The strange case of the sagging Habs

Bob Dylan. To paraphrase St. Bob, are the first 40 games of the Habs season “all an illusion to me now”?

Sagging. The adjective comes up in the lead of Bill Beacon’s Canadian Press story on the super depressing Habs Caps match-up Saturday night. Pretty good word to describe the Canadiens no?

I could think of a few more choice words but none could be published in a family-friendly blog like this. To be polite, you could pull out words like ‘pathetic’, ‘listless’, ‘comatose’, ‘sad-sackish’.

Well you get the idea. It hasn’t been pretty since Montreal clinched that playoff spot by winning in Buffalo less than two weeks ago. Montreal has lost four of its five games since then and those losses have (almost) all been blow-outs. Shall I refresh your memory? The Leafs creamed Les Boys 5-1, the Flyers humiliated The Good Guys 7-3, and Saturday night the Capitals rubbed the Habs’ faces in it with an easy 5-1 romp. One loss, the Pens 6-4 victory, doesn’t look so bad on paper, but when you recall that Markov scored with seconds left, you realize Montreal was never close to winning that one.

The one win in this shameful sequence was Thursday’s 3-2 “win” over Tampa Bay, one of the worst teams in the East, a win that came courtesy of a desperation goal from Brian Gionta in the last minute following the blowing of a 2-0 lead that felt oh-so-much like a replay of a game from last year’s psychotic Habs season.

Short version? This is not good.

So what’s going on? It’s downright mysterious. You have a team that looked good almost every night all season and now they look god-awful most nights. Okay I get the idea that once they clinched the playoff berth, the wind went out of their sails.

But why did the wheels come right off the bus? Was the entire team being held together by the hitting of Alexei Emelin?

There is one scary theory. Remember when the team was flying high, folks were scratching their heads trying to figure out why the last-place losers from last year were fighting for first in the East with the Cup-worthy Penguins. At that time, many of us said this proved that last year’s team clearly wasn’t as bad as we all thought. That there was a good team in there smothered by the wack-job management in place at the time.

Well it’s tempting to say today that maybe the 2013 Habs aren’t as good as they looked prior that playoff-clinching Sabres game. Maybe they were simply playing way above their actual skill level and that this run simply wasn’t going to last. It does remind me a bit of another unlikely Habs run, that one in the spring of 2010.

They beat the first-place Capitals in the first round, upset the Cup champ Pens in the second, and then went on to collapse like a Dollar Store house of cards in the third series against a not even very good Flyers team, failing to score even one single goal in three of the losses in that series. They just fell apart. They had been running on adrenalin (and Jaro Halak’s heroics).

So is that what’s happening now? Was the first 40 games of the season an illusion? A slight of hand? To quote St. Bob Dylan, are all those games “an illusion to me now”, as The Bobster sang in Tangled Up in Blue.

I’m not really buying into this kill-me-now argument but if not that, what? You explain to me what the eff is happening here. The only thing I know for sure is that it confirms what I’ve always said about the Habs. This team doesn’t do boring. When they’re good, they’re totally amazing, winning Cup after Cup and spending whole seasons almost not losing games. If not that, they’re horribly bad.

Now can I get back that totally amazing team?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM

What a difference a week makes for the Habs

Remember last Sunday morning? We were hungover after that 6-0 shellacking of the Habs by the Toronto Maple Leafs and looking at a sad-sack team that had lost three straight.

This Sunday morning, we’re feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with a new spring in our step following Montreal’s easy 4-1 win over our arch-rivals the Philadelphia Flyers (who I think we can say really are our most hated foes).

Better yet, this is the team’s third straight win of the week, good enough to put Les Boys one point up on the Boston Bruins (our second most hated foes) in the Northeast division. That’s right – the Canadiens are in first place in the friggin division with a 9-4-1 record and 19 points. And they’re in second place in the Eastern conference!

Two things. One, I’m super happy. Really. You may say I’m a hater but I’m not. I want the Habs to do well. Really. And this improbably strong start to this shortened season is great, great news. There’s a new management team in town and they appear not to be nearly as crazy as the old bosses. This is good. Under the new regime, you do things like other NHL teams. Scott Gomez is washed up and costs too much money, so you make him walk the plank. Tomas Kaberle is as useful as a block of wood on the ice so you sit him in the press box.

And you gotta love Brendan Gallagher. Going into the season, the buzz was all about Alex Galchenyuk, and he’s gonna be a superstar too, but right now you have to just sit back, look at little Gallagher and say – ‘Man he’s unreal’. Five goals, including that beauty Saturday night where he ripped off a wrister that Boucher didn’t even see. So there are lots of positives.

