Why retooling is the best option for the Habs

Runner77

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Again, That’s literally one thing said in the whole article. Just making a point it’s another prospect that could potentially challenge for a roster spot. No one ever said he would score 100 points and be the saviour

McCarron wouldn't even be in the conversation were it not for the fact that he's no longer waiver exempt. He's regressed badly whether it's Lefebvre-induced or not. If we're at the point of McCarron making the 4th line, there's an opportunity cost issue that needs to be more closely assessed. He's skating in quicksand and doesn't use his size effectively, not to mention his decision-making is terrible. We need to find a taker for him, hopefully a western team falls in love with his oversized carcass.
 

Phozzwald

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Oct 16, 2007
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I almost can't continue reading after ''chronic fatigue.''

How gullible must one be in order to be a sports writer?

Our defence group is

S E R V I C E A B L E
E
R
V
I
C
E
A
B
L
E

Is that what one calls ''one injury away from the worst goddamn defence group you've ever seen''?

Depth on the wings. He names our - league worst - number 1 center as depth on the wings.

Here's the thing, buddy, and I hope you actually use this criticism. You can't just name players on our roster, or prospect pool and say that you think they're serviceable, or good, and that we're therefore ''deep'' at that position. You can say that about literally any team. The point behind a rebuild, or a retool, is not to put us back into the playoffs and drafting 25th again. The point is to build a contender - a team to be feared. To do that, not only do our players have to be ''serviceable,'' not only do our wings have to be ''deep,'' but we have to be more serviceable, and deeper than the rest of the league.

Absent such a comparison, this article is completely worthless.

I serviceable D group. That’s the only time serviceable was used. And I stand by that. People look at last years Defence and think about Benn schlemko, Morrow and Davidson. Not me. I see three young guys in Mete, Juulsen, and Reilly. Lernout who is a guy who can come in and out of the line up. Added to Shea Weber who’s arguably to best at his position defensively and Petry who is a good number 3. It’s a serviceable group with the potential to get better if we get Dahlin or Bergevin makes a move. Fact of the matter is at the moment it’s a serviceable group.

The Habs have a ton of depth on the wing. Drouin moves back to the wing when the Habs acquire an actual centre as well. If you don’t see him as a legit top line winger then I’m sorry I’m done.
 

Phozzwald

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Oct 16, 2007
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McCarron wouldn't even be in the conversation were it not for the fact that he's no longer waiver exempt. He's regressed badly whether it's Lefebvre-induced or not. If we're at the point of McCarron making the 4th line, there's an opportunity cost issue that needs to be more closely assessed. He's skating in quicksand and doesn't use his size effectively, not to mention his decision-making is terrible. We need to find a taker for him, hopefully a western team falls in love with his oversized carcass.

I’m completely ok with that if we could find someone to take him. For me right now my bottom 2 centres are Danault and De La rose regardless. McCarron hasn’t developed the way any of us would have like. There’s no doubt about that whatsoever.
 

Runner77

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Because of exactly what I said in the article. I believe that we have the pieces to become a legit contender IF we add the centres. Having a top 5 pick this year brings in another top player to help the offence as well. We have a good trade chip in Max Pacioretty who should bring in a significant piece for the Habs and they have a chance to sign John Tavares. If the centre position isn’t addressed, then yes the team will fail again and Bergevin will be let go. But Price and Weber are both signed long term, and we should try to win with them now.

You have to stop with the Tavares fantasy scenario. It's a long shot at best, quality UFAs don't tend to choose Montreal as a destination. There is no point arguing how Tavares would help when he's not going to sign here.

Some pundits have maintained that Pacioretty's value was at its best at the last TDL, but Bergevin overplayed his hand. How is he going to be worth more at the draft?

Your belief that adding centers makes this team a "legit contender" is grossly exaggerated. They're gravely exposed at first and second pairing D and would need a PMD. Plus, adding those centers may sap the team of some of their best assets elsewhere, which means creating a hole to fill a hole. Other teams sense the Habs' desperation and they will go for blood.

The Habs are not only condemned to overpay but will be doing so in a context where money alone won't fix all of their glaring issues, where a summer alone won't fix 6 prior years of failed results, where the same individuals that caused the team to creater are being entrusted to behave differently this time around and where the team is built from the goalie on out when the league favors building from the center on down, based on offence and skill over "character" and "attitude".

The top 7 pick the Habs are going to win should help. How much, we don't know.

It's absolutely captain obvious material that the team is vying for a win-now approach, with Price and Weber in tow -- they're not going to try and win 3 or 4 years from now while Price and Weber are going to be declining.
 

G0bias

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Oct 4, 2007
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I serviceable D group. That’s the only time serviceable was used. And I stand by that. People look at last years Defence and think about Benn schlemko, Morrow and Davidson. Not me. I see three young guys in Mete, Juulsen, and Reilly. Lernout who is a guy who can come in and out of the line up. Added to Shea Weber who’s arguably to best at his position defensively and Petry who is a good number 3. It’s a serviceable group with the potential to get better if we get Dahlin or Bergevin makes a move. Fact of the matter is at the moment it’s a serviceable group.

