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 protest fizzles; Price says we all just need to chill

So what if you had a riot and no one came?

Okay so I guess some folks showed up to protest Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier’s wooly decision to hire a unilingual Anglo coach but it was hardly the Rocket Riot Saturday night outside the Bell Centre before the Habs-Lightning bout.

The best response to all this came courtesy of Carey ‘What Me Worry’ Price. Rick Moffat from CJAD reports that Alfred E. Neuman Price said he thought all the Quebec flags at the Bell Centre were part of a campaign to bring the Nordiques back to Quebec. You gotta love the guy! Once this hockey thing dries up, ‘Just Chill Out’ Price should hook-up with fellow yuk-meister Andy Nulman and headline Just For Laughs. (By the way, I caught this one thanks to my pal and fellow hockey enthusiast – and pretty fine actor – Marc-Andre Grondin who you’re welcome to follow on Twitter at @MA_Grondin.)

In my Gazoo colleague Monique Muise’s piece on the Mouvement Quebec francais – eds. note: Wot dat? – protest over the hiring of non-parlez-vous-er Randy Cunneyworth, she quotes the one brave guy out there Saturday with a ‘I love Randy’ sign.

“There have been some snarly looks, but besides that nothing too vulgar,” said Greg Pike, a South Shore native.

Snarly? Man get that man a pen and paper, he’s a veritable wordsmith! Or is it a Wordsworth? Whatever. Pike’s a poet and he don’t know it.

All in all, the whole demo seemed way more mild-mannered than what goes on outside the rink and in the stands at your average Bruins-Habs or Leafs-Canadiens match-up at the Bell Centre. I remember years ago – April 21, 1994 to be exact – being at a playoff game against Boston – that infamous series when Patrick Roy left the series half-way through to have, supposedly, an appendix operation. The Bs were just killing us. They’d lob the puck in from centre-ice and it would slip by back-up goalie Ron Tugnutt, who was clearly in some kind of a psychotic state (and who could blame him, having to stand in on a moment’s notice for St. Patrick?). Boston ended up crushing us 6-3 and all night, the obnoxious Bruins fans – is there any other kind of Bruins fan? – around me and my friend James MacLean were just merciless, ragging us non-stop about how useless our team was without Roooooo-Ahhhhh. There was real tension that night – as in heads might well get kicked in on one side or the other.

But this language protest? Nudding but a tempest in a fleur-de-lys-decorated teapot. And that’s just as well.

And hey Nos Habs won the game – beating Tampa Bay 3-1 – and all of a sudden Les Glorieux are soaring along on a two-game winning streak.

My predictions for tomorrow night

These are my predictions for Saturday night’s game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

My first advantage goes to the Tamapa Bay Lightning because they are up 2-1 in the season series versus the Habs. In the first game between these two teams this season, the Lightning won 4-0. The second game ended 5-1 for the Canadiens. And the last game the Lightning won 4-3.

Both teams have 37 points but the Habs have played one more game than the Lightning. I told my dad that the Habs had an advantage in the game against Tampa Bay because the Habs were playing at the Bell Centre with their home crowd, but my dad (eds. note: that old cynic!) disagreed and said that the Habs had a bad record at home which is true. Their record at home is 6-7-6 but the Lightning have a record of 6-14-3 when they play away from their home arena and the Habs have momentum coming off that 7-3 win at home against the Winninpeg Jets.

Another advantage for the Canadiens is that the Lightning are on a 2 game losing streak so they have less momentum for the game. But an advantage for the Lightning is that they have Steven Stamkos who has 45 points, 5th in the league and 28 goals, 1st in the league. My final prediction for the game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning is that the Habs will win 4-2.

-Keane

P.S. Here’s the Lars Eller penalty shot goal.

Can you remind me why the Habs dumped Marc-André Bergeron?

What’s one of the Montreal Canadiens’ biggest public-relations issues? Exactly. The lack of local talent on the bench. I read somewhere this week – I can’t remember where – someone opining that Mathieu Darche would be an anonymous fourth-liner on any other team but here – ’cause he’s one of the only francophone locals on the team – he’s treated like Sidney Crosby.

Which brings us to the question du jour – why the heck did we not hang on to Marc-André Bergeron? Of course, he’s not the only local and/or franco we dumped – there’s also Maxim Lapierre, Guillaume Latendresse, and Mike Ribeiro, just to mention the first three that come to mind – but since the Habs are set to battle the suddenly-surging Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday night, it seemed like a good time to re-visit le cas Bergeron.