But…..and you knew there was gonna be a but……let’s just remain calm here, not something that comes easily to Montrealers in general and Montreal Canadiens fans in particular. Look at this week. The Habs came really close to losing that game in Tampa Tuesday, looking oh-so-much like last year’s psycho lead-blowing team and then needed to get to overtime to prevail over the Panthers – who’re in 13th place this morning! – in maybe the most boring game of the season.

And last night the Flyers looked a lot like a team’s that 6-9-1 and have lost three of their last four games. They were outshot 29-19 and for large chunks of the game – hello first period! – the Phillie players looked like they were already dreaming of the post-game lap-dances at Chez Pare.

So yeah I’m happy but let’s hold off planning the parade route for the moment.

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.

Flyers going all the way

I think from what I saw in the first round of the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs, that out of the teams that won and are moving on to the 2nd round, my favorite team is the Philadelphia Flyers.

Out of all the team’s moving on, I chose Phillie as the team that will win the Cup because, first of all, The Flyers have the best player through the first round in Claude Giroux. Giroux registered 6 goals and 8 assists to reach a point total of 14 points in the 6 games they played versus the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Penguins goaltending at the beginning of the series was not very good. But you could say the Flyers goaltending was worse. In game 4, both Flyers goaltenders, Ilya Bryzgalov and Sergei Bobrovski, let in a total of 10 goals in a 10-3 loss to the Penguins.

But I think that in game 6, Bryzgalov elevated his game and started playing good, only letting in 1 goal. So I think that goaltending will not be much of a problem for the Flyers. Also I think that the team they are facing, the New Jersey Devils, is not at the same level as the Philadelphia Flyers.

The Flyers also have a lot of firepower  for scoring goals other than Giroux, with snipers like Daniel Briere, Wayne Simmonds, Jaromir Jagr, etc. I am predicting this series to go to 6 games again with a win from the Flyers and I am expecting to see the Flyers at the very least in the Stanley Cup finals.

-Keane

Don Cherry goes into caveman mode on Coach’s Corner

You just knew it was coming. Most every sports columnist has been talking about the embarrassment that is the first few days of the NHL playoffs, with head-shots galore, more fights than a WWF convention and way more goon highlights than cool goals.

So of course Don Cherry appears on his prime time pulpit – otherwise known as Coach’s Corner – and barks at the nation to let us know this is real hockey.

He started Coach’s Corner in the first intermission of the Monday night Rangers-Senators game with a strange rambling chat about the fight-fest between Pittsburgh and Phillie Sunday. He was defending Sidney Crosby but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what Cherry’s point was.

One big part of the whole rant – aka Coach’s Corner – was how impossible us reporters are. He said Crosby is, like Gretzky, so accomodating of reporters, clearly a major sin. Then came Cherry’s defense of the thuggery that’s defined the first games of the playoffs.

“First of all, the fans love it,” said Cherry. “These are the guys that pay the money. The players like it. The coaches like it. So who doesn’t like the fighting? It’s the reporters…..who don’t pay to get in.” (Eds. note: Does Grapes pay full ticket price to see the Leafs?)

To which Cherry’s sidekick Ron MacLean said – “I kind of agree with you on that.” (Eds. note: What a big surprise! Ronnie agreeing with Donnie!)

Then Cherry added: “This is war. This has been going on forever….Quit whining that this stuff has not been going on. If you don’t like it, take up tennis, with your little white shorts.”

Now on one level, this is all kind of comical. Sure Cherry is a cartoon character and all that. But once you stop laughing, you realize it’s just downright weird that our public broadcaster is giving prime on-air real-estate to a guy who’s happy to see millionaire hockey players pounding each other to a pulp. That he’s applauding a game where two of the most talented players in hockey – Crosby and Claude Giroux – get into a couple of punch-ups…..even though both have been sidelined by concussions.

That Penguins-Flyers game Sunday was the NHL at its worst. But apparently the most popular hockey commentator in Canada – and CBC’s most famous personality – thinks that kind of Neanderthal behaviour is just fine’n'dandy. Weird.

- Brendan

P.S. Then, for the Cherry on the sundae, Grapes arrives at the end of the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast to cheer on Bruin captain Zdeno Chara.

“He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body,” says Cherry, who went on to say that’s why he just knew Chara was not trying to hurt Hab Max Pacioretty with that infamous hit.

