2023-24 Montreal Canadiens Discussion Thread

[DON]

41 minutes ago, GHT120 said:

Thanks to the "band-aid trades" the previous 2-3 GMs focused on because of the belief that if you make the playoffs anything can happen ... Sadly, I also think they felt it important for them to "be seen" as trying to make the playoffs.

Trading Kovalev & Souray for good return, might of helped. 

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

33 minutes ago, DON said:

Trading Kovalev & Souray for good return, might of helped. 

 

Don’t remind me of the Souray non-trade 🤮 We let him walk instead of trading him at the deadline when he was having a career year -all because we had a shot at making the playoffs as 8th-seed first-round cannon fodder. He could have commanded a king’s ransom.

 

I’m more sympathetic to Bob the GM than some, but that was sheer folly.

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

29 minutes ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

 

Don’t remind me of the Souray non-trade 🤮 We let him walk instead of trading him at the deadline when he was having a career year -all because we had a shot at making the playoffs as 8th-seed first-round cannon fodder. He could have commanded a king’s ransom.

 

I’m more sympathetic to Bob the GM than some, but that was sheer folly.

 

I absolutely loved Bob the player, one of the classiest guys to ever wear the uniform.  As a GM, the Gomez trade was one of the biggest head shakers I have seen. 

[alfredoh2009]

2 hours ago, GHT120 said:

Thanks to the "band-aid trades" the previous 2-3 GMs focused on because of the belief that if you make the playoffs anything can happen ... Sadly, I also think they felt it important for them to "be seen" as trying to make the playoffs.

yes

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

2 hours ago, GHT120 said:

Thanks to the "band-aid trades" the previous 2-3 GMs focused on because of the belief that if you make the playoffs anything can happen ... Sadly, I also think they felt it important for them to "be seen" as trying to make the playoffs.

 

In Hughes we finally have a GM who has realized that a rebuild needed to be done. Maybe other GM's realized this but they didn't have the support or the cahones to carry it out. I really like what Hughes is doing. Like any GM he will likely have some stumbles along the way but he is definitely headed in the right direction. 

[alfredoh2009]

18 minutes ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:

 

In Hughes we finally have a GM who has realized that a rebuild needed to be done. Maybe other GM's realized this but they didn't have the support or the cahones to carry it out. I really like what Hughes is doing. Like any GM he will likely have some stumbles along the way but he is definitely headed in the right direction. 

 

to be fair, he is the first GM to which Geoff Molson has given the mandate to rebuild. He didn't give that to the previous GMs

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

Hey, let's be fair. Bob did undertake a proper rebuild. From 2003-08, he built patiently through the draft. We forget that players like the Kostitsyns, Higgins, Pleks, and Komisarek - not to mention Price - were widely regarded as rising stars. 

 

Unfortunately, the rebuild didn't work out. Something went wrong, either at the drafting level or (more likely IMHO) with player development. That team finished first in the Conference in '08 and seemed poised to contend in 2009 - but then crashed, quite spectacularly, in 2009. Bob wisely let all those bums go.

 

After that, he tried something else: building through free agency, plus the Gomez trade. That didn't work out either, partly because Gomez unexpectedly aged out really fast, partly because injuries to Markov led to Cammy wanting out, and partly because Goat was Goat. 

 

It's worth noting that there was also sort of a secret, semi-rebuild in the years from 2010-2013. The addition of Subban and Pacioretty in particular, along with Price rounding into mature form, made us contenders in 2014 and 2015, and we were dominating the league for 20 games in 2016 before Price got hurt. 

 

Then Plekanec aged out, and the hole at C became too much for the team to overcome. From 2016 onward, MB had no plan, failed at the draft table, and had zero player development happening. It was just improvisation after improvisation. But I don't think that was really how our GMs operated prior to that. There was one genuine rebuild (2003-2008) and one rather successful retool (2010-14) in the decade leading up to MB.

 

[alfredoh2009]

Gainey is the one who brought the idea of rebuild on the fly. He inherited a garbage team and got them first to middle of the pack and then to "get into the playoffs and anything can happen".

 

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

22 minutes ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

Hey, let's be fair. Bob did undertake a proper rebuild. From 2003-08, he built patiently through the draft. We forget that players like the Kostitsyns, Higgins, Pleks, and Komisarek - not to mention Price - were widely regarded as rising stars. 