With three goals and 19 assists, the 31-year-old Tampa defenceman would be fourth on the Habs in terms of points this year and he would be ahead of all of the other Habs D-men (the closest would be P.K. ‘I think I’m Bobby Orr’ Subban with 16 points). And he would’ve been mighty handy this year given Montreal’s sad-sack powerplay. That PP was missing one thing in particular – someone on the blue-line with a big hard shot. Well as the piece from St. Petersburg Times reporter Damian Cristodero notes, his shot was clocked at 104 miles-per-hour when he was with the Habs and that’s helped him win a bunch of NHL All-Star Game slapshot competitions.

How did Pierre ‘Major Major’ Gauthier address the issue of the lack of a big shooter on the PP? He went out and got a guy, Tomas ‘Cadbury’ Kaberle, who shoots about as often as Scotty ‘I’m Afraid of the Net’ Gomez. In other words, he never shoots, which makes life real easy for the opposing team. (By the way, Kab has hardly been burning up the points column in recent games, eh? Oh well, at least we’ll have someone to complain about for the next two-and-a-half years.)

Montreal picked up Bergeron as a free-agent signing in the fall of 2009 after Andrei Markov went down with a serious injury. (Think about that one for just a second. We have been trying to deal with the Markov injury situation – and dealing with it badly, I might add – for a full two years. But I digress.) So Bergeron was signed to a one-year-deal at the bargain-basement price of $750,000 U.S. and he had a very good year with the Habs, clocking in with 13 goals and 21 assists in 60 games. He was also a fan favourite for obvious reasons – big blast from the blueline + hometown French guy = popular player!

He didn’t play for the first half 0f the 2010-2011 season and then signed a one-year, $1 million deal in January, 2011 with Tampa. Then last summer Tampa GM Steve Yzerman re-signed Bergeron to a two-year one-way contract.

Okay so he is not the greatest defencemen in his zone but then again that could be said of a few of the current Habs D-men and none of them has a blistering slapshot and 22 points in their back pocket. Oh yeah and none of them are franco Quebecers either.

So back to the question du jour – remind me why Ghost Gauthier let this one slip away?

Check out this video of one of his patented blasts-from-the-blueline goals from last year’s playoffs….and sigh.

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!

 

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

 

So who’s winning tonight? The Canucks or the Bruins?

I, as you know, am a Habs fan and in spite of what my son Keane thinks, I am not cheering for the Boston Bruins in this series. But I do think they’re going to win game seven Wednesday and quite frankly they deserve to take home the Cup for the first time in four decades.

In a word – okay a few words – the ‘Nucks have been downright schizoid in this series and, if they do happen to get the proverbial game-seven lucky bounce and win it all, they will be one of the least deserving Cup winners in years. The Sedin twins have been invisible and Roberto Luongo has been both brilliant and amongst the worst goalies in the history of Stanley Cup finals.

I still don’t much like the Bruins but I think you’d have to be one major Canucks fan to suggest that Vancouver has been the better team here. Now Boston has the momentum, though you could argue that this bizarre series hasn’t had anything resembling momentum in either direction.

In the end, it’s impossible to really know what will happen in any game seven. Look at that strange game seven in the Tampa Bay Bruins series where the Lightning simply didn’t show any intensity in the most important game of the year for the team.

But if I had to bet, I’d put my money – like let’s say a quarter – on the Bruins lifting Lord Stanley’s trophy higher than it’s ever been before (thanks to the not-so-gentle giant Zdeno Chara, as a caller to Team 990 pointed out a few hours back). And no I won’t be cheering.

- Brendan

 

So what happened to the Tampa Bay Lightning in game 7 vs. the dreaded Boston Bruins?

Man what a disappointment! For the second time in these playoffs, the understandably hated Boston Bruins won a game seven against a Quebec team. First it was that fright-night OT victory over the Montreal Canadiens in the first round and now they’ve done it again, this time versus Quebec’s official non-Habs team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. To add insult to injury, in both cases the winning goal came courtesy of Nathan Horton. (By the way, much as it pains me to underline it, it’s true that Horton is having a Claude Lemieux-like playoff run, with two OT goals against the Habs, including that devastating game seven marker, and last night’s series-clinching goal against Tampa.)