Of course Don. It was an accident! Chara didn’t even notice he was taking off Pacioretty’s head.

P.S. 2: Apparently the folks at The National don’t share their colleague Cherry’s enthusiasm for the on-ice pugilism. Chris Brown had a highly critical report on the violence in the playoffs on The National Monday. He noted that ratings were up this post-season, particularly in the U.S., while penalty minutes hit a six-year high.

http://youtu.be/jtI2wDH3FBQ

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

 

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

 

How long ’til Geoff Molson realizes Pierre Gauthier is not the man for the job?

Did you notice that the Habs are 1-5 for the season so far? I know, I know, few have mentioned this in recent days but there it is. The Hab-nots have won one game all year – and to add insult to injury, the only team they could beat was the lowly Winnipeg Jets.

Professional sports writers love to laugh at us fans and our passion for our team, and the most common refrain so far this season from the media pundits is – ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s early in the season.’

But Montreal has already dug itself into quite a hole. Of course, they could still make the playoffs. But it’s gonna be a lot harder now and it’s just gonna get harder this week with games against Florida – expect José Theodore to stand on his head against his old team – and then bouts with Phillie – that should go well for the Habs, not! – and a home-and-home series with the Boston Bruins.

We should be worried and if we’re worried, that should have us wondering why the most storied franchise in NHL history has left its fate in the hands of our favourite Vermonter Pierre Gauthier. My pal Brendan Clarke quipped – ‘It’s easy to fire Jacques Martin. At least it’s a local call.’ Gauthier will last longer ’cause Habs president Geoff Molson will have to dip into the team’s long-distance phone account to call up Gauthier in Vermont to tell him he’s persona non grata.

Philippe Cantin has a spot-on column in La Presse Saturday titled ‘Des questions pour Pierre Gauthier‘ and he’s dead right on every point.

Erik Cole? He picks him up for four years and some big bucks, and the guy has been invisible thus far. In the first game of the season, Martin puts him on the third line and barely plays him on the power-play. Then he tells the media Cole is no ‘saviour’. WTF? Is the coach in some kind of Mario Tremblay-esque macho spitting match with his star power forward? If not, what the hell is going on?

Then there’s the Andrei Markov file. He’s still in Florida with his doctor and shows no signs of returning to the chilly north any time soon. WTF2! Why did Gauthier sign him for three years and $17 million with the very real possibility he’ll never return entirely healthy to the Habs line-up? The Montreal defense without Markov is clearly pretty good – if the team was playing in the AHL.

In fact, if anyone can think of any brilliant moves Gauthier has made to make the Habs stronger, I’d love to hear about them.

But the real reason we should be unhappy with Gauthier is because he’s so reluctant to fire his old pal Martin. The coach’s cautious, old-school defensive style isn’t working. It didn’t work in that all-too-winnable series last spring against the Bruins when Coach Martin put on the brakes every time Montreal was up a goal and panicked when we were down a goal. (Just remember that Timmy Thomas was no superstar at that point in the playoffs. He was just okay against the Habs, a team he’s never done particularly well against, and he improved big-time as the Bruins moved forward in the post-season).

But why should we be surprised that Gauthier is one flat general manager. That’s pretty well par-for-the-course for an organization that hasn’t won anything since 1993 and traded away many of its most talented players – including a not-so-bad goalie named Patrick Roy, the last great Habs captain Mike Keane (a throw-in in the Roy deal from Réjean Houle), major point-getter Mike Ribeiro (’cause Saku didn’t like the competition at centre) and 2010 playoff hero Jaro Halak (’cause Carey Price didn’t like the competition between the pipes).

It’s a successive line of upper managers who’ve kept this a sad-sack team for 18 years and current management is just the latest example of this quest-for-mediocrity. Sad to say, maybe the team needs to lose a few more games so Molson will finally realize that he can’t be Mr. Nice Guy if he truly is serious about contending for the Stanley Cup any time soon. Nice guys? They finish last.

- Brendan

 

Tampa Bay Boston playoff highlights

To set the mood for the Tampa Bay Lightning Boston Bruins Eastern Conference Final, which starts Saturday night, here are some highlights from Tampa and Boston’s playoffs so far.

First go back to the 1st round, Tampa vs Pens Game 7. Take a look at the game winner.

Now look at St-Louis’s goal vs the Caps in round 2.

Here’s Nathan Horton OT Winner vs Habs game 7.

Look at the Bruins moving on to the Conference Final for the first time in 19 years.

- Keane