Bob Gainey headed to Dallas Stars to consult

Wow, Elvis really has left the building. Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey has been hired as a consultant to Dallas Stars general manager Joe Nieuwendyk. Dallas is, of course, the place where Mr. Gainey actually had success as a GM, winning the Stanley Cup in 1999 with a little help from Nieuwendyk, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP that year.

The only hiccup is Gainey’s track record since. Obviously Nieuwendyk has fond memories of his old boss – it was Gainey who traded with Calgary to bring Joe down to Texas – but didn’t he notice how What About Bob and his sidekick Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier drove the Canadiens into the ground? Apparently not.

When Gainey abruptly resigned as Habs GM in February, 2010, the team was, to be polite, struggling. Sure it had some limited success on his watch but he was the chief architect of the misguided (eds note: downright pathetic!) strive-for-mediocrity philosophy that came close to destroying the Habs. Making 8th place was always good enough for Bob.

And his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants remake/remodel (eds. note: Isn’t that a Roxy Music album track?) of the team in July, 2009 was an absolute failure. The result of that little bit of electroshock therapy? Last place in the east this season. He made one of the three worst trades in franchise history – right up there with the Patrick Roy and Chris Chelios brain farts – by sending Chris Higgins and defence prospect Ryan McDonagh to the Rangers in return for taking Scott Gomez and his psychotic contract off of Glen Sather’s hands. That one worked out pretty well eh?

Gomez scored……ah forget it, I don’t even wanna go back down that nightmare on La Gauchetiere (eds. note: Ave. les Canadiens!). But the real killer is McDonagh. Have you been watching the terrific Rangers-Capitals series? McDonagh is on the ice whenever something’s on the line. Can you imagine how good he would’ve looked in the Habs line-up this season?

Cammie? He became Rene Bourque. Yeah that worked out well too. And the other big summer 09 pick-up Brian Gionta has been okay but no more.

Then there was the matter of Gainey refusing to vacate his Bell Centre office. He leaves in if not disgrace at least not with his head held high yet he keeps showing up for work every day. How do you spell ‘dysfunctional’? And was he still pulling the strings, the puppet-meister for Ghost Gauthier? Who knows.

Anyway, I’m happy to see Gainey getting some work in Texas. Richard Labbe from La Presse tweeted me to suggest maybe Gainey would try to get Gomez back – a brilliant idea Richard! Then  someone else on Twitter weighed in to say Chatterbox Gainey might also try to trade for Kaberle and, why not, Rene Bourque. Then we all came to the conclusion that he could also bring Pierre ‘Chuckles’ Gauthier, whoopee cushion in hand, down to Dallas to provide a little levity in the Stars’ executive suites. He could be put in charge of handing out one cookie a-piece to the media hacks before games.

I like it. Clearly it’s just a matter of months before the Cup makes its triumphant return to Dallas.

 

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.

 

Who’s coaching the Habs right now?

You might well answer ‘Randy Cunneyworth’ and you might well be wrong. Do you think Cunneyworth really wants to play the remarkably ineffective Rene ‘I Don’t Parlez-Vous Either’ Bourque more than 19 minutes a game, a stat underlined by The Gazette’s Pat Hickey in his column Tuesday?

No I don’t think so either. I was listening to Michel Villeneuve and Martin McGuire on Les Amateurs de sports Monday night – no I don’t have anything resembling a life’ and McGuire was positing the theory that the Bourque ice-time situation was the clearest indication yet that the real coaching decisions are being made upstairs. In other words, it could well be Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier who’s telling his lame-duck “interim” coach who to play when.

Why? For the same reason Gauthier was telling Jacques ‘Mr. Personality’ Martin and later Cunneyworth to play Scott ‘Sigh’ Gomez on the power-play – to justify bad trades made by the firm of G&G (Gainey & Gauthier). Mitch Melnick said it best Monday on TSN 990 – “Rene Bourque is a complete bust!” No can argue with that one.

