Ghost Gauthier shows total lack of class with Cammalleri trade

Okay the trade itself might turn out to be a good one for the Habs. On paper, Rene Bourque for Michael Cammalleri looks more or less equal, if you’re just looking at the stats. Bourque got 27 goals in each of his past two seasons with the Calgary Flames whereas Cammalleri had 19 goals last season and 26 goals the year before.

This year has been a hellish season for Cammy. He has only nine goals and has looked like a shadow of his former self on the ice. Bourque has 13 goals thus far. And Bourque brings size to a team sadly lack in that department – he’s six-foot-two and 205 pounds versus five-foot-nine and 190 pounds for Cammy after a big spaghetti dinner. But just remember there’s always what I like to call the Habs discount – if you score 27 goals for the Flames, you’ll probably score 19 or 20 for us.

So Bourque’s size is a plus. The big minus for the Habs is that Cammy was a playoff monster – remember that magical 2010 run. Yes Jaro Halak was the hero between the pipes but Cammalleri scored 13 goals and won the goal-scoring race for the playoffs even though the Canadiens didn’t make the finals and were shut out in three of five games against the Flyers in the conference final. He also had 10 points in the seven-game series against the Bruins in last year’s playoffs.

So it might be an equal trade. We’ll see. Jury’s out on that. At first I thought it was a great trade – but that was when I was under the mistaken impression that the Habs had received Calgary transplant Terry DiMonte in return for Cammy. But it turned out that the CHOM morning-man came home via a completely different transaction!

Jury however is very much in on how Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier handled the trade – that was just so classless. To fire Cammalleri between the second and third periods of a game is simply unacceptable. It’s like firing a radio morning-man right in the middle of his show.

The message was clear. Gauthier was telling Cammy – and all the other players – if you open your mouth and criticize the organization, I’ll crush you like a bug! The trade comes just hours after La Presse published an explosive piece by Francois Gagnon in which Cammalleri blasts the team for having a culture of “losers”. His comments were an open attack on Gauthier and the entire coaching staff.

Why did he have to send Cammy home mid-way through the game? Why couldn’t it wait til 10 p.m.? It was all about humiliating Cammalleri. Nice. And Montreal might well have lost the game to Boston ’cause of the timing of Gauthier’s move – can you imagine how the players felt on the bench in the third period?

And why did Ghost Gauthier have to rush the deal? If you’ve decided you’re going to deal the winger, why not try to create a bidding war? Here is a guy who – even if he’s struggling this season – has proven to be a money player when it counts, in the playoffs. You’re telling me there aren’t some teams who’re potential Cup contenders who wouldn’t pay quite the price to nab this guy closer to the trade deadline? Many in the media are already reporting that other NHL GMs are calling them to say that they had no idea Cammalleri was on the market and that they would’ve been interested in making an offer to the Canadiens. So why wouldn’t Burlington, Vermont’s greatest hockey mind let everyone know a star forward was on the trading block? Only the vegan insiders know for sure.

But no! Gauthier is all about the panic-button moves. He fires assistant coach Perry ‘What Did I Do Wrong?’ Pearn just minutes before a game to give head coach Jacques ‘Mr. Personality’ Martin a jolt. Then he throws Marcel Marceau Martin out the window just as hastily and brings in his man, Randy ‘Parley Vous’ Cunneyworth, without even pausing to think – ‘Oh yeah, we live in Quebec, maybe we should tell Randy to mumble a couple of phrases in the language of Lafleur’.

The press is all over the team for its cruddy power-play so Major Major rushed to pick-up Tomas ‘Soft As Cadbury’ Kaberle to quarterback the PP. Haven’t heard much about Kab lately eh? He brings a rich three-year contract that the Habs have to pay for and has proved to be just about as soft and heart-less as most of his team-mates here.

Gauthier will do anything, absolutely anything, to save his job, and that’s a scary thought. Just imagine the damage he can inflict on the team between now and the end of the season. The joke here is that he’s gonna lose his job one way or the other. It’s just a question of when it happens.

There are going to be some huge decisions to make as a playoff berth slowly but surely fades from sight and I can’t think of anyone less equipped to deal with this crisis.

- Brendan

 

Canadiens lose another good coach: Kirk Muller to coach Carolina Hurricanes

Well I can’t say I’m surprised. Most of us figured Kirk Muller was going to be a head coach in the NHL but the surprising thing is how quickly it happened. The Carolina Hurricanes announced Monday that Captain Kirk was taking over as coach of the lame-o-rama Canes, replacing Paul Maurice, who was given the heave-ho after a pathetic 8-13-4 start for his team.

