Well that was a good game…..for P.K. Subban

Well that was special. You wait nine-and-a-half months, you forgive the owners in a nanosecond with promises of a free hot dog and chips, and you’re just totally pumped for the first game since last spring starring your beloved Montreal Canadiens.

Things start in promising fashion with a great opening ceremony with the passing of the torch and as you look at Henri Richard, it’s hard to not start dreaming about the glory days of Les Glorieux. But alas that was just a dream. The best line I heard on the game came from – I think but I’m not sure cos I was flipping from sports channel to sports channel Sunday morning – Postmedia columnist Bruce Arthur who said Montreal would be fine if they could play hockey games nearly as well as they do opening ceremonies.

Now okay it’s just one game and they weren’t blown out, it’s true. But keep in mind they were playing a team that will be battling with Les Habs for 12th place in a couple of months;. There just weren’t many positives in Montreal’s 2-1 loss Saturday to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Hot prospect Alex Galchenyuk looked like a hot prospect, with two decent shots and over 13 minutes of cie time, and even I have to admit that Carey ‘What Me Worry?’ Price looked just fine. (Though I would be remiss in not underlining that Jaro ‘Saint’ Halak nabbed a shut-out in his first game of the season with the Blues and Halakit a lot.) The rest of the Habs? Not so much positive to say.

Fact is they looked a lot like last year’s underachieving bunch, which is not all that surprising since they are in fact last year’s underachieving bunch. GM Marc Bergevin added some sandpaper with Brandon Prust (who had his first fight as a Hab), Francis Bouillon, and Colby Armstrong, but didn’t add a whole lot of talent to the sad-sack roster that finished dead last in the East.

They’re also missing one of their best players, a fellow named P.K. Subban, who was watching last night’s game at home in T.O. I gotta think his value goes through the roof after Saturday’s game and it’ll be even higher Tuesday at ten if the Huberdeau/Kovalev show provide the entertainment at the Panthers-Habs match-up that night.

My good pal Tom Burke had it right with his tweet: ‘PK’s ego must be through the roof. They chant his name, they spend the 2nd intermission on HNIC talking about him. King PK.”

So they need to sign him fast. Will he solve all their problems? No. Is his ego an issue in the room? Probably. (Josh Gorges’s comments in Richard Labbe’s piece in La Presse Saturday certainly suggested his team-mates are kind of fed up with him and his dispute with Bergevin.

But this Habs squad needs any help it can get – fast. Sure it’s only one game but what a pathetic game it was.

Here’s the highlight of Saturday’s game, the opening ceremonies:

And here’s a clip of the Simple Plan gig outside the Bell Centre before the game.

 

Allan Walsh makes no apologies for using social media to air his views on the lock-out

National Hockey League player agent Allan Walsh is big on Twitter. Some 11,600 tweets in, he’s one of the most active hockey agents on the social-media platform and since the start of the lockout, he’s launched a steady stream of tweets aggressively attacking the owners’ hardline stance.

Some – not me – have taken him to task on this, most notably TSN star Darren Dreger, who suggested Walsh was shilling for the NHLPA. Walsh shot back – on Twitter, where else? – suggesting Dreger was the one doing the shilling, for the League, which provides him with most of his scoops.

Walsh represents a number of top NHL players, including Marc-Andre Fleury, Martin Havlat, Patrick Elias, David Perron and my main man Jaroslav Halak.

On the phone Friday from Los Angeles, Walsh said he doesn’t worry too much about the fact some don’t dig his openly subjective tweets.

“I never really think about it,” said Walsh. “The one thing I’ve never done is worry about what people think. I learned that long ago. If you worry about what people think, then you’re not really being true to yourself and true to your beliefs and true to your clients. At times perhaps I’ve taken an unpopular position, not just with the CBA but generally speaking, and I’m OK with that.”

So what do you say to those, like Dreger, who suggest you’re just spouting the NHLPA party line?

“My response would be is that you obviously don’t get what I do for my career. I am somebody who represents players. I support the players and I support the NHLPA. What has occurred at times is because I’m sharing a platform with a lot of media, sometimes I feel people think I’m a journalist or should be judged by journalistic standards. I’m not a journalist. I put right up on my Twitter bio what my mission statement is. There’s no hiding the ball at all. My bias is on my tweets.