The Habs have a ton of depth on the wing. Drouin moves back to the wing when the Habs acquire an actual centre as well.

Young /= potential

If you don’t see him as a legit top line winger then I’m sorry I’m done.
What has Drouin shown so far in Montreal, for one to hold such a strong opinion?
 

MaxDummy

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Jul 3, 2011
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"Going into the off-season with a ton of cap space and superstar centre John Tavares set to hit the open market, you can bet Bergevin is going to take a swing. If he does strike out he will still have the cap space, draft picks as well as depth players to use as bargaining chips to acquire a centre"

Draft picks, cap space and depth players won't get you a center that would make us contenders...

"Hey Anaheim! Wanna trade us Getzlaf for Byron, Valiev, Rychel and 3 second round picks?? No?? "

"Trades are so hard, at least I tried"
 

NotProkofievian

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Nov 29, 2011
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I serviceable D group. That’s the only time serviceable was used. And I stand by that. People look at last years Defence and think about Benn schlemko, Morrow and Davidson. Not me. I see three young guys in Mete, Juulsen, and Reilly. Lernout who is a guy who can come in and out of the line up. Added to Shea Weber who’s arguably to best at his position defensively and Petry who is a good number 3. It’s a serviceable group with the potential to get better if we get Dahlin or Bergevin makes a move. Fact of the matter is at the moment it’s a serviceable group.

The Habs have a ton of depth on the wing. Drouin moves back to the wing when the Habs acquire an actual centre as well. If you don’t see him as a legit top line winger then I’m sorry I’m done.

Seriously, go team by team, and see if you can't make a stronger argument for half the league on all these points. You think we're deep at wing? Look at Winnipeg. They have multiple wingers who would be the best wingers on our team, by a lot.

What good is depth if you're upperbounded by half the league at every position? Here's the reality of our winger depth: there were 40 wingers in the league who scored more than our top scoring wingers. 40. I count 22 teams with wingers who did better, most of those had multiple.

And this serviceable d-group? Like I said, if Weber isn't the same, or if he gets injured again, it wasn't some accident that this d group was a collective -59 on the year, in which we were near the bottom of the league in goals against.

Don't worry though, everyone. That could never happen again. They're S E R V I C E A B L E. What on earth does that word even mean? They can technically play the game of hockey?
 

CHfan1

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Apr 23, 2012
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Which is only a 9% chances less then buffalo. Again, New Jersey got Hischer sitting in the same position.

The lottery balls don’t know what happened last year. That’s like saying Dallas should be confident they are moving up because Philly did last year from the same position.

Montreal has a slightly less than a 1 in 10 chance of getting Dahlin. Maybe (hopefully) they get lucky, but it’s not likely.
 

Kriss E

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May 3, 2007
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Not at all what was said. You’re reaching. We could rebuild, and end up being like a Chicago. We could also rebuild like multiple teams have been doing for years and not win the cup. All I said was that it’s possible a rebuild fails as well. Then what?
Then what? Then you adapt. Just terrific right?
The Habs have been retooling for more than 20 years. How's that worked out for us?
Nobody was asking to rebuild 4 years ago, after we went to the ECF. We had Galch entering year 3, Subban solidifying his elite status. We had good depth throughout our line up. A few tweaks here and there, and we could actually contend.
Alas, our management dropped the ball completely, didn't know what to do, didn't want to commit to any direction, and just wasted time/talent.
Bergevin then started making big moves because...well...after a few years you kind of don't have a choice, and most of them were just bad. It has lead us to badly miss the POs in 2 of the last 3 years. We have no direction, no identity, holes up and down our roster, 6 years into his tenure. This is unacceptable.
Our three biggest players, Max-Weber-Price, are all going or already into their 30s. Two of them signed to huge deals getting them to about 40 years old, Max is due for a big raise and long term deal too, which we should want no part of. For fox sake, if Weber is hurt, our top pairing is Alzner-Petry. What in the freaking world??? I mean, do you know nothing of the other teams out there? No way can we compete with the good teams. Barely hold our own versus average ones.

So ya, when you look at the big picture, the best route to take at the moment isn't a retool, it's a complete rebuild.
I can’t understand how people can actually think that signing Tavares and/or trading for a centreman is a bad idea. It blows my mind.
Because there are more issues than just a centerman. We are not a contender even if we sign Tavares.
So you want to trade for another top centerman. Okay, then we will likely have to give up something significant and this management has failed to bring us a centerfor years. You think we're going to pry a top one away by dangling Poehling out there when they couldn't even get us one by trading Subban and Sergachev?

But let's say we do get Tavares-O'Reilly. Our defense will stay horrible. We still have Max hitting the books, Weber-Price are still getting past their prime. So there are still issues with this team.
Of course, we would be better, but as I said, getting two top line center, one being elite, is going to significantly improve any team. I am not sure how this is an argument you want to use to show how good we are.
 