It’s easy to summarize Bourque’s stats – most games, it’s no shots, no goals, no assists, and no hits. And the best part? The Habs are stuck with this guy for four more years at, according to CapGeek, $3 million next year, $4 million the year after that, then two years at $2.5 million. If he continues to play like this, at that price-tag, he is untrade-able. Another classic Ghost trade.

Did I mention that Cammie got a goal and three points Monday night against the Dallas Stars? Yes that’s the same Cammie Gauthier traded – during the intermission for heaven’s sake – to Calgary in return for Bourque.

So the conspiracy theory goes that Gauthier could be pressuring Cunneyworth to play Bourque more in a desperate bid to get him some points – a strategy that’s clearly backfiring. The same type of theories cropped up with Gomer – because why else would the coaches be giving this non-scorer so much quality ice-time?

There was a hilarious exchange between Hickey and Cunneyworth on Monday after the morning skate at Brossard, which began with Hickey reminding Parlez-Vous that a week ago he called-out Bourque for not pulling his weight on the team.

“He acknowledges he’s been playing like a dog,” says Hickey. “He’s still getting 20 minutes a game. Is it discouraging that he doesn’t seem to have responded to that?”

In one of the funnier moments in recent Habs media scrum history, Cunneyworth actually argues that Ghost Bourque has shown some improvement over the last week. (Eds. note: Maybe Parlez-Vous thought Hickey was talking about Raymond Bourque in his prime!) Cunneyworth says – you can’t make this stuff up! – that Bourque is out there with a little more authority, that he likes the way he’s manoeuvring his body. (Eds. note: It’s not Battle of the Blades Randy.)

“He tries to get as far away from the scrums as possible,” counters Hickey. “This guy is supposed to be a tough guy.”

Hats off to Hickey on this one. Once again, I just feel bad for Cunneyworth here. He’s been put into yet another impossible situation by his bosses – the same bosses who threw him under the bus just hours after they made him coach of the Habs.

A few weeks back, La Presse’s Francois Gagnon had a great piece speculating about management interference with the Habs coaches. He suggested that Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey might have been trying to call the bench-decision shots back when Claude Julien was coaching and that Julien didn’t appreciate that one bit.

Gagnon also has a good column in La Presse Tuesday titled ‘Molson doit congedier Gauthier’. (Eds. note: Clearly Gagnon is an avid reader of Top Shelf With BK.) And you have to think Geoff Molson will follow this sound advice.

But Mr. Molson will not be able to fire Bourque. Or Tomas ‘Soft As Cadbury’ Kaberle. Or Gomez. Actually maybe he will “fire” Gomez – by sending him to ride the bus with the folks toiling in Hamilton.

My point is just that even if he does the right thing and sweeps out the stagnant management, it’s still going to take the new GM and coach at least two if not three seasons to mend the wounds inflicted during the the reign of error known as the G&G years.

 

One more reason to fire Pierre Gauthier

I know, I know, we hardly need more reasons to give Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier the heave-ho. Your Montreal Canadiens sit comfortably in last place in the East Friday, with 62 points, three points behind the lowly New York Islanders (who also have a game in hand). Imagine that! The Habs in last place in the conference, 27th in the 30-team league, on March 9. This ain’t October.

This after the epic battle for 27th place last night in Edmonton, a game the Hab-nots were supposed to lose in order to gain ground in their quest to nab a better draft pick.  They won, 5-3, with Max ‘Take That Chara” Pacioretty scoring two goals, to reach the 30-goal mark. (That’s right, the team can’t even lose when they’re supposed to!)

So yes the extraordinary #fail that is the Habs 2011-2012 season is reason enough to fire Gauthier and his associate (eds. note: Boss?) , Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey.

But there’s more. Check out this article from the Los Angeles Times in April 2002. The piece by Diane Pucin  has been flying around social-media circles for a few days now – I got my copy from pal Sidhartha Banerjee. The headline is ‘We Hardly Got to Know Gauthier’ and it was penned shortly after he was fired as president and general manager of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

So much of what she’s written could be applied to today’s Gauthier. In fact, just substitute ‘Canadiens’ for ‘Mighty Ducks’ and you’d swear you were reading a piece in today’s papers.