“What I’m doing is I’m advancing arguments on behalf on my clients, on behalf of the players, and I’m using my opinions. I’m not speaking directly for my players. There are a lot of people out there giving the owners position. And there’s not as many people advocating the players’ position. So I’m advocating the players’ position. And some people see that and say: ‘Well you’re biased. You’re not being fair. You’re not being objective.’ You’re right.”

He’s made some great points in the past weeks about the damage Gary ‘I hate hockey’ Bettman and his cronies are doing to the League. I’ll have a follow-up blog with some of the highlights from our conversation about the negotiations.

You know what? I like advocates. Nothing wrong with having a strong opinion and sticking to it. Plus, Allan Walsh just happens to be right – this ugly lockout is all about union-busting and that’s just plain wrong. More on that later!

 

Carey Price deal a huge mistake for the Habs

Hey at least I’m consistent man. I’ve been saying since the very beginnings of the Top Shelf revolution that Carey ‘Man in Black’ Price is one unproven commodity and I’m sticking to my guns this morning.

No I’m not suggesting we trade him to St. Louis to get Jaroslav ‘Hero’ Halak back (eds. note: Why not? Good idea!). All I’m saying is that Pricey ain’t won nothing in the National Hockey League. And since he ain’t done nothing yet, he does NOT deserve to be the third highest-paid netminder in the Big Leagues.

On Monday, Marc ‘We Still Like Him’ Bergevin signed Price to a six-year deal at $6.5 million per season. As Pat Hickey notes in his piece in the Gazette Tuesday, there are only two goalies with higher cap hits than Price. They are Pekka Rinne in Nashville who is the top earner with a pay cheque of $7 million per year, followed closely by New York Rangers whiz kid Henrik Lundqvist with a salary of $6.875 million.

Does Price deserve the same kind of money as these guys? Not by any stretch of the imagination. The problem is that, as Jack Todd calls ‘em, “his cheerleaders in the press box” have been telling us for years that Price is the next Patrick Roy but there’s absolutely no proof of that up until now. He’s a good goalie, most of the time, but that’s it.

Let’s do a little comparison shopping. Finnish phenom Renne led the league last year in wins, shots against, games played, and saves, and was one of three finalists for the Vezina Trophy for best goalie. That by the way was the second straight year he was on the short list for the Vezina.

Lundqvist won the Vezina this past season – i.e. he’s the  best goalie in the league – and had a goals-against-average of 1.97 and a save-percentage of .930. He was also simply stunning in the playoffs.

Price? Ummm first-off he wasn’t in the playoffs. Price had a losing record last season, with 26 wins and 28 losses, and a mediocre GAA of 2.43 and a less-than-stellar save-percentage of .916.

Now you are going to say he was playing for a cruddy team. And you’re right. But still. He didn’t steal any games for the Hab-nots. He didn’t do anything to deserve $6.5 million.

Then there’s the fact that he’s never taken the Habs anywhere in the post-season. In four playoffs with the Canadiens, he’s only won 8 out of 26 games. That’s terrible. And I’m not even going to give you his playoff GAA and save-percentage stats cos they stink.

The only post-season success the Habs have had in recent memory is the spring of 2010 when that unlikely team made it to the conference final – but the fellow between the pipes that playoff was a chap named Halak while Mr. Price was warming the bench.

It’s too much money and too many years for a guy who hasn’t proven anything yet in the Big Boys League. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying Price will never become a great goalie. He might. But he isn’t a great goalie right here right now.

Don’t sign Carey Price for more than four years

When Los Angeles Kings goalie Jonathan Quick agreed to a ten-year contract extension with his Cup-winning team, my Twitter pal Paul Wong was quick to ask me where I figured that left Carey ‘Gump Cash’ Price.

My answer? It has nothing to do with Price. Quick won the Stanley Cup and nabbed the Conn Smythe Trophy along the way. Price, may I remind you, has won nothing. Ever. In the National Hockey League.

I’m not saying he’s not a good goalie. He is. And he may become a great one. But to paraphrase the great Bachman Turner Overdrive, We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet! (Add in your own ‘b-b-b-b-b-baby’.)

Our beloved Habs, may I remind you, finished last place in the East this past season. Now of course that wasn’t mainly Price’s fault. Heck it was hardly The Man in Black’s fault at all. That was a psycho team from top to bottom, crafted in the image of its strange general manager. But Pricey didn’t pull off any miracles either.

