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Some thoughts and hope for next year-potential team as GM and coach.


REV-G

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The only reason Burke considered him is because he can't think past Anaheim.

Frankly, I think Burke should have made the move a long time ago. I think Carlyle is a damn good coach - was just past his shelf life in Anaheim. Wilson on the other hand is an idiot. His pompous ass was actually perfect for Toronto and I was hoping Burke would have left his buddy in place until the end of the year.

They were clearly never gonna consider Carlyle

IMO, that is part of the problem in Montreal.

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Ron Wilson...LOL

Wilson is not a bad coach. That teams shortcomings are not his fault. Now I'm hearing people claim he didn't make the team physical enough... what the hell was he supposed to do? Demand Schenn to hit people?

Anyway, no for Montreal of course but he'll rebound on another team.

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My guess is that PG and Molson realized that JM had the coaching ability to likely keep the team on the bubble, and perhaps make the playoffs again, maybe. They, rightly, want more than the bubble and the opportunity was ripe.

This is where you must see that your theory is more wishful thinking than reality. I understand there are many people who for whatever reason are sick and tired of being a bubble team and simply squeaking into the playoffs. I personally am of a very different nature and agree with those who would say that "all you have to do is get in and anything can happen". It is obviously extremely rare for an 8th seeded team to actually win the cup but the possibility is still there and so I really don't understand the mentality of those who would rather get a high draft pick than "squeak" into the playoffs. I also agree with what CC mentioned about Gauthier wanting to save his job and Molson wanting playoff revenue.

When it comes to the firing of Jacques Martin, many people, similar to the Toronto situation, were calling for his head even a few weeks before he actually got canned. Obviously there were also those who didn't like him since his very hiring, but even his supporters started to lose faith within the few weeks before his actual firing. The same can be said with Cammalleri. I sincerely loved Cammalleri, but even I was ready to part with him because something was simply missing from his game this season... he simply seemed disinterested. I just wish we got a bit of a better return for Cammalleri even though I like Bourque and his salaray. This is not to say that a good General Manager should simply give in to the masses and fire/trade coaches and players based on fan observation... but my point is that I think Pierre Gauthier saw many of the same things that us fans did, at the very same time we did. So the firing of Jacques Martin and the trading of Cammalleri were not based on a Plan B for tanking, they were just necessary moves to be made in order to BETTER the team.

What I will say is that I completely agree that Pierre Gauthier messed up in the way he handled things and I think we can all agree on that. The firing of Jacques Martin was the correct move to make but to replace him with not only an Anglo speaking coach (I actually don't mind that fact as much as the next point) but to replace him with an assistant coach who came from within the same system as Jacques Martin was a huge mistake... why even fire him if that was the case? Sure Cunneyworth has progressively implemented his own style but it took a good 10 games to do so and in essence the season was lost. As for the Cammalleri ordeal? Well I think the way it was handled speaks for itself.

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I don't understand why I should like Roy because he was a great goalie. I am not hiring a goalie, but a GM or coach. I know he has junior coaching experience, but it is a big jump to NHL coaching. What experience does he have that indicates he is going to be a great GM?

Its not that I am against him, but I see a repeated history of thinking ex-stars will make great coaches or GMs. They can, but they need to work their way up and prove themselves in these capacities before we should hand the keys to the Habs to them. The last time we tried this (Tremblay,Houle) and it was a disaster.

I want to see NHL proven calibre people running this organization. I would like someone who has shown he is ready for one of the biggest assignments in hockey. The Habs need to stop being a feeder team, hiring people with little experience, having them fail, learn, etc.. then move on to other teams as experienced coaches / GMs. It should be the other way around.

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I don't understand why I should like Roy because he was a great goalie. I am not hiring a goalie, but a GM or coach. I know he has junior coaching experience, but it is a big jump to NHL coaching. What experience does he have that indicates he is going to be a great GM?

Its not that I am against him, but I see a repeated history of thinking ex-stars will make great coaches or GMs. They can, but they need to work their way up and prove themselves in these capacities before we should hand the keys to the Habs to them. The last time we tried this (Tremblay,Houle) and it was a disaster.

I want to see NHL proven calibre people running this organization. I would like someone who has shown he is ready for one of the biggest assignments in hockey. The Habs need to stop being a feeder team, hiring people with little experience, having them fail, learn, etc.. then move on to other teams as experienced coaches / GMs. It should be the other way around.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with your fear or apprehension in Roy.