So what happened to the Bolts? My Twitter pal Rafael Ouellet – who also happens to be one of our more intriguing arthouse filmmakers – was at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston Friday night for the game and he tweeted to say he thought the Bolts looked nervous, also quite rightly pointing out that the B’s worked hard, shut down the neutral zone and that it was a super exciting game, with lots of good clean hits and not one penalty (Don Cherry must’ve been in ecstasy!).

Tampa had a great first period but they never looked dangerous in the next two periods and they appeared to go into a bit of a defensive shell, which led another Twitter pal, @lawyergirl77, to quip that “they wanted to take a page from Martin’s super successful playbook.” Ouch! You do have to think the game was a bit of a stumble for star rookie coach Guy Boucher who has so often looked brilliant in this post-season. You could – and actually should – also point the finger at captain Vincent Lecavalier who was, yet again, invisible Friday night. My Cousin Vinnie has to be the leader at moments like this and he wasn’t Friday night. As usual, it was Martin St. Louis and Newfoundland superstar Teddy Purcell who did the heavy lifting. The Bolt who was just friggin sensational was Dwayne Roloson – after a couple of shaky games, he just ruled for 37 of 38 shots. Rollie the Goalie – who looks like a grizzled aging rocker – delivered a stunning performance – That save late on Michael Ryder was something else!

In any case, let’s get this final going so I can happily watch the Vancouver Canucks crush and humiliate the Bruins in five games.

- Brendan

Here’s the video of Horton’s winning goal, a beauty.

P.S. For an interesting, non-hockey-fanatic take on these playoffs, click here for a neat blog post.

 

Tampa Bay Lightning, Quebec’s team, takes last stand against big bad Boston Bruins

Friday’s night game is shaping up as THE game of the playoffs thus far. In one corner, the pesky Tampa Bay Lightning, a club that pretty well no one expected to go this far in the post-season (including their own management team), and in the other corner the nastiest team in the Real Season, the Boston Bruins. If you’re a Habs fan, the choice is simple, no? (The best line I heard came from my friend Karsten. He said he hopes the Bruins win so that they can be totally and utterly destroyed in the final by the Canucks!)

We hate the Bruins. Always have. But more so now than ever. Need I remind you? I just have two words for you – Zdeno Chara. Then there’s the fact that we lost in OT of game seven to the Bruins. So like I’ve been saying ever since – though the other teams don’t seem to be listening – I want to see the Bs lose in humiliating fashion. Maybe tonight’s the night for that.

On a more positive note, as a proud Quebecois hockey fan you just gotta cheer for the Bolts. The team is led by two of the province’s greatest hockey players of this generation, Ile Perrot’s very own superstar Vincent Lecavalier and diminutive Laval dynamo Martin St. Louis. St. Louis had a career season with 31 goals, 68 assists, and 99 points, which is why he was one of three finalists – and the likely winner – of the Hart trophy.

The pure laine Tampa line-up also includes blue-line Howitzer specialist Marc-André Bergeron – who was delivering those eye-catching slapshots for the Habs last year – and ultra-talented forward Simon Gagné. Imagine if Montreal had four franco stars of this calibre!

But the guy I really love on Tampa is Teddy Purcell. This is the Newfoundlander who has five goals in six games against the Bruins and a whopping 17 points in the post-season. This is an under-achiever who was never drafted, was passed over by every NHL club, flubbed it in his first stint with the Los Angeles Kings, and was traded to Tampa in return for – irony or irony for Habs fans – Jeff Halpern (who also stiffed with the Kings). This guy sure looks like a natural goal-scorer now.

Montreal filmmaker and hockey scout Simon Boisvert – whom you can follow as @simonsnake70 on Twitter – said Purcell flew under the radar as a result of poor pro scouting. “This guy was a natural scorer waiting to blossom,” tweets Boisvert. “He didn’t get a fair chance with the Kings.”

One guy who did see Purcell’s potential was my fellow Top Shelf blogger – and my ten-year-old son – Keane. He picked him in our neighbourhood playoff hockey pool and that pick is the main reason we are still in a horse race with one other family for the top spot. If Tampa wins tonight, we might just nab the ice-cream winnings this year!

- Brendan

Check out this beauty of a goal from Purcell in the first minute of game six.

And here’s his second goal from the same game – not quite as nice, but we’ll take it.