The other thing I said to Paul is that those ten, eleven, twelve-year deals are just stoopid. D-U-M-B, as the Ramones put it so memorably. Just look at the Roberto Luongo situation. Here is a netminder with ten years left on his ridiculous 12-year, $64 million contract with the Vancouver Canucks and he’s not even the team’s No. 1 goalie anymore, with Cory Schneider effectively in that spot right now after Luongo choked in the playoffs yet again. But Vancouver is stuck with Luongo since no sane general manager wants to pick up that kind of contract for a goalie who keeps underwhelming.

There are reports that the Habs might be contemplating a six or seven-year deal for Price for something in the range of $6 million or $7 million a year.

Well I have just one piece of advice for the Habs’ new, much-improved GM Marc ‘Dashing Man’ Bergevin – don’t give Price more than four years. He’s still an unproven commodity. I’m not saying don’t sign him. I’m not saying think way outside the box and instead go for the season’s most surprising free agent – Marty ‘Old Man’ Brodeur. (Though wouldn’t that be a great story, eh? Brodeur returns to his hometown to finish his career with the Canadiens? Hey a guy can dream.)

I’m not saying trade Price to St. Louis to get Jaroslav Halak back – though that too is a cool idea.

No I’m just saying don’t go for more than four years. Let Mr. Country Music bring us a Cup – or even a couple of dominant playoff-series wins – and then we’ll talk about ten-year deals.

Liking the NHL Awards – Pacioretty wins, Chara loses, Halak takes Jennings

On the eve of the most important draft for the Canadiens in a few decades, let’s celebrate a great night for us Habs fans at the NHL Awards.

The big news, of course, was that Max Pacioretty nabbed the Bill Masterton Trophy, beating out Joffrey Lupul from the Maple Leafs and favourite Daniel Alfredsson from the Senators. The award is for the player who is the best example in the past season of perseverance and sportsmanship.

Patch told The Gazette’s Dave Stubbs that “It doesn’t sound real right now but this is definitely the best thing in the world.”

Indeed. I’ll just say that I was listening to sports radio Wednesday – it does happen sometimes when my radio dial veers off CBC Radio One by mistake – and I heard the “experts” – who will remain un-named to protect the guilty – saying there was simply no chance that Pacioretty would win the Masterton. The argument was that it’s voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association and that hockey scribes have radically divided views on the infamous Zdeno Chara hit on Pacioretty – when the Brunis D-man crushed Patch’s head into a stanchion at the Bell Centre in the spring 0f 2011, sending the Hab to the hospital in a stretcher with a fractured cervical vertebra.

So I take the win as something of a vindication for our take on this hit – that it was an ugly incident, that seasoned vet Chara knew exactly what he was doing when he rammed Pacioretty’s upper body into the stanchion. This is a story with a happy ending too – Patch bounced back from this potentially-career-threatening injury to play his best-ever season in the big leagues, notching 33 goals and 32 assists on the only happening line on a C-list team going nowhere fast (that would be our beloved Habs!).

But the NHL Awards story gets even better – cos Chara lost in the Norris trophy race to Senators defenceman Erik Karlsson. Poor old Zdeno – he has to watch Pacioretty win, he loses and he gets to sit there in the crowd thinking long and hard about how far the Bruins have fallen since their Cup victory the year before!

Last but not least, my main man Jaroslav Halak won the Jennings Trophy with fellow Blues netminder Brian Elliott for allowing the fewest goals during the regular season. Their numbers are just mind blowing – Elliott had a 1.56 goals-against-average and Halak had a 1.97 GAA.

So you know what? I like Carey ‘The Man in Black’ Price as much as the next Montrealer but let’s just admit that Jaro remains an effin amazing goalie!

And stay tuned. We’ll talk more about the 2012 NHL draft and the Habs third-overall pick shortly!

A Habs fan’s take on the playoffs

It’s all about the Habs right? I know Les Boys haven’t played for a couple of weeks but you just know that all us Habs fans are watching the post-season with our Habs-coloured glasses.