That said, Roy is one of the best coaches not coaching in the NHL right now and he's unquestionably one of the best GMs not being a GM in the NHL right now. His GM work in Quebec has been outstanding (someone who follows the Q can explain to you better, I just know from other websites from Q followers who hate the Remparts that they respect the hell out of Roy) and while he was an average coach at first, this year he's one of the best in the Q.

We're talking a guy who can get goals out of players in a league that has considerable trouble getting real production out of anyone. He knows how to handle lines, he knows how to make Europeans feel like they are a part of the team instead of segregated and he's driven to win.

Colorado went out of their way to try to get him into the Avs organization due to his accomplishments in Quebec and Roy turned it down, presumably because he wants to work in Montreal first. I usually prefer experienced coaches as well but right now the good ones are locked up. Going with Roy would be a great move.

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There's absolutely nothing wrong with your fear or apprehension in Roy.

That said, Roy is one of the best coaches not coaching in the NHL right now and he's unquestionably one of the best GMs not being a GM in the NHL right now. His GM work in Quebec has been outstanding (someone who follows the Q can explain to you better, I just know from other websites from Q followers who hate the Remparts that they respect the hell out of Roy) and while he was an average coach at first, this year he's one of the best in the Q.

We're talking a guy who can get goals out of players in a league that has considerable trouble getting real production out of anyone. He knows how to handle lines, he knows how to make Europeans feel like they are a part of the team instead of segregated and he's driven to win.

Colorado went out of their way to try to get him into the Avs organization due to his accomplishments in Quebec and Roy turned it down, presumably because he wants to work in Montreal first. I usually prefer experienced coaches as well but right now the good ones are locked up. Going with Roy would be a great move.

If all this is true, then it sounds like he is ready be an assistant GM under a proven GM, who can complete his training and give him some NHL level experience.

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MOLG is bang on about Roy in almost everything there. It is very well said and describes all the reasons I want Roy as coach with an experienced GM to train him, and then he'd eventually take over as GM. Just one small point to clarify, Roy turned down Colorado because he is coaching his two sons in Quebec.  His youngest son is now playing his overage season in Quebec, he will be too old to continue after this year.

This is now the perfect time for Patrick to make the jump.

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If all this is true, then it sounds like he is ready be an assistant GM under a proven GM, who can complete his training and give him some NHL level experience.

Absolutely, he's ready for the next step. He just needs an assistant coach with a steady hand beside him. And a GM like Lacroix teaching him that aspect.

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Absolutely, he's ready for the next step. He just needs an assistant coach with a steady hand beside him. And a GM like Lacroix teaching him that aspect.

Turning aside Larry Robinson for an assistant coaching position would crack my top five of, "Biggest mistakes this franchise has made in the last 10 years". The blame for that goes to Boivin.

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Turning aside Larry Robinson for an assistant coaching position would crack my top five of, "Biggest mistakes this franchise has made in the last 10 years".  The blame for that goes to Boivin.

Perfect time to fix that assuming Roy and Larry have a good relationship

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I also agree with what CC mentioned about Gauthier wanting to save his job and Molson wanting playoff revenue...

...the firing of Jacques Martin and the trading of Cammalleri were not based on a Plan B for tanking, they were just necessary moves to be made in order to BETTER the team.

What I will say is that I completely agree that Pierre Gauthier messed up in the way he handled things and I think we can all agree on that. The firing of Jacques Martin was the correct move to make but to replace him with not only an Anglo speaking coach (I actually don't mind that fact as much as the next point) but to replace him with an assistant coach who came from within the same system as Jacques Martin was a huge mistake... why even fire him if that was the case? Sure Cunneyworth has progressively implemented his own style but it took a good 10 games to do so and in essence the season was lost. As for the Cammalleri ordeal? Well I think the way it was handled speaks for itself.

I just have a very different perspective on all this. Given the deep analysis and long-term thinking we find even on a fan discussion board such as this, I have no trouble imagining that PG and Molson have not only more experience and inside info to work with, but also sharper minds for the subtleties of long-term organizational planning and team development than any of us.

Yes, the financial bottom line is paramount, but no experienced business person thinks of the bottom line on soley a year-by-year basis. Long-term profit is constantly in juxtaposition with short-term profit when decisions are being made. And the ultimate goal, both financial and otherwise, is obviously to win the Stanley Cup (= $ + prestige, which is almost as important as $ to business people).