 

Unfortunately, the rebuild didn't work out. Something went wrong, either at the drafting level or (more likely IMHO) with player development. That team finished first in the Conference in '08 and seemed poised to contend in 2009 - but then crashed, quite spectacularly, in 2009. Bob wisely let all those bums go.

 

After that, he tried something else: building through free agency, plus the Gomez trade. That didn't work out either, partly because Gomez unexpectedly aged out really fast, partly because injuries to Markov led to Cammy wanting out, and partly because Goat was Goat. 

 

It's worth noting that there was also sort of a secret, semi-rebuild in the years from 2010-2013. The addition of Subban and Pacioretty in particular, along with Price rounding into mature form, made us contenders in 2014 and 2015, and we were dominating the league for 20 games in 2016 before Price got hurt. 

 

Then Plekanec aged out, and the hole at C became too much for the team to overcome. From 2016 onward, MB had no plan, failed at the draft table, and had zero player development happening. It was just improvisation after improvisation. But I don't think that was really how our GMs operated prior to that. There was one genuine rebuild (2003-2008) and one rather successful retool (2010-14) in the decade leading up to MB.

 

 

I guess the Gomez trade sticks in my mind because it indicated to me that Gainey had no understanding of the salary cap. At the time Gomez was making 7.3M/year when the salary cap was 56M, that's like approx. 11M/year today with a salary cap of 83.5M.  Gomez was 30 years old at the time of the trade and on the downside, he had scored over 20 goals once and basically averaged 60pts/year in his career.  Today to get rid of a contract like that you would have to offer a sweetener but NO Gainey provided the sweetener of a future stud defensemen (McDonagh) AND a very useful player in Higgins.  Sather must have thought he died and went to heaven. 

 

I know Gainey did some good things as GM but that trade made me wonder if he was losing his marbles as a GM. 

 

[GHT120]

4 minutes ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:

I guess the Gomez trade sticks in my mind because it indicated to me that Gainey had no understanding of the salary cap. At the time Gomez was making 7.3M/year when the salary cap was 56M, that's like approx. 11M/year today with a salary cap of 83.5M.  Gomez was 30 years old at the time of the trade and on the downside, he had scored over 20 goals once and basically averaged 60pts/year in his career.  Today to get rid of a contract like that you would have to offer a sweetener but NO Gainey provided the sweetener of a future stud defensemen (McDonagh) AND a very useful player in Higgins.  Sather must have thought he died and went to heaven. 

 

I know Gainey did some good things as GM but that trade made me wonder if he was losing his marbles as a GM. 

 

I agree ... it was a desperate move to try to move on from the Koivu/Kovalev era without rebuilding ... if I recall, it was also supposedly because he felt it would help him sign Gionta and Cammalleri. 

 

***NOT*** defending, just sharing my opinion and memories.

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

On the Gomez deal...I suspect Bob thought he was getting an elite playmaking C. And in fairness, Gomez was an excellent playmaker who routinely finished toward the top of the league in assist totals. I don't think he would have denied that Gomer was overpaid and I don't think he was deluded that he was getting a goal-scorer.

 

The hell of it was, Gomez's game collapsed after his first year with us. Complete, catastrophic breakdown. I don't think he could have anticipated THAT. 

 

Not saying it was a good deal, because obviously McDonagh became a top-pairing D-man for years thereafter. Disaster. But to my mind the cap hit was not in itself so horrific, nor was Gomez a bad player per se - the problem, apart from McDonagh, was that Gomez became one of those guys who aged out overnight, relatively young. 

 

In retrospect Bob should have just kept Koivu. Whether the Gomez trade incentivized UFAs to come here is another question.  

 

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

Gomez got 42 assists the year before Gainey traded for him, I wouldn't call that elite AND he was making 7.3M which was 13% of the cap. A horrible trade from the outset. Gainey got completely hosed on that deal. In my opinion one of the worst trades by a Habs GM since I have been following the team and there have been some bad ones. 