So what’s the Habs’ fanatic take on the 2012 playoffs? Well first-off we’re in a celebratory mood today. The Big Bad Bruins are gone. I mean, how sweet is that? Boston loses in overtime in game seven of the first round. It just doesn’t get any better than that. They have to swallow the same punishment the Canadiens and their fans went through last year – with the Bs knocking off Montreal in game seven OT of the first round. The Habs were one Subban slapshot away from advancing to the second round.

Last night, it was fun to see the Bruins dealing with the same sort of failure. But it was even worse of course for them given that they won the Cup last spring. The good news? Zdeno Chara – who apparently doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, if you believe the unbiased views of Don Cherry – will not be hoisting the Cup this season. Oh well.

On to who us Habs nuts are backing. Well St. Louis of course. Why? ‘Cause of Jaroslav Halak. I know he’s still injured – apparently he will not be available for the first two games of the second-round series against Los Angeles. But he’ll be back. Count on it. And how cool would that be to see the Blues win it all and have Jaro sipping from the Cup – clip that photo out and mail it down to Ghost Gauthier’s manor in Burlington.

Our other team – well the Preds. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if les freres Kostitsyn made it all the way – two very talented snipers tossed on to the trash heap of history by the firm of Gainey & Gauthier.

In short, us Habs obsessives take our pleasures where we can find ‘em. Of course, we’d rather be watching our team. But you know what? The sad-sack 2011-2012 Habs would be smoked by even the worst team in these playoffs.

- Brendan

 

Kudos to Geoff Molson for sending Michael Cammalleri his jersey

Michael Cammalleri has finally got his Canadiens sweater back! Friday, on his Twitter account, Cammie tweeted: ‘Just received a hand written letter from Geoff Molson and my jersey from last game as a hab. Much appreciated thank you. Merci.’

So credit to Habs president Molson for showing some real class and paying Cammalleri a little respect after he had his face rubbed in the sand by the previous management.

You may recall that Cammalleri, after he was unceremoniously traded to the Calgary Flames in January, asked Canadiens GM Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier if he could keep his No. 13 sweater as a momento of his time with the Habs. The Ghost said ‘sure thing’ but with one caveat – Cammie would have to pay for the sweater!!!! Reports suggest the talented sniper would’ve had to shell-out between $600 and $1250 for the jersey.

It’s a great story – one that should be pulled out every time we’re trying to sum up the neurotic pettiness of the Gauthier era as Habs main-man. But why should we be surprised to learn that the Ghost was so intent in giving Cammie one last face-wash. This was a GM who specialized in mean-spirited Scroogedness.

Just think of the way he traded the veteran winger – between the second and third periods of a game in Boston. In a scene taken from the pages of one of Rejean Tremblay’s more far-fetched Lance et Compte scripts, the Ghost told Cammalleri mid-way through the game to get undressed and head back to the hotel and wait for his call to find out where he was headed. This, by the way, would be a hotel the team had already checked out of because they were flying straight back from Boston to Montreal after the game. So Cammalleri had to sit in the lobby and steam, waiting for Gauthier to deign to give him a buzz. It was one of the ugliest moments in recent Habs history.

Then of course there was the Halak Molson Cup incident. When Jaroslav Halak made his much-anticipated return to the Bell Centre this winter, Gauthier delayed the Molson Cup ceremony by a week so the team could present the trophy to Carey Price – in a childish effort to humiliate Halak and take his mind off his game. As was the case with most of Gauthier’s petty moves, it backfired. Halak shut-out the Habs and the fans voted him first star of the game.

You can say this is all small stuff – but it set the tone for the entire organization. Gauthier was the ultimate micro-manager – remember the story about allowing reporters only one cookie per meal when he was running the lean, mean (eds. note: Vegan?) Ottawa Senators?

The Canadiens have always been one of the classiest teams in professional sports and there’s just no place for this sort of behaviour. With this one small gesture from Molson, maybe just maybe the team is back off the Road to Ruin – as the Ramones so eloquently put it – and back on the Rocket to Russia. Okay so I’m stretching it with my reference two of the greatest albums in the history of recorded music, but you get the idea.

So Molson got this one right. Now there’s the small matter of hiring the right GM…..

- Brendan

My fond memories of Pierre Gauthier

Ah yes, my pleasant thoughts on Mr. Gauthier. Hmmm this is going to be maybe my shortest blog ever.

