Post-Game Talk: Slafstudsky and Slick Nick lead the way as Habs defeat the Ducks

[eurodin]

Primeau third star. Really? It was 13 shots.

Granted, if Allen was in net, it would be 2 goals given his save %.

 

[eurodin]

Its funny that some supposedly experts are judging this season by the standings. The picture is clarifying on many young players and its very positive for most of them. We have 4 top 6 players with Slaf Suzuki CC and Dach. We have a bunch of prospects having good/great season outside the NHL: Dobes Bogdan,Engstrom,Kapanen,Eriksson, Roy,Mesar,Beck,Mailloux. KH got some great assets to continue improving the pipeline or the NHL team . Beside Dach’s injury this season is a succes all the way imo and the other good news is we’re getting closer to never have to watch again Pearson, Dvorak Allen etc etc in a Hab uniform!!

You are not wrong, but you are also not right.

1) We have been saying our young talent pool has been good for the last 20 years on forums when in fact many busts have been produced. It is my opinion you can't look to far down (too far young) to judge talent. You have to look at the imediate talent, because even the imediate talent will take several years to materilize.

2) We have huge holes for 2nd and 3rd forward lines. We have a huge hole for top 3 defense. There is nothing in the next 2-3 years that will overcome this unless we get some UFA/RFA.

We are very far away, at least 2-3 good players from a playoff team. Having a top 9 injured is not uncommon. Call it 2 if you include Dach and a healthy team.

 

[BLONG7]

You are not wrong, but you are also not right.

1) We have been saying our young talent pool has been good for the last 20 years on forums when in fact many busts have been produced. It is my opinion you can't look to far down (too far young) to judge talent. You have to look at the imediate talent, because even the imediate talent will take several years to materilize.

2) We have huge holes for 2nd and 3rd forward lines. We have a huge hole for top 3 defense. There is nothing in the next 2-3 years that will overcome this unless we get some UFA/RFA.

We are very far away, at least 2-3 good players from a playoff team. Having a top 9 injured is not uncommon. Call it 2 if you include Dach and a healthy team.

Curious, if you think,, Roy, Farrell, or Mesar could stick next year?
Obviously our offense could use the injection of youth, and not the Gally, Armia, Anderson kind.

 

[eurodin]

Curious, if you think,, Roy, Farrell, or Mesar could stick next year?
Obviously our offense could use the injection of youth, and not the Gally, Armia, Anderson kind.

I won't even comment about it. Too much crystal ball effect. The drafting from 2008 to 2018 put us in this precarious position we find ourselves in today. If it was not for Caufield, Suzuki, Dach, Monty, Matheson picks/trades we would be in the basement with the Ducks and not be playing .500 hockey. Those dealings prevented disaster.

The scary part is Gally is our 4th best scoring forward. On pace for a whopping 28 pts.....I am fine with Armia on the 3rd line (sure, he is overpaid). I see his value on this thin forward set. He is complimentary scoring. Just like a Tatar would be. I was never a big Danealt fan, but him and Tatar would look great on the team instead of Gally, Jake Evans, Pearson., Anderson (when he does not skate). We use to have good 2nd and 3rd lines on the playoffs habs in the last 15 years. The Eller-Moen-Kostitsyn line was leaps and bounds over what we have for our 3rd line.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

Well, the trade was awful because it wasn't just leclair. Desjardins was a top dman for them as well for a long time.

But while the flyers saw a good asset in leclair, even they didn't see what leclair would become while playing with lindros. Desjardins was the peice that they coveted most at the time.

After Desjardins left, Habs suffered from poor D for a while. Brisebois was almost #1 D instead of Desjardins, habs had legion of no names or names playing D we tend to forget. Ther wasn'tr Chelios anymore, Markov was drafted in '98 and started to be a factor in '01. We had the Makhalov skying story, Rivet, Baron, Manson, Ulanov, Popovic, Fitzpatrick, Cullimore, etc. We had some decent offensive with Koivu, Turgeon, Damphousse, Recchi, Savage, Ruzinski and Bure but it stopped there, Not much depth 3rd and 4th line and a bad D corp.