She starts by noting that he has no profile in the community. “He was anonymous”. Check.

“He tended to make statements that weren’t true, in the sense that soon after he’d said something wouldn’t happen, it happened.” Check again.

Remember the firm of G&G saying size didn’t matter, that it was all about talent, when they picked up the Smurfs, Scott ‘Big Bucks Equals Loopy Grin’ Gomez, Michael ‘See Ya Later’ Cammalleri, and Brian ‘Big Heart’ Gionta. Then the Ghost trades Cammie to Calgary for Rene Bourque and says we need to get bigger up-front. (Don’t get me started on fact Bourque is nearly as invisible as the Ghost himself.)

Gauthier also just said the team can easily turn things around and rapidly get back to its former winning ways. That is not true. So why’d he say it? To try to keep his job.

She also writes that Gauthier’s plan “resulted in the Ducks finishing 25 points out of the playoffs this season, a finish billed as a success by management because it was an improvement over last season.” Check again!

The Habs will finish way, way out of the playoffs and it wouldn’t surprise me if Gauthier talks about the great effort the team made. He was talking just last week about how Les Boys were playing with pride, which led many of us to wonder exactly which hockey team he’s been watching. These guys have no pride. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve given up. Too harsh? They’re 3-7 in their last ten games when they’re meant to be in the thick of a desperate run for the playoffs.

My deep-rooted dislike of the Gainey/Gauthier regime started that year – maybe six years ago – when the Habs missed the playoffs by a game and Bob ‘Elvis Has Not Left the Building’ Gainey talked in his season-ending press conference about how we should all be proud of how hard the team battled to try to make 8th place.

I’ll never forget the day I heard Sonali Karnick reporting that on Daybreak. I just lost it on air, jumping in to say no Habs GM should ever be even remotely satisfied with 8th place, never mind not making the playoffs. That was my epiphany – when I realized the Habs had become all about the quest for mediocrity.

Well the one thing this article underlines is that Gauthier is at the very least consistent.

And so am I.

Fire Gauthier.

Now.

Today might be a good day to fire Pierre Gauthier

It’s just a thought. Here we are, it’s the start of the weekend, time to uncork a bottle of Red Stripe, order in some food, and watch the game. We’re all in a good mood, right?

Exactly. There’s only one problem. The game is Montreal-Washington and, let’s be honest here, this ain’t a meeting at the summit. This is whatever you’d call the opposite of a meeting at the summit. Today us Habs fans woke up to something few of us have ever experienced – the Habs are right at this exact second – at 6:40 p.m. Friday – dead last in the East.

That’s right, they’re officially cellar-dwellers. 15th place. 28th in the 30-team league. The Caps are doing only marginally better. They’re in 10th place in the East, only three points out of 8th. But they’re on a big-time skid, having lost the last three and five of the past six.

When did the Habs last finish at the bottom of the standings? Someone, I think it was Richard Labbe from La Presse, tweeted earlier this week to suggest this has not happened since the ’30s. To state the obvious – this is not good. Hell it’s a freakin’ disaster.

So why not toss Ghost Gauthier overboard tonight? I think the idea has some merit. First off, you fire Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier and he won’t be able to do any more damage to the team between now and the trade deadline.

You don’t think he can do damage? You don’t remember the Tomas ‘Soft as Cadbury’ Kaberle trade? We are stuck with a guy for three years for way too much money and he’s the kind of player who just drags a team down to his heart-less level. Did you see Eric Staal stroll by him the other day to score on Carey ‘What Me Worry’ Price? Every GM in the league – and most every hockey fan – knew Kab was a disaster. Every GM that is except Gauthier and his sidekick – or is it his boss? – Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey.

So get rid of him and you’ll save the Habs from trading away Andrei ‘Where’s the Party?’ Kostitsyn for a sack of pucks, only to see AK46 come to Ryder-like life with another smarter team.

The other good thing about setting the Ghost free tonight is it’ll give the folks at TSN, who’re already on hyper-caffeinated pre-trade-deadline overdrive, something to talk about over the weekend.

