The NHL season will be won or lost on Wednesday

Well it all comes down to this. Game seven of the Stanley Cup final. The Habs and the Bruins are all tied-up at three-games a-piece. The whole season comes down to one game. Man up. So who’s going to guarantee a win?

Unfortunately the fate of the season is not in the hands of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito or Ken Dryden and Guy Lafleur. This particular game seven is in the hands of a bunch of very rich guys in suits and it’s up to them to decide if we get to see any hockey in the next six months.

The National Hockey League board of governors meets in New York City on Wednesday and if the moderate – read ‘sane’ – owners don’t stand up and tell Gary ‘I hate hockey’ Bettman enough’s enough, the season is toast. The pressure’s on.

I wrote it last Saturday – ‘It’s time for the moderate owners to take a stand’. Though in all honesty, the actual blog was more angry diatribe against Bettman’s destruction of the league than a call for moderate action.

On Sunday, Larry Brooks published a just-brilliant column in the New York Post saying – trend alert! – that it was time for moderate owners to take the puck back from Bettman. Given where he writes, Brooks focused in on New York Rangers CEO Jim Dolan.

Then on Thursday, Jack Todd weighed in with a great column, an open letter to Canadiens owner Geoff Molson to step in to end the lock-out. Saturday, La Presse columnist Philippe Cantin said pretty well the same thing in his piece, Une occasion pour Geoff Molson. (There’s no link to that one cos La Presse hasn’t yet made it available on their site as of mid-day Saturday.)

And all four of us are right. The puck is not just on Molson’s stick. It’s up to the doves to take back control of the league from the hawks. So yeah the Habs owners should be wading into the debate for the first time, but so should the Blue Shirts’ boss in the Big Apple and so should the owners of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment, the folks who own the only NHL franchise worth a billion bucks.

It’s not fair to put all the pressure on Geoff Molson. Like why should it all be on the shoulders of one of the league’s newest owners?

But they can’t just sit there and do nothing. They owe it to their fans to do something. I asked someone last night to tell me who owns the Habs and you know what he said? The fans. And he’s right. Team owners often talk about their responsibility to the fans and now they have perfect chance to prove that’s not just empty talk.

It’s nuts to lose this season. It’s just as nuts to deal with the expiry of every single collective agreement by locking out your employees. That’s a great way to destroy the league. That’s Bettman’s way. And I still have heard no rational explanation as to why the 30 NHL owners think that this scorched-Earth policy is the best thing for the league.

So Wednesday’s the day. So if you care about the NHL, the choice is simple. If you’re a fan, let the owners know how you feel. If you’re an owner, let Bettman know how you feel.

- Brendan

 

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.

 

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!

There is a God….Scott Gomez scores!

Where were you when Scott Gomez scored his first goal in more than a year?

Me I was, appropriately enough, out on the hockey rink, playing a little shinny, having grown a tad bored with the Habs-Islanders match-up – what I like to think of as the meeting somewhere that is very much not the summit – and so I missed seeing the momentous moment live. Canadian Press mistakenly reports that Gomez tipped in a Raphael Diaz shot. In fact he blasted in a one-timer from the right face-off circle doing his best imitation of Cammie back when Mr. Cammalleri was scoring those sorts of goals on a regular basis.

Gomez’s last goal was Feb. 5, 2011 against his former team the New York Rangers, at the Bell Centre. It was a more innocent age. We still had the faith. Gomez had hair on his head. The coach spoke French. We still believed ‘world peace’ was an achievable goal. Then came the drought.

A National Post blog breaks down the Gomez stats: He played 50 games in between the two goals, while missing 21 games earlier this season due to injury, with total ice time of 17 hours, 40 minutes, and 30 seconds. 50 games works out to $4,486,067.80 in salary for the over-paid forward. The National Post also notes that over the same period Tampa Bay phenom Stephen Stamkos scored 48 goals. (That’s just mean of the Post but hey those guys in Toronto are mean. You know it.)

After the game, Gomez sounded relieved, but still curiously downbeat.

“I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself,” said Gomez. “I’ve just kept working. It’s certainly good to get a win, and of course it’s great to finally score.”

