The end is nigh

[mike]

Team D was once again terrible, team once again came out of the gate slow, team again can't score, Pacioretty once again didn't score, the team doesn't draw penalties, pk is again terrible and Price once again played well enough to give his team a chance to win and again they didn't.

Tomorrow they'll get hammered in Tampa and a loss in Sunrise on Saturday will end their playoff hopes and it ain't even 2018 yet.

Fine job Bergy. You should be proud.

[Nyssa]

Nah, he'll blame the poor performance on La Grippe.

On the bright side, my pet potted a goal making his 9th
of the season. Soon to be in double digits! So does MB
trade him once he gets there for a bag of pucks and
picks?

Nyssa, who wouldn't put it past MB to trade her pet and
keep the captain...for his great leadership qualities, of
course

[Ed]

You know what Mike? I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them beat the Lightning.

Price stands on his head, the newcomers score a couple and the Bolts are still in holiday mode.

Then again...... There is reality.


Ed

[Chuck]

Mete “My style of play helped Canada win the WJC”
CJ “I don’t care, back here the plan is simply. Dump, Dump and Dump”!

[Chuck]

When Max Pac uses his cloak of invisibility, it covered his entire line, something he learnt from Plekanec

[Nyssa]

Chuck wrote:

> Mete ?My style of play helped Canada win the WJC?
> CJ ?I don?t care, back here the plan is simply. Dump, Dump
> and Dump?!

Sad, but probably true.

In the end, CJ isn't much of an upgrade over MT except
that CJ doesn't mumble and he seems more like a regular
guy than MT who I always got the impression he thought
he was better than anybody else.

Just my pre-New Year's not-so-humble opinion.

Nyssa, who wishes the Habs would get off the "must be
francophone" Affirmative Action bit and simply go for
the best available even if the guy is Finnish or Russian
much less a first-language English speaker

[Chuck]

Caught part of the game, saw Mete make a great 2 zone + cross ice pass, my immediate thought was if this was Montreal, they’d be performing CPR on the Hab coach. The type of pass Markov used to make regularly, as well as being the only Hab defenceman who’d be forgiven, if it went south.

[Gerry]

On the bright side, they are down to I think 27th overall now. The division is so bad it sometimes doesn't seem like they are that far out, but only 1 team outside the division is below them. Which is getting to top-5 draft pick territory.

l8r,
Gerry

[Nyssa]

So? We got a #3 with my pet, and what did they do with him?
Wasted development time and jerked him around from center to
wing and back again, then dumped on him at every opportunity.

Even if they snag a Top 5 pick, the current management and
coaching staff wouldn't have a clue as to how to properly
develop the kid into a top player.

And that's assuming that MB goes with the best pick for what
we need, not the top French-speaking player or some other
diversion that won't help down the road. Or that MB doesn't
end up trading him away for a bag of pucks or some shiny object
in the first year or two because "he hasn't developed into what
we thought he was capable of."

Cynical? Yeah. Bitter, probably. Realistic, definitely!

The track record on picking and developing is out there for
all to see, and we've been living with MB's "Five Year Plan"
for six years now to no good effect.

We're screwed, period, unless there's a house cleaning of
the management and coaching staff to keep the (very) few
pieces of the coaching and scouting staffs that have shown
competency.

But from all the signs, that ain't gonna happen, so a Top
5 pick will be just another disappointment in the long run
for the fans.

Nyssa, who seems to be ending the year on a very negative note

[Chuck]

Have any of their forwards developed the way their system needed them to be? Back to don`t change the system to fit the players, make the players change to fit the system. The across the board weak puck skills by the defence has sucked the offence out of this team where offensive zone turnovers rarely are rescued by the defence. Because it is always the forward's fault, never the two lines of the defence playing behind them (Defencemen and Goalie). How often do they convert those turnovers back into scoring chances rather then a chance for the defence to show off their rebound clearing skills!

[Gerry]

Sergachev must be thrilled with the trade. His 23pts would still be tops on the Habs (of course he wouldn't have anything close to that if he was on the Habs).