But the real reason you should give Gauthier his pink slip – and what the heck give one to Bob ‘Elvis Has Not Left the Building’ Gainey while you’re at it – is that the Canadiens are in LAST PLACE in the Eastern Conference today. That’s not just unacceptable. It’s tragic.

The quest for mediocrity has to end now! Actually how about we trade Gauthier for Leafs GM Brian Burke? I became a huge Burke fan when I saw his comments a couple of weeks back about how he could’ve got the Leafs into the playoffs over the past couple of years by trading young players but that he wants to build a championship team.

“I’m not interested in making the playoffs and getting our asses kicked in the first round,” said Burke.

But that’s precisely been the Gainey/Gauthier philosophy in a nutshell. Let’s just squeak into the post-season and we’ll get the fans and media off our backs for another season. Earth to Habs Central – this is what’s called a loser’s philosophy. Cammie was right on that count. This team has been trying not to lose for years now rather than trying to win.

Remember that year when Saku ‘I Know I Was Never a First-Line Centre’ Koivu said, at the start of the season, that the Habs wouldn’t be winning the Cup. He was just reflecting the vibe at head office. Keeps the expensive suds flowing, keep the even more expensive tickets selling, and everything will be okay.

So fire Gauthier now. Please. And let’s bring in new management that will think outside the box. Outside the loser’s box that is.

Here is a classic Seinfeld clip that oh so perfectly captures the spirit of the past couple of decades of Habsdom (courtesy of my Twitter pal Paul Wong).

More Habs dreaming. Is 2012 1971 all over again?

Ummmm no. But it sure is a good talking point. This started with my old pal David Winch, who just might be the biggest Habs fan residing in Geneva, who started talking 1971 in response to my recent post about this year’s sad-sack Hab-nots maybe actually making the playoffs. David started a word association game in the plethora of comments on my Facebook page about the blog, writing; ’1971, MacNeil, and…???’ Then he went on to say: ‘I was daydreaming. Outsider team, 2nd half surge, upset Bruins, Anglo coach fired….ha’

If you are not a regular Red Fisher reader, Nos Canadiens de Montreal stunned the hockey world – and my Bruins-crazed older brother Dermot – in the 1971 playoffs by upsetting the Stanley Cup champ Bruins in the first round and going on to win the Cup. That would a Bruins team led by, as Mr. Fisher might put it, chaps named Orr, Esposito and Cheevers. In the final, the Canadiens beat-out another pretty decent hockey club in the Chicago Blackhawks, that included folks like Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and my hero at the time, goalie Tony Esposito. (I still have my Espo-style mask that I wore for street hockey!)

The common wisdom is that that extraordinary 1971 playoff run was all about a rookie netminder in Montreal, Ken Dryden. But Mr. Winch was quick to underline that his man Frank Mahovlich also had a word or two to say in that Cup win. David’s point is, in part, that Mahovlich doesn’t get the credit he deserves for that playoff run just like Cammalleri doesn’t get enough respect for his goal-scoring surge in the 2010 post-season (a run that we all routinely attribute entirely to another phenomenal netminder, my man Jaroslav Halak). Mahovlich scored 14 goals and notched 27 points in the 1971 playoffs, with Cammie winning the playoff scoring title in 2010 with 13 goals (in spite of the fact that his team only went to the conference final!).

Now I have a soft spot for David Winch but I’m afraid the 2012 Habs just ain’t the 1971 Habs. Brian Gionta ain’t Jean Beliveau, Carey Price ain’t Ken Dryden, and…..well you get the idea.

But where this comparison gets interesting is in the coaching department. In 1970-71, Claude Ruel was head coach at the start of the season, but he stepped down when it looked like they might not make the playoffs and assistant coach Al MacNeil took-over. With MacNeil running the bench, they won the Cup – and it was in large part because he played a hunch and rolled the dice on a young goalie who’d only played six games during the regular season.