 

[JianYang]

After Desjardins left, Habs suffered from poor D for a while. Brisebois was almost #1 D instead of Desjardins, habs had legion of no names or names playing D we tend to forget. Ther wasn'tr Chelios anymore, Markov was drafted in '98 and started to be a factor in '01. We had the Makhalov skying story, Rivet, Baron, Manson, Ulanov, Popovic, Fitzpatrick, Cullimore, etc. We had some decent offensive with Koivu, Turgeon, Damphousse, Recchi, Savage, Ruzinski and Bure but it stopped there, Not much depth 3rd and 4th line and a bad D corp.

The Habs had an insane defensive pipeline in the late 80s. Desjardins was one of the last products of this. Then odelein was traded about a year later for richer.

Amazing how quickly that pipeline was pissed away.

 

[Habs10Habs]

Did you see Richer? Damn he was good. He could’ve been an all time great player but mental health got in the way. One of my favourite players ever.

Richer was incredible. He could skate, he could shoot. I took his number when I played high school football. I even had his #44 shaved on each side of my head. Sadly when I took my helmet off. It looked like HH instead of 44 lol

 

[LaP]

You are not wrong, but you are also not right.

1) We have been saying our young talent pool has been good for the last 20 years on forums when in fact many busts have been produced. It is my opinion you can't look to far down (too far young) to judge talent. You have to look at the imediate talent, because even the imediate talent will take several years to materilize.

2) We have huge holes for 2nd and 3rd forward lines. We have a huge hole for top 3 defense. There is nothing in the next 2-3 years that will overcome this unless we get some UFA/RFA.

We are very far away, at least 2-3 good players from a playoff team. Having a top 9 injured is not uncommon. Call it 2 if you include Dach and a healthy team.

I think you are overly negative,

We have two holes in the top 6.

Caufield-Suzuki-Slaf
x-Dach-x

This can easily be overcome in the next draft with a top 5 pick. Almost all teams have one hole in the top 6. Avs have Half retired Ryan Johansen on their 2nd line and the guy is bad.

We have two holes on the 3rd line. Assuming that all of Roy, Beck, Heineman, Mesar will not develop into 3rd line player is even worse than being overly negative imo it's being quite unrealistic. At least one will become a quality 3rd line player. That leaves one hole on the 3rd line which is easily fixable via UFA it's not big deal at all.

Bottom 3 defense looks solid with Xhekaj, Stuble. You can fill the remaining spot in the bottom 3 with a UFA easy.

Top 3 will need help. But Guhle is already a good top 3. THere's a couple of candidate here in Mailloux, Hutson And Rainbacher.

Don't think we are very far away. 2-3 years max then it will be a matter of getting experience and signing the right UFA to fill some holes. Going with the logic that all our prospects will fail because all our prospects failed in the past under different management is kind of rudiculous imo.

Which dman did as well as Mailloux in their first AHL year recently? I can only think of Subban. Which forward did as well as Roy in first AHL year? Can't recall any recently honestly. Assuming those two keep the pace for a full AHL year those are extremely solid first AHL season and they certainly project as solid prospects to become good NHLer.

If you remove Allen from the equation this year we would be close to a playoffs spot tbh.

 

[eurodin]

After Desjardins left, Habs suffered from poor D for a while. Brisebois was almost #1 D instead of Desjardins, habs had legion of no names or names playing D we tend to forget. Ther wasn'tr Chelios anymore, Markov was drafted in '98 and started to be a factor in '01. We had the Makhalov skying story, Rivet, Baron, Manson, Ulanov, Popovic, Fitzpatrick, Cullimore, etc. We had some decent offensive with Koivu, Turgeon, Damphousse, Recchi, Savage, Ruzinski and Bure but it stopped there, Not much depth 3rd and 4th line and a bad D corp.

