Honestly. Both Armia and Evans have been pretty good in their roles. Evan’s plays incredibly hard, takes a beating and blocks shots. How can you say he doesn’t play with intensity? Of course there would be better options if we were competing, but we’re not. Why rush a young guy in?
Post-Game Talk: Jake "All-in" for an NFL-type score!
- Thread starter Runner77
- Start date
Habs
We should have drafted Michkov
- Feb 28, 2002
- 21,252
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I'm about done with Struble getting all these free chances after his massive screwups, and my boy Arbs is Strike 1 and out of here.
Exactly. And my god, anyone that misses the days of DD and Pacioretty just lost my respect
Funny enough, but the only guys that aren’t screwing up are Savard and Kovy. Everyone is else is messing up. It’s not just Struble. Even Guhle makes some bad plays.
WeThreeKings
Habs cup - its in the BAG
Exactly. And my god, anyone that misses the days of DD and Pacioretty just lost my respect
Funny enough, but the only guys that aren’t screwing up are Savard and Kovy. Everyone is else is messing up. It’s not just Struble. Even Guhle makes some bad plays.
It's a hard league to be a young defenseman and sophomore slumps have always been a thing. This is the problem when people aren't hockey fans, they are just Habs fans, there is 0 ability to understand how things are across the league.
Shred
Registered User
- Nov 1, 2005
- 1,140
- 531
Montembeault is too good, he’s ruining the tank! We’ll be mediocre forever!
Allen is so bad, he has become untradeable! We’ll be mediocre forever!
Our goalie must allow exactly 4 goals per game and the only acceptable score is 4-3 in regulation with goals from Suzuki, Slaf and Caufield.
Get with the program
WeThreeKings
Habs cup - its in the BAG
Montembeault is too good, he’s ruining the tank! We’ll be mediocre forever!
Allen is so bad, he has become untradeable! We’ll be mediocre forever!
Our goalie must allow exactly 4 goals per game and the only acceptable score is 4-3 in regulation with goals from Suzuki, Slaf and Caufield.
Get with the program
No because then we aren't winning - so that's bad, too!
The Real Timo
Registered User
- Jun 18, 2019
- 14,482
- 18,027
he has no problem doing it to Xhekaj. You can't but notice that MSL doesn't like him .
So what I'm gathering is we lost yesterday because St. Louis said Xhekaj took a bad penalty in a presser two weeks ago
Captain Mountain
Formerly Captain Wolverine
- Jun 6, 2010
- 20,437
- 14,013
Some of y'all need to pay attention to other teams, because this "rebuild" hasn't been long by any stretch of the imagination.
MasterD
Giggidy Giggidy Goo
- Jul 1, 2004
- 5,623
- 5,002
What?
Struble, our 22 years old rookie with 21 AHL games and 34 NHL games of experience, had a very rough night. For sure.
To call him a pylon though, shows you're either not watching the games, or very disingenuous.
The Gr8 Dane
L'harceleur
this rebuild is much more interesting than any therrien/Julien team carried by CP31.
Like did anybody actually believe we would win anything with those teams , it blows my mind
I'm convinced the win now crowd just don't follow the sport outside of Montreal and don't have an actual grasp on how ass our roster has been compared to almost every team in the league for 20 years before the rebuild started
MasterD
Giggidy Giggidy Goo
- Jul 1, 2004
- 5,623
- 5,002
We have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. Maybe they repeated tens of times and Xhekaj didn't listen. Or maybe MSL doesn't like him. We don't know.
Either way, Xhekaj didn't play well at the end of his season last year, and didn't play well this year. He deserved to be sent down, and will get better. There's a reason he was never drafted.
Patience.
The discussion on whether we should have tanked or tried to compete is pretty meaningless anyway as there was no real choice in the matter. The new FO took over a last place roster and had no choice but to sell off before the 2022 deadline because of the upcoming cap problems for summer 2022.