Habs management thanked MacNeil by promptly firing him that summer and sending him down to coach the Habs’ farm team in Nova Scotia. MacNeil, a unilingual anglophone, had clashed in a very public manner with Henri Richard that year and was said to have a bad relationship with many of the franco players.

MacNeil was the last unilingual anglo coach of the Habs…..until this fellow Randy ‘Parley-vous’ Cunneyworth came along this year. (Bob Berry, who coached the Habs in the early 80s, was not fluently bilingual but could carry on a conversation in the language of Beliveau.)

So maybe there’s something to this whole ’2012-is-the-new-1971′. Imagine. Following the All-Star game, building on improbable wins against Toronto and Detroit, the Habs go on a major-league second-half upswing, sneak into the playoffs in 8th place, use their speed to beat the Big Bad Cup champion Bruins in the first round, and take it all in a classic seven-game series against the heavily-favoured Chicago Blackhawks (who are back-stopped by former Bruin Timmy Thomas who was traded to the Hawks at the trade deadline following his controversial decision to snub President Barack Obama).

Then the day after the parade – which follows the usual route – manager Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier fires Cunneyworth, sending him back down to the farm-team in Hamilton. (Team president Geoff Molson has already made it clear the coach next year will need to be bilingual…..so it won’t be Mr. Cunneyworth.) May the All-Star-weekend dreaming continue…..

Only 16 days left until the big Scott Gomez anniversary

How time flies when you’re having fun. As we enjoy this fine, fine Habs season, it’s been all too easy to forget that Scotty ‘Big Bucks = Loopy Grin’ Gomez is set to celebrate his big anniversary in less than three weeks.

That’s right. On Feb. 5, Gomez and the entire Canadiens organization will be celebrating the first anniversary of Gomer’s last goal in the National Hockey League. I haven’t heard yet but I can only assume that the Habs brain-trust is hard at work on pulling together the kind of looking-back-at-Habs-history party that they’re so good at.

Can I make one suggestion? I think you simply must have Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey as a central part of the ceremony. After all, it was Bob ‘Elvis Has Not Left the Building’ Gainey who brought Gomez to these shores, when he took that $51.5 million contract off of New York Rangers’ boss Glen Sather’s hands. Rumors that Sather still sends Gainey a priceless bottle of single malt every Christmas remain unconfirmed.

This season Gomez is being paid $7.5 million and has so far lit up the scoreboard……well actually he hasn’t. He has the big doughnut. Zero goals. Five assists. Minus four. If Gomez’s last season – seven goals, 38 points, minus 15 – was a total disaster, as even Gomez admitted, well that makes this year the hockey equivalent of the apocalypse.

The funniest thing – yes in a very dark comedy sense – is that Gomez might well have been one of the better Hab players Wednesday night in the 3-0 loss to the Washington Capitals. He had a team-leading five shots and has nine shots on goal in his last two games.

He actually looks great – but that’s the problem with Gomez. He often LOOKS fab but the flash results in nada.

Do you sense a little bitterness chez moi today? Really? Okay here’s the thing. With Alex Ovechkin’s goal making it 3-zip Wednesday night, the wags on Twitter were saying Ovie just knocked the Canadiens out of the playoffs, something he just couldn’t do in the spring of 2010. Montreal is now nine points out of eighth place and short of a miracle – and it ain’t coming – these guys ain’t making the post-season dance, as Mr. Fisher likes to call it.

As Réjean Tremblay underlined on 98.5 FM Thursday morning, Montreal has 42 points in 46 games and has 36 games left. Tremblay said – and most agree – that you’ll need at least 90 points to make the playoffs. So Montreal needs to nab at least 48 points in its final 36 games.

Do the math! Please! They basically have to win two out of three games between now and the end of the season. That would be a tall order for the Boston Bruins or New York Rangers – two powerhouse squads. For the Habs – who I don’t think even the most boosterish press-box type would call a powerhouse – it’s just a dream. And the season’s a nightmare.

But what really kills me is that the team faces some of the biggest management decisions in two decades and the guys who are going to make those huge decisions for us are the same two geniuses who got us into this mess in the first place – Gauthier and his puppet-master Gainey.