Terrible era, 1 playoff series win since 1993 cup in the following 10 years. Markov won them a lot of series, along with their powerplay, speed and balanced top 9.

We managed to draft better in the following era with likes of Markov, Ryder, Patio, Price, Gally, Subban.

Today's team is almost as bad as that 90s team.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

Terrible era, 1 playoff series win since 1993 cup in the following 10 years. Markov won them a lot of series, along with their powerplay, speed and balanced top 9.

We managed to draft better in the following era with likes of Markov, Ryder, Patio, Price, Gally, Subban.

Today's team is almost as bad as that 90s team.

Yes but today we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have good young players, we only need to add few more and surround them with quality depth players.

 

[eurodin]

I think you are overly negative,

We have two holes in the top 6.

Caufield-Suzuki-Slaf
x-Dach-x

This can easily be overcome in the next draft with a top 5 pick. Almost all teams have one hole in the top 6. Avs have Half retired Ryan Johansen on their 2nd line and the guy is bad.

We have two holes on the 3rd line. Assuming that all of Roy, Beck, Heineman, Mesar will not develop into 3rd line player is even worse than being overly negative imo it's being quite unrealistic. At least one will become a quality 3rd line player. That leaves one hole on the 3rd line which is easily fixable via UFA it's not big deal at all.

Bottom 3 defense looks solid with Xhekaj, Stuble. You can fill the remaining spot in the bottom 3 with a UFA easy.

Top 3 will need help. But Guhle is already a good top 3. THere's a couple of candidate here in Mailloux, Hutson And Rainbacher.

Don't think we are very far away. 2-3 years max then it will be a matter of getting experience and signing the right UFA to fill some holes. Going with the logic that all our prospects will fail because all our prospects failed in the past under different management is kind of rudiculous imo.

Which dman did as well as Mailloux in their first AHL year recently? I can only think of Subban. Which forward did as well as Roy in first AHL year? Can't recall any recently honestly. Assuming those two keep the pace for a full AHL year those are extremely solid first AHL season and they certainly project as solid prospects to become good NHLer.

If you remove Allen from the equation this year we would be close to a playoffs spot tbh.

I actually agree with everything you said except I think you vastly underestimate how hard it is to achieve. You just said we need 4 top 9 players, and 1.5 top 4 Dman.

We have not signed any significant UFA in a very long. I don't think we have the ability.

I would argue that we are 4 years away if are prospects pan out.

Who is our 4th best Dman on our team now? I could not tell you. I am not a huge fan of Savard, he reminds me of a slightly better Jordie Benn. He makes up the .5 dman.

I agree 3 goalie roation is a failed experient, I don't think we are near the playoffs though. We have poor team defense, goal differential is poor and we don't have many/any 2 way forwards. Samuel needs to stand on his head to win games. Is it for these reasons I am airing on the negative side.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

I think you are overly negative,

We have two holes in the top 6.

Caufield-Suzuki-Slaf
x-Dach-x

This can easily be overcome in the next draft with a top 5 pick. Almost all teams have one hole in the top 6. Avs have Half retired Ryan Johansen on their 2nd line and the guy is bad.

We have two holes on the 3rd line. Assuming that all of Roy, Beck, Heineman, Mesar will not develop into 3rd line player is even worse than being overly negative imo it's being quite unrealistic. At least one will become a quality 3rd line player. That leaves one hole on the 3rd line which is easily fixable via UFA it's not big deal at all.

Bottom 3 defense looks solid with Xhekaj, Stuble. You can fill the remaining spot in the bottom 3 with a UFA easy.

Top 3 will need help. But Guhle is already a good top 3. THere's a couple of candidate here in Mailloux, Hutson And Rainbacher.

Don't think we are very far away. 2-3 years max then it will be a matter of getting experience and signing the right UFA to fill some holes. Going with the logic that all our prospects will fail because all our prospects failed in the past under different management is kind of rudiculous imo.