But seriously, I’m not ready to wade into the debate about who’s the best man for the Habs GM job – all I’ll say for now is ‘stop this Patrick Roy nonsense, right now’. We’ll have plenty of time for that GM chatter in the coming weeks.

No this morning I want to cast a look back at the most enigmatic of Canadiens’ general managers, Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier. Humour me. I’ve spent most of the past year penning a mono-thematic blog that can be summed up in one phrase – ‘Fire the Ghost now!’ So I can’t let him leave town and slink back to his meat-free/journalist-free manor in Burlington without a few parting thoughts.

I learn from the Ottawa Citizen’s Wayne Scanlan column this morning that Gauthier picked-up the ‘Ghost’ monicker from his days at the Ottawa Senators GM, where he had a pretty successful run from 1995 to 1998. That success leads Scanlan to conclude that Gauthier is “a decent hockey man, regardless of the mess he just left.”

I’m not well-placed to weigh in on whether or not he was a decent hockey man when he was running the Sens but he was not a decent hockey man here in Montreal. In fact, ‘decent’ isn’t the first word that springs to mind when looking back at Gauthier’s tenure ici.

What the F happened this year in Montreal? In some ways, the team’s collapse was mysterious. They were able to compete last year. So why were they so broken this season? The answer starts, as it always does, at the top. The players didn’t believe in Gauthier. The media didn’t believe in Gauthier. The fans didn’t believe in Gauthier. This is not good.

Even if he had made one great deal after another – which he didn’t – the Ghost wouldn’t have been much liked. There wasn’t much to like there. Ask anyone who works in the executive suites of the Bell Centre if he ever deigned to say ‘bonjour’. No he didn’t.

He treated the media like crap. He always reminded me of an old-school Quebec priest. ‘I have all the answers. You don’t. So listen up my friends.’ And he is one of those guys who’ll say anything to get out of a room. Media hack: ‘Why’d you pick up underachiever Rene ‘Complete Bust’ Bourque?’ Ghost: ‘Cos we need size upfront’. Not said is that Gauthier and his pal Bob “Elvis Has Finally Left the Building’ Gainey had spent the past few years making the case that size didn’t matter.

So his (lack of) personality didn’t help. But it was his actions that really drove the Habs into the ground this year. Two in particular. The first was signing Andrei ‘Question Mark’ Markov to a three-year deal last summer. The Habs have spent the past two seasons trying – unsuccessfully – to deal with Markov’s absence and that’s been a huge reason for the team’s woes.

Gauthier had the chance to cut Markov free and take that dough and go get an A-list D-man. But he didn’t. Then he spent the whole season telling us how Markov was on his way back…..sooon…..any day now. The tragi-comic soap opera reached its nadir that time in Los Angeles when no one – the Ghost, the coach – seemed to know where Markov was that day.

The other was the way he fired Jacques ‘Mr. Personality’ Martin. As Francois Gagnon points out in his column Saturday, the Canadiens were still fighting for a playoff spot when Gauthier chopped Martin on Dec. 17, with a 13-12-7 record.

Now I was a huge critic of Martin’s. I’m not going to start pretending this morning that Marcel Marceau was my idea of a great coach. Playing a trap-like system with a small fast-skating team is just goofy. But what a way to make him walk the plank. The morning of a game. (Well this of course is the same GM who traded Michael Cammalleri between the second and third periods of a game in Boston, telling the seasoned player to go back to his hotel – which the team had already checked out of – and wait for his call to tell him where he was going. You don’t treat the scummiest player in the league like that, never mind a guy who bled bleu-blanc-et-rouge during that miraculous 2010 playoff run! But I digress.)

Then you replace Martin with Randy ‘Parlez-Vous’ Cunneyworth, a unilingual anglophone with no NHL head-coaching experience. Oh yeah and you also announce that he is “interim” head coach. In other words, he’s gonna be toast come the end of the season. And then you’re surprised when the players refuse to take the guy seriously. Why would they?

And you don’t for a second think that his lack of French is going to create an apocalyptic controversy. Of course you don’t Pierre, ’cause you live in Vermont and have absolutely no idea what’s going on inside Quebecers’ heads. What you did that day was treat all of us with contempt. (Though to be fair, let’s admit that Geoff Molson should’ve stopped that madness before it happened.)