You’ll recall that Kirk-is-Work Muller had left the Canadiens organization earlier this year to coach the Nashville Predators’ AHL affiliate in Milwaukee. He spent five years as an assistant coach with Montreal and is also a former Canadiens captain.

There later was talk that there was some conflict between Muller and fellow Habs assistant coach Perry Pearn, and that conflict helped push Muller out of Montreal. The irony is that Pearn is also gone – the victim of a panicky purge by GM Pierre Gauthier early in the season when the Habs were most definitely the Hab-nots.

Two things. First off, congrats to Muller. Second, am I the only guy who thinks we have just lost a second good coach here, on the heels of Guy Boucher moving to Tampa Bay from the Hamilton Bulldogs a couple of years back? But we’ve got Jacques ‘Mr. Personality’ Martin, so why am I complaining? Protect that lead boys!

 

Could it be that Pierre Gauthier actually knows what he’s doing?

Thursday I was weighing in on the mystery wrapped in a riddle that is Habs GM Pierre Gauthier and, as usual, I wasn’t sounding too happy about the Canadiens’ fearless leader. But my old pal Daniel Sanger wrote in to Top Shelf – and we do love getting mail ’round these parts – after Thursday’s downright astonishing 2-1 victory in Beantown over the Bruins to suggest maybe Gauthier’s message got trhough to Jacques Martin and the players.

And it’s hard to argue with two straight victories over two of our arch rivals (and two pretty good teams), the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston. La Presse columnist Philippe Cantin makes a similar point in Friday’s paper, saying Gauthier sent a powerful message to everyone in the organization when he fired assistant coach Perry Pearn and then went and talked directly to the players.

I still don’t believe that Martin is the man for the job at hand and remain perplexed by Gauthier singling out Pearn as the problem. But something has changed chez les Habs in the last 48 hours. So let’s touch base on this again in a few games. See? I can be a reasonable guy every now and then (though not too often!).

- Brendan

 

The mystery wrapped in a riddle that is Pierre Gauthier

So Montreal Canadiens general manager Pierre Gauthier finally broke his silence Wednesday to address the horrifying start of the season from his Habs and a day later I’m still trying to figure out what Gauthier’s message was. He fired assistant coach Perry Pearn and no one quite knows what to make of that. The Gazette’s Pat Hickey penned a good column suggesting Gauthier was sending a warning signal to head coach Jacques Martin by giving Martin’s old pal and longtime colleague the pink slip.

But Gauthier’s explanation for the firing was opaque at best.

“We don’t like the results right now and that brings us to evaluate a lot of things in the organization and it’s not about an individual person,” said Gauthier. “The result of Mr. Pearn being re-affected, if he accepts our offer, is more about a change from a global perspective, a big-picture perspective. We need to be better at what we do. We need to be more efficient and in order to do that, that is one of the changes we decided to make. But it is in no way a reflection of who he is as a person or what he’s been doing or his professionalism.”

Huh? So he’s suggesting he didn’t have any issues with Pearn. So why’d he toss him overboard? And how exactly is ditching one assistant coach going to turn things around? The Habs did go on to play one of their best games of this young season following the mystery firing, handily dominating Philadelphia 5-1. But most of us don’t believe that win had anything to do with Pearn’s firing. Mysterious.

Even odder is Gauthier’s analysis of the Canadiens’ performance so far this year. In Richard Labbe’s column in La Presse, Gauthier is quoted saying “I think we’ve played very well so far (this season), aside from the games against Calgary and Pittsburgh. We’re playing good but we’re not winning.”

Which begs the question. Has my favourite Vermonter being watching the same Habs team as the rest of us? Until last night’s match with the Flyers, I think it’s fair to say this has been a disastrous start for the Habs up until now and clearly there is much that is wrong with this team. Most nights, the lack of effort and/or the lack of results is mystifying. They’re in the cellar of the Eastern Conference and right near the bottom of the league. And Gauthier thinks that’s just dandy.

Hmmm….I guess it’s true that as long as the Bell Centre is full and Bell is still paying big bucks for the TV rights, management couldn’t give a hoot about the on-ice product. Well that’s kinda depressing.

- Brendan