I hate to be a party-pooper – okay actually I revel in being a Habs party-pooper – but the photo in La Presse and The Gazette says it all. The shot shows Gomez and a few of his team-mates celebrating near the bench, all with big smiles on their face, and just behind them you see coach Randy ‘Parlez-vous’ Cunneyworth staring straight-ahead, with the kuind of grim look normally reserved for that moment when you realize you’ve just been fired. Come to think of it, that’s probably what M. Cunneyworth was thinking about. How, no matter what happens, he is going to be tossed on the trash-heap of history once this sorry season finally winds down.

But let’s live in the moment just for a second. Gomez scores. Doesn’t that mean anything is possible? That the Habs could win the Cup? That people will start reading newspapers again? That I could perhaps lace-up and take Gomer’s place on the third line?

Was the Scott Gomez deal the worst trade of the Gainey era?

It’s a tough question ’cause there were some mighty questionable deals in the years that Bob Gainey ran the Habs shop. But it’s hard not to think the trade that brought Scott Gomez from the New York Rangers to Montreal was the one move that did the most damage to the team.

With the Canadiens set to match-up against the Blue Shirts at Madison Square Garden Saturday night, it seems like an ideal time to cast a look back at that not-so-blockbuster deal. Richard Labbé has a good piece in La Presse Saturday and the title kinda says it all: ‘McDonagh fait oublier Gomez’. Labbé suggests Ryan McDonagh, who went to New York as part of the Gomez trade, has become one of New York’s most important players. This first-round pick of the Habs, who’s now 22, plays around 25 minutes a night for John Tortorella’s team, has five points in 11 games, and is one of their key blue-liners. Better yet (for New York), they saved a cool $30 million in the process.

The other guy who went to the Big Apple that fateful day in June, 2009 was Chris Higgins. It didn’t really work out in New York for the Long Island native but he has now become an important part of the Vancouver Canucks. Higgins is the Canucks leading goal-scorer this season thus far with some suggesting he’s the team’s most valuable player.

That deal also brought Tom Pyatt to Montreal and….well that didn’t work out that well for us. He didn’t find a home here and is now toiling for the Tampa Bay Lightning, where he has one assist in his first eight games.

And the main man in all this? You really need to ask? The fellow we’re paying out $30 million to has one assist in the six games he’s played this season and hasn’t put the puck in the back of the net since last February. Just how useful is Scott Gomez to the Montreal Canadiens? As soon as he leaves the line-up with an upper-body injury, the team goes on a four-game winning streak!

And the architect of this crippling trade? Well turns out he’s still somewhere deep inside the Bell Centre,  a kind of Minister Without Portfolio (or Accountability) who’s whispering in the ear of current GM Pierre “Gainey Lite” Gauthier.

Sigh.

- Brendan

 

Will Scott Gomez bounce back this year?

That’s the $7.5 million question. Will Montreal Canadiens centre Scott Gomez come storming back after the worst season of his career last year?

I kind of doubt it. Why so pessmistic? ‘Cause his stats are on the down and down for the past couple of years not just last season. In 2010-2011, he had a measly – okay downright pathetic – seven goals and a mediocre 31 assists, and let’s face it twas pretty painful to watch him most nights.

But the year before wasn’t exactly an All-Star season either. He had 12 goals and 59 points, which is not totally horrifying but hardly great numbers for the guy who’s supposed to be your No. 1 centre and makes an obscene amount of money.2008-2009, his last season with the New York Rangers, wasn’t much better, with Gomer nabbing 16 goals and 58 points. Which has you wondering why exactly Bob Gainey went and picked him – and his pricey contract – up that year.

You have to go all the way back to 2005-2006 to find anything to get even midly excited about in Gomez’s production – that was the year he notched 33 goals and 84 points for the New Jersey Devils.

Gomez is 31 now and to be brutally honest, it just might be that his best days are behind him. I remember seeing this career highlight package on Gomez on Hockey Night in Canada during the playoffs last spring and you saw a different Gomez in the clips, with the Devils-era Gomez crashing the net and playing with a drive we’ve never seen here in Montreal.

As a Habs fan, I’m hoping I’m wrong on this one, but right at this exact nanosecond, there isn’t much reason to be particularly optimistic about the mystery wrapped in a riddle that is Scott Gomez.