There is no mystery in the fact that Cunneyworth is (in 2011-2012) a vastly inferior coach to Martin - there could have been no illusion that this move was going to make the Habs better or more competitive in the short-term. I have a hard time seeing PG firing JM and replacing him with RC mid-season as a move designed to facilitate anything but a high draft selection, in a year rich with top-10 big Cs, with a long-term view to becoming a contender. It has been rumoured that the trade for Cammy was in the works for a while, and I strongly suspect it was part of the tank plan when PG fired JM. Furthermore, with the possibility of Boucher, Roy, Crawford and other quality bilingual coaches all being on the market for hire, PG wanted to make sure JM didn't keep the team on the bubble to not only squander a shot at an impact top ten draft choice, but what if they made it a round or two in the playoffs again? Harder to fire JM at that juncture...

The real mystery here is the Kabs trade, as Commadant pointed out. Yet, I strongly disagree with his idea that "the problem with Gauthier this season (is that), none of the moves fit together to show any kind of coherent plan, not for tanking or otherwise." Like I said, these professionals are way sharper and more informed than us - they have a coherent plan, whether we detect it, or agree with it, is another matter.

That's not to say the plan isn't flexible and evolving. In light of this, I have two possible retroactive assessments of the Kabs trade:

1) As I speculated in my original post, the deal was Hail Mary pass # 1 in a Plan B Tank (which included firing JM, and trading away Cams, AK and Gill) concocted by PG, Molson and the other big decision makers in the organization. PG got a veteran PP QB for an eensy weensy fraction of what Boston had paid for him less than a year earlier. The upside potential was high, and Kabs point production on the flailing Habs proves PG a winner on this trade, IMO. Yet, this was not a trade for the Wiz, and PG had no illusion that acquring Kabs was going to save the season. He is a 5-6 D, veteran place holder and mentor for Beaulieu on a young and getting younger D corps.

2) PG actually did think Kabs might save the season in light of the certainty that Markov was not going to - this seems like a ludicrous suggestion, but it may be true that PG is an idiot. If so, Moslon et al freaked out and brought the hammer down on PG explaining that a) JM was going to be fired that the plan was to go for a high draft pick by further gutting the offense before the deadline, and b) he will probably not be around next season but it is his job to carry out this plan till spring if he ever wanted to GM in the NHL again.

I think the truth will come out in the months ahead. If PG sticks around to hire the new coach, we will know that he helped concoct the plan and that the Kabs trade was part of it. If he gets canned we will know that he either pissed off his boss with the Kabs trade, or that Molson felt the need to turn him into another sacrificial lamb at the end of a lost season.

The point is, I think it is pretty clear that a high draft choice has been engineered, and that it shows the kind of vision that I think PG has been conveying ever since he took the helm from Gainey. I suspect it was his idea.

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I just think there is more to it than this. You've made some pretty good points which are unlike CC said, plausible, but not necessarily factual. The major point you made that I agree with is that there are definitely things that go on inside the locker room and behind the scenes that we are not entirely aware of and so a lot of our analysis is often based on speculation. With that being said, unless Pierre Gauthier directly went inside the locker room and told the players themselves that this team was "designed" to be one of the bottom feeders in the league in order to get a high draft pick and provide for the future, your theory would be an EXTREMELY risky one on Pierre Gauthier's part. There are still KEY players on this team (think Cole, Pacioretty, Desharnais, PRICE, Subban, Gorges and even to a lesser extent Plekanec) who fight every night for the win. With hindsight, it is obvious that this has not translated into wins but I do not think even Gauthier could have predicted that we would have fallen this low in the standings as a consequence of his moves. I'm sure, like you said, people like Pierre Gauthier and others are more qualified for the position which they hold than any of us... That is why they have risen to the top after all. But I can assure you that my life is surrounded by sports and like you, I can understand a lot of the intricacies surrounding the decision making process behind any given move... both short term and long term ones.

So, perhaps Pierre Gauthier "does" know more than I, but at the very point that Gauthier fired Jacques Martin and even when he traded Cammalleri, I truly did not believe our team would still be bad enough to get that coveted top 3 pick. The only way your theory makes sense if if the top 3 pick was guaranteed based on his moves. Weeks later, it is easy to look in retrospect and attempt to envision a genius Gauthier who made these moves for the greater good of our organization. I just tend to agree with your second perspective in thinking that Gauthier is not necessarily an idiot but mishandled things this season. Both perspectives (neither of which can be proven) lead to the same conclusion. Either Pierre Gauthier planned on tanking and did exactly as you said or he tried to better the team and his moves backfired. Both can be argued to the death and both lead to same outcome... where the Canadiens find themselves in the standings right now.

