouldn't have looked good for the organization to shut him down and take away eligibility for some of his 'A' bonuses worth $212,500, especially heading into contract talks. Earlier in the day, it was suggested that something happened on Friday that made them take this action so there might have been some sort of flare-up where everyone went okay, now it's time.

That provides a bit of comfort at least, they're doing this early enough so that it won't linger into training camp.