But also what’s up with this “interim” thing. That trashed the season right then and there. So why’d Gauthier do that? There is no logical explanation. Actually there is one and it’s real nasty. That he wanted someone behind the bench that he could control. I want to believe that’s not true ’cause it makes me sick to think of it. But you give me a better explanation. It was Dec. 17 for heaven’s sake. The season was imminently save-able. So why he’d have the team commit hari-kari.

I could mention giving away Halak, bringing in pricey disasters Kaberle and Bourque, giving up AK46 for next to nothing…..but I won’t.

No I’m done with my trip down memory lane.

Now that’s off my chest, I’m ready to move on. You too?

 

Gauthier fired – the Habs spring has sprung!

I feel like breaking into song. I know, I know, it’s a frightening thought.

Nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey, good-bye!

Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier has officially been tossed on to the trash heap of history by the Canadiens owner and president Geoff ‘My New Hero’ Molson. And not a moment too soon, I might add. Better yet, Molson also made it clear Thursday morning that I need a new nickname for Bob ‘Elvis Has Not Left the Building’ Gainey. That’s right – Bob ‘I’m Always the Last Guy at the Party’ Gainey is in fact leaving the building.

This is – in case you can’t figure it out on your own – great news. The only downside is I will now have to think harder before penning my Top Shelf blogs because I will at last have to retire the ‘Gauthier-must-be-fired’ template. Oh well, life becomes tougher for me as a blogger but I am infinitely more happy as a Habs fan.

The firm of G&G have decimated one of the greatest franchises in professional sports. I got into a bit of a tiff on Twitter Thursday morning when I described the nine years of the Gainey & Gauthier reign of error as a “disastrous” era. Folks pointed out that the team once finished first in the Eastern Conference – a bit of a fluke – and made it to the conference final in 2010 – that entirely due to one man, Jaroslav Halak, a fellow that G&G had actively and openly tried to run out of town earlier in the season.

Fact is G&G’s Habs never won nothing. Worse, their management motto was ‘let’s try not to lose too badly.’ I’m not the world’s biggest Mike Cammalleri fan but man did he nail it when he let it all hang out that day just before he got shipped off – between periods! – to the Flames. Montreal does have a “losing” culture or, if you prefer, a “loser’s” culture. That’s the way it’s been ever since Gainey took-over.

The mantra has been – ‘struggle to make 8th place, so we can keep the fans and media off our backs for another year.’ No one ever talked about winning the Cup. That’s a pathetic excuse for a team philosophy if you’re the New York Islanders. If you’re the Montreal Effin Canadiens, it’s beyond pathetic. It’s a slap in the face to the team’s fans.

But what I heard Thursday morning was something else altogether. Molson, the new kid on the Habs block, talking about winning. Now some are already saying those are empty words but at least he’s saying the right words, something I haven’t much heard since 1993.

“Ownership will accept nothing less than a winning culture in this organization,” said Molson.

Them’s fighting words. And it gets better. Listen to how he describes the Habs culture in recent years.

“The Montreal Canadiens is a storied franchise, often cited as one of the greatest sports organizations in the world. Our 24 Stanley Cups are a testament to this. However the traits that are common to all successful organizations have been lacking in recent years. When one looks to the great organizations of the past or the ones that are performing particularly well currently, the root of their success lies in their consistency and stability.”

With stable owners in place, Molson goes on to suggest the time has come to bring the same stability to the on-ice product.

“It is my responsibility to identify solutions and rebuild the winning culture that this franchise’s fans, its history and its tradition demand.”

Molson wants the Cup. It might be ego on this part. Maybe he wants to go down in history as the guy who brought the Holy Grail back to its rightful home in Montreal. Who cares why he’s doing it. What matters is that he wants to win. And he says he’ll do whatever takes to do it.

Of course, the Habs aren’t out of the woods now by any stretch of the imagination. It’s going to take some time to recover from the G&G mistakes – mistakes named Scott ‘Yikes’ Gomez, Tomas ‘Soft As Cadbury’ Kaberle, Rene ‘Complete Bust’ Bourque. There’s also no getting back the players lost in goofball deals and/or via sheer negligence, like Ryan McDonagh, Mike Ribeiro, Mikhail Grabovski, Mark Streit.

But at least management is finally admitting they messed up badly. That’s the key first step. It’s like the alcoholic admitting he has a problem. You can’t start the cure until you admit you’re sick.