Which dman did as well as Mailloux in their first AHL year recently? I can only think of Subban. Which forward did as well as Roy in first AHL year? Can't recall any recently honestly. Assuming those two keep the pace for a full AHL year those are extremely solid first AHL season and they certainly project as solid prospects to become good NHLer.

If you remove Allen from the equation this year we would be close to a playoffs spot tbh.

I think Roy will fill one of those top six holes.

 

[durojean]

I actually agree with everything you said except I think you vastly underestimate how hard it is to achieve. You just said we need 4 top 9 players, and 1.5 top 4 Dman.

We have not signed any significant UFA in a very long. I don't think we have the ability.

I would argue that we are 4 years away if are prospects pan out.

Who is our 4th best Dman on our team now? I could not tell you. I am not a huge fan of Savard, he reminds me of a slightly better Jordie Benn. He makes up the .5 dman.

I agree 3 goalie roation is a failed experient, I don't think we are near the playoffs though. We have poor team defense, goal differential is poor and we don't have many/any 2 way forwards. Samuel needs to stand on his head to win games. Is it for these reasons I am airing on the negative side.

Still don't understand why the 3 goalie experiment is that bad. I feel like some time we took advantage of it because our goalie seemed more relaxed and could relax during the harder moments of the schedule.

The stats of our goalies never took a big drop either except maybe for Allen who as a harder time recently but Montembault and Primeau are showing good progress this year. Allen did not get injured this year also. I also feel like it puts some kind of competition between the 3 goalies that we did not have before.

It also pushes the team to rely on their own play and not on the good play of a goalie like the habs seemed to do during all of the good years of Carey Price.

I feel that it's more because it is a different approach that we hear that much complaining. In reality, the rotation really is not that bad.

 

[donghabs98]

Good to see the PP look good (really like Newhook in the bumper position) and Slaf and Nick driving the offense.

I was truly shocked at how bad the Ducks are defensively, they looked so bad, 2 on 1s, 2 on 0s, their PK looking lost. Hard to think the team is deep in their rebuild, have a number of good young pieces to work with and yet looks so bad against a Habs team that isnt deep either.

 

[donghabs98]

I didn’t even care when Cole was behind the play or messing up the last while. He was miles ahead of everyone else of the last 30 years or so. Pure excitement

Thats it, I think the only main criteria for a play-by-play announcer is their voice and the energy they bring. They don't need to provide any insight or commentary, thats for their partner to do.

 

[Forsead]

He looks like Marian Hossa heir's apparent right now (bigger more physical, a little less strong offensively, the potential of the same HOF two-way plays) if he continues this awesome development.

Next year 60+ pts (I guess 65-66 pts), next a PPG winger and a true line driver. This will be paramount of the Habs being competitive wihtout a very strong superstar center.

 

[eurodin]

Still don't understand why the 3 goalie experiment is that bad. I feel like some time we took advantage of it because our goalie seemed more relaxed and could relax during the harder moments of the schedule.

The stats of our goalies never took a big drop either except maybe for Allen who as a harder time recently but Montembault and Primeau are showing good progress this year. Allen did not get injured this year also. I also feel like it puts some kind of competition between the 3 goalies that we did not have before.

It also pushes the team to rely on their own play and not on the good play of a goalie like the habs seemed to do during all of the good years of Carey Price.

I feel that it's more because it is a different approach that we hear that much complaining. In reality, the rotation really is not that bad.

Sam is 12-8
Primeau is 5-5
Jake is 5-10.

I understand the save percantages are all close, but I think the win stats are very telling of performance for 2023-2024.

When Jake Allen is on top of the game, he is very good. He has not been on top of his game since the 1st year he joined the team.

 

[eurodin]

Anaheim was that bad.

 

[cphabs]

Forgot to mention this about his potential as a 19 year old. He’s making his line mates “better”. Caufield is scoring again and Suzuki is on fire.