It's easy to forget this now but the Habs had zero money available in summer 2022 until Price agreed to go on LTIR in mid August, and they used the money to eat Monahan and sign Dach. Last summer going into this year there was a tad more flexibility but at most we could have afforded to add maybe one generic Garland/Perron/Killorn/Compher type of forward and that's not enough to change anything. A bottom 5-7 finish was always locked in for 22-23 and 23-24, the roster was overloaded and capped out with bad veteran players and lost Danault, Price, Weber, Kotkaniemi, and had Gallagher and Petry both decline heavily. You can't just snap your fingers and make 30M in bad contracts disappear and instantly replace them with market-value star players.
I get that the rebuttal is just going to be "lol you can always blame the last guy" but the NHL has a hard salary cap and the Habs were completely capped out on crappy veterans who had little to no trade value. We got paid a 1st to take Monahan for 1x6.1, the price to dump Drouin, Hoffman, Armia, Petry, etc and then also go out and acquire enough core roster talent to get the team into the playoffs 2023 or 2024 would have been absolutely astronomical.
For the upcoming summer & 24-25 there's probably room for debate as there's finally more cap & roster flexibility, but the discussion of whether or not we "should" have tanked for 22-23 or 23-24 is pretty meaningless as there was no realistic path to anything remotely close to a playoff team.
It's easy to forget this now but the Habs had zero money available in summer 2022 until Price agreed to go on LTIR in mid August, and they used the money to eat Monahan and sign Dach. Last summer going into this year there was a tad more flexibility but at most we could have afforded to add maybe one generic Garland/Perron/Killorn/Compher type of forward and that's not enough to change anything. A bottom 5-7 finish was always locked in for 22-23 and 23-24, the roster was overloaded and capped out with bad veteran players and lost Danault, Price, Weber, Kotkaniemi, and had Gallagher and Petry both decline heavily. You can't just snap your fingers and make 30M in bad contracts disappear and instantly replace them with market-value star players.
I get that the rebuttal is just going to be "lol you can always blame the last guy" but the NHL has a hard salary cap and the Habs were completely capped out on crappy veterans who had little to no trade value. We got paid a 1st to take Monahan for 1x6.1, the price to dump Drouin, Hoffman, Armia, Petry, etc and then also go out and acquire enough core roster talent to get the team into the playoffs 2023 or 2024 would have been absolutely astronomical.
For the upcoming summer & 24-25 there's probably room for debate as there's finally more cap & roster flexibility, but the discussion of whether or not we "should" have tanked for 22-23 or 23-24 is pretty meaningless as there was no realistic path to anything remotely close to a playoff team.
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WeThreeKings
Habs cup - its in the BAG
I'd also note that other than the Boston Bruins who somehow have transitioned out of the Bergeron/Krejci era.. so the exception to the rule... a team surviving losing their two star players, forever, and coming back and being competitive.. is just not a logical possibility.
Especially since they were not losing their two star players off a deep roster, it was a roster who had recently been bad enough to draft 3 OA for Kotkaniemi and was going to draft top 10 if Covid didn't force them into the bubble.
Habs
We should have drafted Michkov
- Feb 28, 2002
- 21,252
- 14,772
Captain Mountain
Formerly Captain Wolverine
- Jun 6, 2010
- 20,437
- 14,013
I actually went to both games this weekend, so I thought I'd share some of my impressions.
1) Allen was brutal and Montembault was great, but both of them have rebound control issues. Montembault's compete is great though and he had some pretty impressive moments.
2) The lack of structure the team plays with is noticeable. A lot of the guys compete hard, but they look chaotic out there at times. I think Suzuki and Caufield were the only guys that didn't have at least one moment where they froze and didn't know what to do at certain points. Its not a major issue mid-rebuild when development of young guys is the priority, but the coaching staff needs to either address it or changes will need to be made to the coaching staff.
3) The Caufield-Suzuki-Slafkovsky line is the light in the darkness of the season. Most attention is on the growth of Slafkovsky and what he can end up becoming considering how raw he still is and that you still see the confidence isn't quite there yet to make plays more consistently. But Caufield's defensive play and playmaking growth deserves some credit, as does Suzuki's willingness to use his shot and go for it offensively. That line was targeted by both Dallas and St. Louis and still were able to control the play.
