Habs should sign P.K. Subban tout de suite

Like what the heck are they waiting for? P.K. Subban is the last restricted free agent on the Canadiens roster not to be signed and by most accounts Subban’s agent Don Meehan and Habs GM Marc Bergevin haven’t even begun serious discussions.

Now I believe P.K. when he says he wants to remain a Hab and isn’t looking to hook up with any other team. But M. Bergevin may have noticed that the Philadelphia Flyers have made D-man Shea Weber a 14-year $110 million offer sheet and Weber’s current team, the Nashville Predators, will have to match that offer if they want to keep their superstar.

Word is that the Preds will match the Flyers’s nutsoid offer. They have to.

And that’s what could happen to the Habs. If they don’t move fast on Subban, some moronic owner is going to come along and offer Subban some moronic contract. And then Bergevin will be forced to match it. So sign this guy! NOW!

Now P.K. had a pretty cruddy sophomore season. Seven goals and 29 assists is not what we need or expect from Mr. Subban. He had twice as many goals in his first season.

But he underwhelmed last year for one reason and one reason only – the team was downright psychotic under the reign of terror of Pierre ‘WTF’ Gauthier. I remember going to one game, that snorefest against Columbus in the fall, and it was painful to watch Subban.

He’d pick up the puck behind his own net, start revving up for one of those patented Subban coast-to-coast rushes, start, and then suddenly remember that Coach Jacques ‘Mr. Personality’ Martin had ordered him to play conservatively. So he’d stop, stumble, and more often than not drop the puck right in front of Carey ‘What Me Worry?’ Price. Next thing you know Columbus would have a great scoring chance.

But make no mistake about it. Subban is our franchise player. Even more than Pricey, Subban is the guy they should be building the team around. He is an incredible fan favourite cos he’s both a stunningly talented player and has an ultra-charismatic personality. For the first time in a couple of decades, the Habs have a superstar who’s not a goalie. This is a great thing.

So sign him now Mr. Bergevin. Do not dilly-dally on this one.

Bergevin impresses with his signings, particularly by picking up Prust

Okay so there were no superstar signings – did you really expect any? – but newish Habs GM Marc ‘Dashing Man’ Bergevin did not so bad on free-agency-day aka Canada Day aka Moving Day aka Spain Day.

Bergevin went shopping on Sunday, nabbing tough-guy forward Brandon Prust from the New York Rangers, right winger Colby Armstrong from the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Frankie the Bull aka Francis Bouillon from the Nashville Predators.

All good in my view. It’s not gonna instantly make a bad team good but it’s a few steps in the right direction. All of a sudden one of the wimpiest teams in Bettman’s League is a lot tougher. Earlier last week, Bergevin signed Ryan White to a one-year-deal and Jokerman Bergevin also signed Travis Moen to a whopping four years and $7.4 million.

In other words, when opposing teams start pushing Carey ‘Man in Black’ Price around and yapping at P.K. ‘Malcolm’s Brother’ Subban, there will be any number of guys – Prust, Armstrong, Bouillon, White or Moen – to say ‘Hey pal, touch Pricey again and I’m gonna make you look like that guy that got trampled by the bull at the last rodeo Price attended.’

It’s a whole new thing for the Habs. This is the team that – under the misguided G&G regime (eds. note: Misguided? Methinks some stronger language is needed here!) – used to work with the philosophy that size and toughness was highly over-rated and that the Smurfs was the best movie to come out of Hollywood in the past decade. When they finally got an enforcer, they went and picked up Georges ‘Commensal’ Laraque, who was more interested in organic fiddleheads than crushing heads.

I really liked what I heard from Prust in the Canadian Press piece by Bill Beacon.

“It’s good to have a little more team toughness,” said Prust. “Other teams coming into our building will know they’re in for a long night.”

Yeah $10 million over four years is a lot of dough for a guy who had five goals and 12 assists last year with the Blue Shirts but I think what Bergevin liked more in Prust’s stats was the 156 penalty minutes.

Armstrong is the biggest question mark here. He only played 29 games last year with the Loafs, plagued by injuries and the jury is out whether he’ll really help the Habs. But if he’s healthy, that’s another big – six-foot/195-pounds – forward to make room for the Habs’ pint-sized skill guys showcase that skill.

Bouillon is a great guy to get back. In fact, he’s just a great guy and you have to wonder why they let him go to Nashville in the first place. Oh yeah, the out-of-it team brass had no idea what they were doing back then. He’s small but super tough and is all heart – the perfect guy for a team that played like it had no heart most nights last season.