Like how does that make any sense whatsoever? Gainey blew up the team in the summer of 2009 and his much-vaunted five-year-plan is lying in burning ruins at centre-ice. Cammalleri? Gone, traded for a third-liner. Gomez? Re-read the top of this blog. Gionta? Gone for the season and a good, not great, addition to the team.

Any how, let’s focus on the positive. Let’s get going on the party preparations for Feb. 5. How about a video montage of all of Gomez’s near-misses over the past 12 months? And a collection of jokes from Twitter…..à la ‘The last time Scott Gomez scored a goal’. Man it’s gonna be one great soirée!

 

Will Pierre Gauthier still be GM come Monday morning?

It’s not a crazy question. The Canadiens suit up Saturday night against the surprising Ottawa Senators who are 7-1-2 in their last ten games and are sitting comfortably in fifth place in the East. Then Sunday night, the Bell Centre guests are the Eastern Conference top dogs the New York Rangers. In short, the odds are against Montreal in both games.

If Montreal loses both games – which is entirely possible, with gusts up to probable – does Habs president Geoff Molson finally step up to the plate and give Ghost Gauthier his walking papers before he has to read another of Jack Todd’s withering Monday-morning columns?

Meanwhile Montreal languishes Saturday morning nine points out of playoff contention and mired in yet another controversy. It’s not so much the Michael Cammalleri trade as the way the trade happened – with Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier firing the star winger between the second and third period of the game in Boston Thursday night.

Postmedia sports scribe Cam Cole has an inspired column, which was published in the Gaz Saturday, on the woes of the Habs, and it had me thinking maybe you need someone outside Montreal to tell the truth about the rot at the core of his organization.

Cole writes: “The GM, Pierre Gauthier, appears to have no vision or sense of what to do, apart from dropping bombshells from time to time and hoping that the team will respond to shock therapy.”

La Presse columnist Philippe Cantin also had a just-scathing piece Friday blasting Pierre ‘Panic Button’ Gauthier for the Cammalleri trade. One of Cantin’s points – which is right on the money – is that the trade was all about Gauthier’s protecting his man, Randy ‘Parley Vous’ Cunneyworth. Cammy took direct aim at Cunneyworth with his comments about how “We prepare for our games like losers.”

It’s hard to argue with Cammalleri. The Jacques ‘Mr. Personality’ Martin system was all about trying not to lose and Cunneyworth is a chip off the old block – he’s following his old boss’s philosophy hook-line-and-sinker.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the damage to the Habs being inflicted by years of improvisational management from Bob ‘What About Bob’ Gainey and now Ghost Gauthier (with Bob ‘Elvis Has Not Left the Building’ Gainey still pulling the puppet strings from beneath Gauthier’s desk). My son said the other day that he actually kind of likes the Leafs. A friend told me his neighbour – a pure laine franco who’s always lived-and-died by le bleu-blanc-et-rouge forever – said the other day – ‘Hey Les Leafs sont pas pire cette annee.

I keep running into people telling me they’re Bruins fans. A mother of one of the players on my son’s PeeWee team is a die-hard Blackhawks fans and when I asked her way why, she said it’s ’cause it’s exciting to watch the young, dynamic team led by Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.

Yes folks here have always treated hockey like a religion and the Canadiens organization like the Vatican – but just remember what happened with Quebecers and Catholicism. As a priest said in a Denys Arcand film – Jesus de Montreal, I think – Quebec used to be one of the most Catholic countries in the world. Then one day in the mid-’60s, everyone just stood up and left the Churches. And they never came back.

Well the same thing could happen with the Habs. I met a guy yesterday at a sports store and his bitter comment was that all the Habs owners care about is selling beer. I believe he’s wrong. But as long as someone as cynical as Gauthier is pulling the levers – and defending his moves with that bizarre condescending style of his – there’s gonna be more and more Quebecers who agree with that fellow’s assessment of the situation. And you know what else I heard at the same sports store? Habs jerseys haven’t been selling for months now.