4) There really isn't much standout at forward other than them, but Newhook's upside is pretty noticeable and I think playing with an actual top-6 forward or two would bring out more than he's shown so far. He doesn't have the chemistry with other guys yet (especially on the PP), but he makes things happen in a good way. Gignac, Roy, Pezz and Armia also played well.
5) The lack of depth on D is noticeable. Matheson was generally good, but he had a number of gaffes that sours the overall impression. Savard's lack of speed is a big problem. Guhle is good, but I don't really see what some do in him. I think he'll be a really good #3D (maybe #2), but I'm not sure I see more there. I really didn't like his performance on the PP against St. Louis. Struble and Kovacevic struggled a lot and Xhekaj probably needs more icetime.
1) Allen was brutal and Montembault was great, but both of them have rebound control issues. Montembault's compete is great though and he had some pretty impressive moments.
2) The lack of structure the team plays with is noticeable. A lot of the guys compete hard, but they look chaotic out there at times. I think Suzuki and Caufield were the only guys that didn't have at least one moment where they froze and didn't know what to do at certain points. Its not a major issue mid-rebuild when development of young guys is the priority, but the coaching staff needs to either address it or changes will need to be made to the coaching staff.
3) The Caufield-Suzuki-Slafkovsky line is the light in the darkness of the season. Most attention is on the growth of Slafkovsky and what he can end up becoming considering how raw he still is and that you still see the confidence isn't quite there yet to make plays more consistently. But Caufield's defensive play and playmaking growth deserves some credit, as does Suzuki's willingness to use his shot and go for it offensively. That line was targeted by both Dallas and St. Louis and still were able to control the play.
4) There really isn't much standout at forward other than them, but Newhook's upside is pretty noticeable and I think playing with an actual top-6 forward or two would bring out more than he's shown so far. He doesn't have the chemistry with other guys yet (especially on the PP), but he makes things happen in a good way. Gignac, Roy, Pezz and Armia also played well.
5) The lack of depth on D is noticeable. Matheson was generally good, but he had a number of gaffes that sours the overall impression. Savard's lack of speed is a big problem. Guhle is good, but I don't really see what some do in him. I think he'll be a really good #3D (maybe #2), but I'm not sure I see more there. I really didn't like his performance on the PP against St. Louis. Struble and Kovacevic struggled a lot and Xhekaj probably needs more icetime.
Nico Cauzuki
Registered User
I tend to think that Harris was/is on the trade block and therefore needed to play. Of course, if he’s out now, so much for that.
If Xhekaj was in the doghouse, then what about the rumours that Hughes is turning down offers for him? I don’t buy it. Xhekaj is fine and will be part of the team going forward. Now, if they call up Norlinder and play him over Arber, ThEN I’d agree that there’s a problem.
I don’t solely blame the D. It’s team D that’s bad. Plays made all over the ice affect what might happen in the D zone.
- Jun 24, 2012
- 83,804
- 150,826
We don’t really know that MSL hates Xhekaj. However, this is what happens when a coach chooses to publicly call out certain players for making mistakes and not others. These kind of inferences can be avoided by simply dealing with a player’s mistakes, privately.
teamfirst
Registered User
- Oct 28, 2016
- 3,682
- 2,407
Maybe on a pro-tank not watching games but only scoreboard fans, and what's wrong with being carried by your best player, isn't it the way it suppose to be
The Gr8 Dane
L'harceleur
The entire roster was bottom 5 in the NHL . you can't win in a parity league with a HOF goaltender and a bunch of scrubs.
If you thought those teams were ever going to win anything that's cool for you.
Most people knew we had no chance of winning the cup going into every single year of the Gainey/Bergevin régime.
Personally I couldn't care less about a Wednesday night in february i want the team to have cup contention ambitions , not fill up seats in the regular season and pray for 8th place ambitions
teamfirst
Registered User
- Oct 28, 2016
- 3,682
- 2,407
Entire roster being bottom 5 is grossly exagerated but i was just mentioning that watching games back then was way more fun then warching them now for me, but of course if you're not watching it's not the same
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