But anyway, a top draft pick is at least an opportunity at a star player. They may well squander that opportunity, yet again. But they need that star power so badly, and it's not easy to get it, so any opportunity is at least better than nothing.

l8r,
Gerry

[Chuck]

Do the Habs ever consider that when choosing who to draft, none of them played a style of hockey resembling the system they will be told to play after joining the Habs. Offence often drives which forwards go in the 1st round but once they join the Habs they are told to stifle those skills, because the defencemen playing behind them cannot do much of anything other then clear rebounds and rarely feed them the puck anywhere useful.

Love the flow of play in the WJC

[Mike]

I think if they continue to flounder and drop into the bottom 5 of the
league, Molson will have no choice. He'll have to let Bergevin go but
not until the end of the year. No point doing it before. Molson should
also do a whole lot of soul searching once he does finally pull the plug
and flood the foxhole. He needs to examine his own behaviour and how he
influences those below him. His last name may be Molson but that leaves
no guarantees that he knows anymore about owning a hockey team than any
of us on this board. Its time he took a step back and hired a real
hockey man to run the team and let him hire and be responsible for a new
GM. But before any of that, Molson needs to have an open and frank
discussion with all the Habs fans and tell them that winning is now the
only thing that matters. All things being equal, we'll chose a French GM
and a French President but this will not stop the team from hiring an
extremely qualified anglo GM, coach or President. 25 years of mediocrity
is enough.

[Chuck]

I am afraid any change will just bring more of the same, more retired NHL players who believe so much in the culture that was in place when they played, that they will never move away from a risk averse defence driven system, lunch pail style of hockey instead of building from their best players out, all the players not just the idea that a pure defence, mistake free hockey requires that you start from the Goal out. Resulting in the myth the system works when you happen to have a star goalie at the top of his game, making it appear the system being played in front of him actually works

[Gerry]

Do you think if they had a frank discussion with all the Habs fans that they'd actually conclude that winning is the only thing that matters? Because I don't think it actually does to most Habs fans? Or at least, the vocal majority of "Habs fans" would come out of the woodwork, and to them, winning is definitely not what matters most. But they do buy the tickets, pay the advertising, etc, etc. They may not be the diehards posting 30 years of lamentations on Usenet, but they are still the fans that have the voice that Molson is listening to, and will have to continue to listen to.

I don't think they should fight that particularly battle yet. Claude Julien is a topnotch NHL coach, and there are others like Vigneault, Boucher around, and it shouldn't be impossible to continue operating with the best Francophone personnel at the helm. They do need to be careful not to "settle" when somebody isn't available and never hire a less-qualified guy like Therrien again. And they do need to clean out some of the bloatage in the front office gang of former players. I think they can still run a franco-centric operation, but they do still have to be more careful and run a tighter, smarter, more modern ship while doing so.

l8r,
Gerry

[Chuck]

Are there any coaches who can be pricks when it comes to motivating and empowering their best players? Or do they all make the same lame moves such as over playing stone handed defence pairings like Petry and Benn, who rely on random chance when trying to move the puck, taking a line that has worked well, removing Deslauriers in order to give Froese some playing time despite the fact the problem is all the other line combos he can come up with?

I see Max Pac is beginning to crack, it would be nice to see him lose it, and publicly state what he really feels about his team’s “system”

[Mike]

On 2017-12-30 04:50 PM, Chuck wrote:
> Do the Habs ever consider that when choosing who to draft, none of them played a style of hockey resembling the system they will be told to play after joining the Habs. Offence often drives which forwards go in the 1st round but once they join the Habs they are told to stifle those skills, because the defencemen playing behind them cannot do much of anything other then clear rebounds and rarely feed them the puck anywhere useful.
>
> Love the flow of play in the WJC
>

and to make matters worse, when the Habs finally do have an opportunity
to assemble a defensive squad with great puck movers or skaters, they
get rid of them - Subban, Sergachev, McDonnagh, Markov - buh bye. Take
that skill elsewhere, you dont fit the mould. Or should I say mold :-)