But the worst thing we can do is give Molson a free ride. The culture of the organization has to change. The contempt Gainey and Gauthier showed for both the fans and the media has to end. Management has to be out there answering questions.

Like Molson did Thursday. That press conference was the polar opposite of the botched media event introducing Randy ‘Parlez-Vous’ Cunneyworth – a press conference where all concerned forgot they were holding the event in a mostly French-speaking city and seemed surprised by every question that came their way. Molson spoke at length in the language of Beliveau and handled every media query without missing a beat.

It was light years from the G&G style – Gainey and Gauthier always acted like they couldn’t believe these peasants (aka journalists) had somehow snuck into the castle to pester them with childish inquiries.

So today there is much room for optimism. Now let’s see if Molson – with help from his new adviser, Serge Savard - takes advantage of this great opportunity. I for one am jumping back on the bandwagon. You should too.

 

The Habs don’t know how to develop talent

You probably already suspected this – that the current Habs are clueless when it comes to developing players. The Firm of G&G – Gainey & Gauthier – are infamous for trading away talented players who then flourish elsewhere. We all kinda already, in our bones, knew this.

But a terrific column by Francois Gagnon in La Presse a couple of days back really puts this in focus. Gagnon’s piece is inspired by a study undertaken by Ed Willes evaluating the drafting track records of NHL teams between 2000 and 2009. He rather improbably has Your Montreal Canadiens coming out in first place on the drafting chart, which I think will come as a shocker to most of you.

“Sorry, can’t explain this but the numbers don’t lie,” writes Willes.

But here’s where Gagnon’s column comes into play. His point is that yes the Habs did indeed draft lots of quality players during that decade but the cream of the crop then went on to thrive elsewhere.

Gagnon notes that of the 26 players drafted by the Canadiens since 2000, only seven are still with the team – Louis ‘I might become a good player’ Leblanc  from the 2009 draft, Max ‘Hero’ Pacioretty, Yanick ‘Huh?’ Weber and P.K. ‘I feel good’ Subban from what was obviously a pretty good drafting session for the Habs in 2007, Ryan ‘Fisticuffs’ White from 2006, Carey ‘What me worry’ Price from 2005, and Tomas ‘Under-achiever’ Plekanec from 2001.

That’s the good news. The bad news, as detailed by Gagnon, is all the quality players we drafted and then gave up for almost nothing in return. Yes Mr. Gainey and Mr. Gauthier, take a sip of your high-end coffee and take a look at this. Ryan ‘Hello Mr. Gainey’ McDonagh. A throw-in in the now infamous Scott Gomez-Chris Higgins trade. He’s now one of the New York Rangers’ top blue-liners. Dumping McDonagh is right up there with Reggie ‘This is my claim to fame’ Houle throwing in the great Mike Keane – hey I even named my son after him – in the Patrick Roy deal with Colorado. How many Cups did Keane go on to win? Don’t ask. And maybe McDonagh will win the Cup this year. But I digress.

Gagnon continues with the list of shame. The ‘Where’s the party’ Kostitsyn brothers, both to Nashville. Mikhail Grabovski, who is now a key player with the Maple Leafs. Given up for a song. Jaroslav Halak. The less said the better, okay? And he’s now team-mates on the Blues with another former Hab draft pick, Matt d’Agostini.

Mark Streit. That’s one that kills me. Captain of the Islanders. We all knew he was great when he was here but the Firm of G&G just let him slip away. And the Gagnon list goes on – read his column to see how many decent players the Habs brain-trust dumped like yesterday’s papers.

Then the fine La Presse columnist moves on to the guys we could’ve picked up in drafts past but didn’t, including a couple of French-Canadian stars, Claude Giroux – No. 2 in the points standing as we speak – and Simon Gagne.

So how did Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey and Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier do such a cruddy job of developing the talent they had right there on the bench? Good question. I don’t have the answer. I can’t get inside these two guys’ minds to know why – and that I’m thinking is probably a good thing!

That’s the mysterious part of this story. The less mysterious part – it’s downright crystal-clear actually – is the fact that G&G have mismanaged the team. That’s not up for debate. At every turn, they’ve made the wrong moves. (And we haven’t even got to how they mismanaged the coaching situation. Let’s leave that for another blog.)

Urgggghhh!