All guys who seemed suited to new coach Michel ‘Hey I Got a New Suit’ Therrien’s lunch-bucket style. So yeah good news.

 

Just love that the Predators suspended Kostitsyn and Radulov

Now that takes cojones. Nashville Predators general manager David Poile announced Tuesday that the team has suspended two of its star forwards, former Hab-not Andrei Kostitsyn and Alex Radulov, for game three of the Preds series versus the Phoenix Coyotes.

Poile said the two players broke team rules.

“The Nashville Predators have a few simple rules centred around doing the right things,” Poile said in a statement. “We have always operated with a team-first mentality and philosophy. Violating team rules is not fair to our team and their team-mates.”

Poile didn’t say what rules they broke but most reports suggested it was a matter of breaking curfew. There were many reports that they were out partying to the wee hours of Sunday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona, just hours before game two of the series. In that game, Radulov was singled out by many for his poor play.

The Preds are down two-zip in the series, which resumes Wednesday.

What’s funny in the story – at least for us Habs nuts – is that Kostitsyn was often rumoured to be on the party circuit here in Montreal and many figured that might be one reason why many a night he looked downright uninterested while meandering aimlessly around the Bell Centre ice. Andrei and his younger brother Sergei were, of course, not the only Habs said to be fixtures in some of the city’s more colourful drinking establishments at the height of the team’s party-hearty days a couple of years back. Much of the late-night gossip centred around Carey Price and Chris Higgins was also by all reports enjoying himself with some enthusiasm in his adopted hometown.

And Habs management appeared to have absolutely no control of the players’ off-ice behaviour, even though those shenanigans were clearly have an impact on their lacklustre play on-the-ice. That’s why it’s so cool to see Preds management actually putting on their culottes and saying ‘Enough’s enough!”

I always thought the Habs bosses showed a remarkable lack of responsibility with their players. They bring these young men to Montreal, give them millions of dollars and then set them loose in a city which worships at the feet of Habs players. They can do anything they like – and you know they’ll be offered most every illicit thrill you can imagine.

So why not try to take care of these guys? Price was the perfect example. The whole future of the franchise rests on the shoulders of this kid from a tiny burgh in Northern B.C. and, when he got here, he was obviously not the most mature of guys. Yet Habs management just let him do whatever he pleased. Why not do what Mario Lemieux did when Sidney Crosby first came to Pittsburgh – he put him up in his house until Crosby was ready to live on his own.

Also why not, like the Preds’ bosses, discipline these guys when they behaved like clowns. Maybe if the firm of Gainey & Gauthier had shown a little character and told the brothers K to focus on putting the puck in the net rather than putting all their energy into extra-curricular activites, the team might now have two extra 25-goal scorers.

- Brendan

P.S. Check out Keith Jones on NBC tearing a few strips off Radulov for his lame-o-rama play Sunday.

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

 

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!

Trade Gauthier, not Kostitsyn

Look I don’t much like Andrei ‘Where’s the Party?’ Kostitsyn either. He’s a whiner. Most nights, he looks like he’d rather be hanging with his buddies at the bar doing God knows what and his play reflects that sadsack attitude.

But the guy has loads of talent and a smart team would know how to get him to perform. And me I’m thinking that smart team is the Nashville Predators, who picked up AK46 Monday morning in return for a second-round pick next year and the conditional fifth-round 2013 pick that they nabbed in the Hal Gill trade with the same team.

Kostitsyn will score 30 goals next year for the Preds. You read it here first. Remember what my Habs-obsessed accountant Randall Huberman said on the weekend? Players always play worse when they arrive in Montreal and always improve when the Habs trade them to another team.

(Goon filmmaker Michael Dowse – who’s the man behind the No. 1 movie in the land this weekend – took time off his champagne drinking today to tweet to underline that AK is an unrestricted free agent this summer. So he may be scoring those 30 goals somewhere else. But it won’t be for the Habs.)

Look at Andrei’s little brother Sergei who was dealt by the Canadiens to the Predators a couple of years back. He scored 23 goals and had 50 points last season, and already has 15 goals this year. Those are big numbers by the Habs (kind of sad) standards. And no he never produced for us.

Sure AK is sucking it out big-time this year, with 12 goals and 12 assists, but remember this is a team where no one is producing except for the Patch/Desharnais/Cole line. Kostitsyn has talent. We’ve seen it. Remember 07-08 when he was on the team’s best line, alongside Tomas Plekanec and Alex Kovalev? He can play. You just have to figure out how to get him inspired.