Also, In my humble opinion Cunneyworth is actually a good coach, worthy of an NHL job. Regardless of what the general consensus around here has been about Jacques Martin, there are very few coaches in history that match up to his pedigree and so any rookie coach would certainly fall short of his experience and skill set. While I don't agree that Cunneyworth was the right choice for the job here, I do not think that Gauthier thought he was "so bad" that he would facilitate his overall "plan" of tanking.

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Gauthier believed in Cunneyworth. He truly did. He hired him as Boucher's replacement after allowing Boucher to leave, allowed Muller to leave to promote Cunneyworth to Martin's assistant, and fired Pearn to give Cunneyworth/Ladouceur more of a say. Everything he did involved promoting Cunneyworth at the expense of other qualified candidates.

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I expect Cunneyworth to go on and have a very successful career as an NHL coach. It is really unfair to rate him with a team that was inept when he got here, was designed by somebody else and in a free fall mode. I expect another coach to be here by the start of next season.

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What that article doesn't tell you is how the team with 90% players PG acquired went to the Stanley Cup final the year after he was fired. Clearly he built an awful club in Anaheim and left them with a foundation of a club that was rapidly declining.

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What that article doesn't tell you is how the team with 90% players PG acquired went to the Stanley Cup final the year after he was fired. Clearly he built an awful club in Anaheim and left them with a foundation of a club that was rapidly declining.

i was just thinking the same thing actually...But I dont think that We will have the same turn around....I really dont see any Perry's or Getslafs or Ryan's in our future line up. There are absolutely no first line prospects in our current system, with the exception of Patches who is good but not top end.(he is a fantastic complimentary player but no Perry or Ryan)

if we could somehow magically get two top 10 picks this year I would change my tune but that is obviously a pipe dream.

by the way I think this feud that you and lafrous have going is getting kind of old....I am not saying I agree with his negative atitude all the time but I think you should stop instigating him.

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What that article doesn't tell you is how the team with 90% players PG acquired went to the Stanley Cup final the year after he was fired. Clearly he built an awful club in Anaheim and left them with a foundation of a club that was rapidly declining.

i also just realized that I got my cup runs mixed up.....

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i was just thinking the same thing actually...But I dont think that We will have the same turn around....I really dont see any Perry's or Getslafs or Ryan's in our future line up.   There are absolutely no first line prospects in our current system, with the exception of Patches who is good but not top end.(he is a fantastic complimentary player but no Perry or Ryan)

if we could somehow magically get two top 10 picks this year I would change my tune but that is obviously a pipe dream.

Price, Subban and Patches give us three nice pieces to build around all under 25 years old. Adding another pick will give us a foundation. Eller, DD, Emelin, Diaz, White, Leblanc, are also good pieces. Our prospects are doing very well in junior and the NCAA and we have 7 picks in the first 2 rounds of the next two drafts. Things are not as bad as they've been described. The next GM will start with a better group than you typically find on a 28/29th place club.

by the way I think this feud that you and lafrous have going is getting kind of old....I am not saying I agree with his negative atitude all the time but I think you should stop instigating him.

If you go back and look I always give my hockey opinion. I'm not the person who starts calling people "fanboys" "ignorant" or other names. All I've done is discuss the issues brought up. I dont see how thats instigating. If he doesn't like alternative viewpoints to his opinions he shouldn't post them on a message board.

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Commandant should not be asked to apologize for making a 100% valid hockey point in his response to what was, in effect, not even a substantive critique of Gauthier's performance in Anaheim, just an attack on his blandness. PG *did* create the foundation for a Cup-winner. That's a fact.

He obviously hadn't done it here and should be fired.

All I will say in Gauthier's defence is that it could have gone another way with a little luck. I tend to agree with this analysis: http://habsloyalist....nt-of-nail.html If Markov's knee had held up as expected, the whole season is likely a different story. Nevertheless, it didn't hold up, and Gauthier patently failed to patch the hole that left in the roster. The injuries to Gio and the Cammalleri rebellion took us further off the rails. Gauthier then proceeded to make all the confused, panicky and erratic moves that have marked this epic fail of a season. I doubt that Gauthier had ever encountered such a perfect storm, and although he had a promising c.v. prior to that point, he flunked the acid test.

The underlying idea, often proposed, that this season is somehow Gainey's fault strikes me as a bit puzzling. Yes, Gainey assembled the core of the team in 2009, and yes, Gomez was a catastrophic mistake, but how was Gainey supposed to know that Markov would be lost forever or that Cammy would pull up stakes like he did? It seems to be Bob left a solid core in place that needed further work. Unless he masterminded all the panic moves this season, I don't see why it's his fault.

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