- Brendan Kelly

Hey Habs fans! Show a little faith….

Last night, the last thing I tweeted was: ‘Right now I feel like someone kicked my head in.’ To which fine Montreal filmmaker Tara Johns replied: ‘Yet another head injury in the NHL this year – deplorable.’

A few minutes back, my friend Brendan – no joke, that’s his name – called to ask if I was hanging by my fingernails from the Jacques Cartier bridge. Yes he’s a comic. He went on to tell me he stopped watching the game when the Habs began to implode in period two – and who can blame him. The rest of us were absolute masochists to watch that mother of all meltdowns.

O.K. at least it wasn’t quite as bad as the Rangers blowing that 3-0 lead to Washington the other night, but still. It was brutal. When the Canadiens were up 3-1 last night, Bruins coach Claude Julien and not-so-nice-guy captain Zdeno Chara looked shattered. (By the way, am I the only one who finds that Julien and Jacques Martin are curiously alike and curiously mind-numbingly boring?)

So the short version is it wasn’t a good night – for me or anyone else who cares about the most storied franchise in professional hockey. That’s where the faith comes in. You gotta have it, as George Michael put it (long before he became known to police forces on several continents).

But Bruce Springsteen of course put it best: ‘Show a little faith/there’s magic in the night’. That’s all I got for you today. Play Thunder Road. Heck play all of Born to Run. And – it is Good Friday after all – pray.

- Brendan

Here is the video of my new favourite Bruin – NOT! – showing his true colours Thursday night. Here is Andrew Ference showing what he thinks of Habs fans.

And worse here is Ference’s pathetic excuse for his behaviour. It was, apparently, a glove malfunction!

Bruins Habs series ain’t over, ’til it’s over

You may have heard. The Montreal Canadiens won the first two games in Boston and are up two-nil on the supposedly-mighty Bruins. And that, by the way, is good news. But I’m not so much happy as stunned.

And the biggest danger going into tonight’s first game at the Bell Centre is the Habs feeling over-confident. Jack Todd had a good column in this morning’s Montreal Gazette making the point that there is indeed a lot of hockey still to be played.

Todd ends with a story about the 1996 Rangers Habs series when Montreal won the first two in the Big Apple and then went on to lose four straight to the Blue Shirts. But Todd could have just as easily talked about the first-round 2006 series between Montreal and the Carolina Hurricanes. Montreal famously won the first two in Raleigh, in the process ending goaltender Martin Gerber’s career in Carolina and helping introduce to the world a young netminder named Cam Ward. The Hurricanes went on to win the next four.

So we shouldn’t be taking anything for granted here. That said, this isn’t 2006 or 1996. If Montreal continues to play like they did in the first two games, there is simply no way that the B’s are going to win four of the next five games, including three at the Bell Centre with 21,000 Montrealers chanting Chara Sucks (or perhaps something even a little more colourful). But it won’t necessarily be easy. Should be a great week.

- Brendan

Why not re-live the highlights of Saturday night’s game one more time?

Could the New York Rangers come back in their series vs the Washington Capitals

Here’s what’s happened to the Rangers so far: A 2-1 overtime loss against the Capitals in game 1 and a 2-0 loss to the Capitals in game 2. In game 1 the Rangers scored first but blew the lead and lost in OT. In game 3 though, the Rangers were up 2-1 in the third, but with about 5 minutes to go, Capitals forward Mike Knuble tied it up with a rebound off of Nicklas Backstrom’s one timer. With 1 minute and 39 seconds left in the game, Brandon Dubinsky scored with a fluky goal off the Capitals defenceman and in. The Rangers ended up winning the game 3-2.

I think the Rangers could come back to win the series because last year vs the Habs the Capitals were up by two in the series and then lost the series in game 7. The Capitals are almost in the same position this year against the Rangers, as they led the series 2-0 and have just lost to the Rangers in game 3 and are heading back to New York for game 4.

- Keane

Alex Ovechkin goal vs Rangers, Playoffs 2011

Take a look at Ovi’s grinding goal vs Rangers last night. In Russian!

-Keane