Also, is Preds GM David Poile the only general manager that Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier knows? Does he have phone numbers for any other GMs? The Ghost is infamous for not offering players right ’round the league. Did he check with everyone re AK46? Because by all accounts, he did not phone all of his colleagues when he was quickly dealing Halak to St. Louis.

Here’s an idea. Why not trade the Goat? Maybe a straight-up deal with the Leafs – Gauthier for Burke! I like it. In one transaction, the Loafs get the worst GM in the league and we finally get a guy in Montreal who isn’t afraid to talk to the media.

For heaven’s sake, our GM would even be on Twitter. What? You don’t think Toronto would go for it? Okay, throw in Bob ‘Elvis Has Not Left the Building’ Gainey. And then we’ll pick up free agent George Costanza as Burke’s assistant. C’mon it’s a great plan.

Hey you gotta laugh man! What’s the alternative? The alternative is treating this as the tragedy it is. And I can’t face that right at this second. I got enough problems pal.

 

Hall Gill trade means one thing – it’s over!

I was listening to Mitch Melnick and Pierre McGuire this afternoon on TSN Radio 990 and, naturally enough, they were talking about the Hal Gill trade. Most of the chat was about what it meant to add Gill to the Nashville Predators line-up.

But much as I love those two guys’ chats, they never mentioned the main point of the trade. This is it Habs fans. It’s over. The season is officially toast. If Ghost Gauthier is tossing Skillsy overboard, then he’s has finally decided this team ain’t doing nothing in the post-season. In other words, it’s sell-off time.

Gill hasn’t done all that much this season, as usual. He never does. But he has a well-deserved reputation as a playoff monster. He was amazing during the Habs’ miraculous playoff run in 2010 and has loads of playoff experience, going to the Cup final twice with the Penguins (including winning it all in 2009) and he has 105 post-season games under his belt.

He will most definitely help the Preds in their playoff run and if ‘Major Major’ Gauthier is parting ways with Gills, it’s the clearest signal yet that management has decided our sadsack squad ain’t making the post-season dance, as Mr. Fisher likes to call it.

And what do we get? Blake Geoffrion for one thing. His main claim to fame is his storied family history. His great grandfather is Habs legend Howie Morenz, his grandfather is Boom Boom Geoffrion, and his dad is Danny Geoffrion, who spent three season in the NHL playing for both Montreal and Winnipeg.

That’s all kind of cool but he’s spent most of this year in the minors and is heading straight to the Bulldogs. So I’m not quite clear on why so many people today seeming to be saying that Gauthier finally made a good deal. Am I missing something here?

Also, not that anyone cares about language ’round these parts, but Geoffrion was born in Florida, grew up in Tennessee and as far as we know does not speak a word of French. It’s actually kind of funny, following the pick-up of Rene Bourque, who, in spite of his name, also doesn’t parlez-vous. Not that anyone will make a big deal of that sort of thing in Montreal.

So it’s all just kind of depressing. We don’t get anything that’s gonna do much for us and we lose one of the few guys on the team with anything resembling heart. And our enigmatic GM sends out the signal he’s given up on the team. Sigh.

History Will Be Made

Take a look at a bunch of nhl.com History Will Be Made videos. First Pekka Rinne stand on his head in game 2 vs the Canucks. Second, Ben Ferriero OT winner in game 1 vs Wings. Third, the Vancouver Canucks come out with a win in game 1 vs the Preds. And fourth, the 41 year old goaltender, Dwayne Roloson, shuts-out the Pens.

Bobby Ryan’s Unbelievable Goal April 22nd, 2011 Playoffs vs Predators in Game #5

Take a look at Ducks forward Bobby Ryan go through everyone and score a goal.

-Keane

My predictions for the 2011 NHL Playoffs

EASTERN CONFERENCE:

CAPITALS VS RANGERS – CAPITALS IN 7

FLYERS VS SABRES – FLYERS IN 6

BRUINS VS HABS – HABS IN 7

PENGUINS VS LIGHTNING – LIGHTNING IN 6

WESTERN CONFERENCE:

CANUCKS VS BLACKHAWKS – HAWKS IN 7

SHARKS VS KINGS – KINGS IN 5

WINGS VS COYOTES – COYOTES IN 4

DUCKS VS PREDS – DUCKS IN 6

-Keane