[alfredoh2009]

didn't the cap come after the Gainey era? I remember making the argument how two GMs later, it became an issue; but, if I remember correctly, the cap was not an issue in Gainey's time span

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

9 minutes ago, alfredoh2009 said:

didn't the cap come after the Gainey era? I remember making the argument how two GMs later, it became an issue; but, if I remember correctly, the cap was not an issue in Gainey's time span

 

The salary cap started in 2005-06

[alfredoh2009]

13 minutes ago, alfredoh2009 said:

didn't the cap come after the Gainey era? I remember making the argument how two GMs later, it became an issue; but, if I remember correctly, the cap was not an issue in Gainey's time span

 

Cap came in in 2004

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHL_salary_cap

 

There was the strike when they changed it and introduced the salary floor just before MB came in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Montreal_Canadiens_general_managers

 

[GHT120]

1 hour ago, alfredoh2009 said:

 

Cap came in in 2004

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHL_salary_cap

 

There was the strike when they changed it and introduced the salary floor just before MB came in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Montreal_Canadiens_general_managers

 

2004-2005 season was cancelled due to the lockout ... the CBA settlement that was reached imposed a cap, which took effect in the 2005-2006 season ... I am certain there has always been a "lower limit/cap floor"; agreeing to a cap ceiling without a floor would have been ridiculous, even for the NHLPA.

 

But the "floor" has never been a concern for the Habs. 

[hab29RETIRED]

9 hours ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:

 

I guess the Gomez trade sticks in my mind because it indicated to me that Gainey had no understanding of the salary cap. At the time Gomez was making 7.3M/year when the salary cap was 56M, that's like approx. 11M/year today with a salary cap of 83.5M.  Gomez was 30 years old at the time of the trade and on the downside, he had scored over 20 goals once and basically averaged 60pts/year in his career.  Today to get rid of a contract like that you would have to offer a sweetener but NO Gainey provided the sweetener of a future stud defensemen (McDonagh) AND a very useful player in Higgins.  Sather must have thought he died and went to heaven. 

 

I know Gainey did some good things as GM but that trade made me wonder if he was losing his marbles as a GM. 

 

That was what I couldn’t understand.

we did the rangers a favour of dumping a contract they needed to get rid off. For that favour we “threw in” a stud first Pairing D prospect 

who was called a future captain when he was drafted. Too bad he went on to captain another team. Can you imagine if that deal wasn’t made and if  became the Captain instead of MaxPac?

 

[hab29RETIRED]

8 hours ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:

Gomez got 42 assists the year before Gainey traded for him, I wouldn't call that elite AND he was making 7.3M which was 13% of the cap. A horrible trade from the outset. Gainey got completely hosed on that deal. In my opinion one of the worst trades by a Habs GM since I have been following the team and there have been some bad ones. 

Umm, ROY, cough, cough, choke!

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

1 minute ago, hab29RETIRED said:

That was what I couldn’t understand.

we did the rangers a favour of dumping a contract they needed to get rid off. For that favour we “threw in” a stud first Pairing D prospect 

who was called a future captain when he was drafted. Too bad he went on to captain another team. Can you imagine if that deal wasn’t made and if  became the Captain instead of MaxPac?

 

 

Also imagine a D comprised of him, Subban, and Markov. With Price behind them.

 

The mind reels

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

4 minutes ago, hab29RETIRED said:

Umm, ROY, cough, cough, choke!

 

The Roy trade was a bad one, the John Leclair trade, the Sergachev trade.  If GM's are active they are bound to make a stinker once in a while but the Gomez trade seemed bad from the outset because of the inherited overpriced contract. 

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

8 minutes ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

 

Also imagine a D comprised of him, Subban, and Markov. With Price behind them.

 

The mind reels

 

That would have been a pretty darn good defense. Defensemen take some time to develop, you have to be careful getting rid of them. 

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

3 minutes ago, Habs Fan in Edmonton said:

 

That would have been a pretty darn good defense. Defensemen take some time to develop, you have to be careful getting rid of them. 

 

Considering that we would likely have made the Finals in 2014 even without McD had Price not had his knee taken out by Kreider, and then we finished 2nd overall in 2015, I think it’s fair to say that is a Cup-worthy defence.

 

Agree on the wider point, don’t trade Guhle.

 

[Habs Fan in Edmonton]

1 minute ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

 

Considering that we would likely have made the Finals in 2014 even without McD had Price not had his knee taken out by Kreider, and then we finished 2nd overall in 2015, I think it’s fair to say that is a Cup-worthy defence.

 

Agree on the wider point, don’t trade Guhle.

 

 

Guhle is a keeper, just needs to get a little stronger which he will. Terrific skater. 

[DON]

 

Newhook seems a much better winger than centre eh.

 

Juraj Slafkovský is showing that he belongs - EOTP (habseyesontheprize.com)

 

[dlbalr]

I think he's a little due for a goal, wouldn't you say?