NotProkofievian

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Nov 29, 2011
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Crosby
McDavid
Malkin
Matthews
Karlsson
Doughty
Hedman
Kucherov
Ovechkin
Marchand
P. Kane
Gaudreau
Draisaitl
Barzal
Tavares
Pastrnak
Benn
Seguin
Barkov
Stamkos
Kessel
Laine
Scheifele
Giroux
Voracek
MacKinnon
Rantanen
Kuznetsov
Panarin
Kopitar
Getzlaf
Forsberg
Jones
Bergeron
Hall
Burns
Klingberg
Pietrangelo
Point
Backstrom

Here's a list of every player I can think of for whom I think anyone would trade any one of our players, 1 for 1. There are 40 names on this list. There are many names for whom you could make a strong argument to include on this list. Hell, we even had one of those names, but in order to not derail the exercise I left him off. I left off names like Eichel, Ehlers, and Wheeler, Monahan, Carlson, etc. etc.

This is why we should rebuild. We're not even in the conversation.
 
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habsgirl5000

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Jul 15, 2017
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Because I honestly don't feel we are that far off. I feel we can win now with Price and Weber still able to produce.

what the heck have you been watching?

we are not that far off?.....LOL!

thats like saying the moon is not too far from the earth,

and why are you assuming price and weber are still able to produce?.....did you even watch this team this past season?

price and weber are both on a very steep decline.....it aint gonna get any better
 

Milhouse40

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Aug 19, 2010
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I don't believe in rebuild.
But i also don't believe what this article is selling.

There's a space between.

It's pretty simple.

With this year's draft, the Habs will have a 3rd top 5 pick in 7 years.
Many thinks that adding more of those picks will eventually make the Habs a contender.....really?

How many does we need.....cause Toronto got 4 in the same time frame.

Hey, Boston picked twice in the top 10 in the last 10 years and both of those players are not even with the team anymore.....and they are back at it this year.

How many top pick does Vegas got in their line-up to win that much?

Rebuild and getting tons of picks is equally a pipe dream as getting Tavares, Dahlin and hoping that McCarron will be a good NHLer.

Get what you need. Plain and simple.

Toronto was "rebuilding" while they traded a 1st round pick to get Andersen....that goes against the notion of rebuilding isn't?

They got what they needed.
This is where Bergevin failed for 7 years. Got a tons of players but not what the team needed.

Most if not all rebuild that really worked were not teams tanking for years and getting good pick......they are teams getting 1st overall pick. With the lottery, it's just impossible these days to make sure to get one.
 
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Spearmint Rhino

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Sep 17, 2013
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So you're saying, just like the Lord, there are Renaud Lavoies everywhere.
Surely there can't be more than one person on this planet that believes MB so that's the only thing that makes sense - and he's so far down the foxhole at this point I think he has a hard time remembering what exactly he believes in
 
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habsfan909

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Feb 20, 2018
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Which is only a 9% chances less then buffalo. Again, New Jersey got Hischer sitting in the same position.
Huh? So because we have 9% chance less than Buffalo we have a good chance? What in the heavens? No matter Buffalo's odds, we still have less 10% chance. Our % of getting #1 overall remains the same, despite Buffalo.
Just because Jersey had an 8.5% chance of winning a lottery - and won - it doesn't mean we have a good chance since we have those same 8.5% odds.
 

habsfan909

Registered User
Feb 20, 2018
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959
I don't believe in rebuild.
But i also don't believe what this article is selling.

There's a space between.

It's pretty simple.

With this year's draft, the Habs will have a 3rd top 5 pick in 7 years.
Many thinks that adding more of those picks will eventually make the Habs a contender.....really?

How many does we need.....cause Toronto got 4 in the same time frame.

Hey, Boston picked twice in the top 10 in the last 10 years and both of those players are not even with the team anymore.....and they are back at it this year.

How many top pick does Vegas got in their line-up to win that much?

Rebuild and getting tons of picks is equally a pipe dream as getting Tavares, Dahlin and hoping that McCarron will be a good NHLer.

Get what you need. Plain and simple.

Toronto was "rebuilding" while they traded a 1st round pick to get Andersen....that goes against the notion of rebuilding isn't?

They got what they needed.
This is where Bergevin failed for 7 years. Got a tons of players but not what the team needed.

Most if not all rebuild that really worked were not teams tanking for years and getting good pick......they are teams getting 1st overall pick. With the lottery, it's just impossible these days to make sure to get one.
Yes Chicago and Pittsburgh didn't get top picks to turn it around either....
It's not about tanking. It's about not being stuck in the middle where we have been for 20+ years. Then we end up with the 15th overall pick which is an ok player.
And lets be clear about Toronto - they got a generational centre superstar in Matthews.
You need top 5 picks that connect. We screwed up Chucky - or he could have developed into a centre that we need.
TOP talent is not signing here. They don't want to play for the Habs. It's not a draw. So we need to build through the draft.
OR we can keep going round and round and 10 years from now, we can have the same convo about "retool" again.
 

Price is Wright

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Feb 5, 2010
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Five years ago if we added a 1C, we would be a contender because of our mix of youth, depth, and assets. We still had Therrien coaching but maybe he could be ignored. With a younger Markov, faster Subban, and a healthy Price, adding one centre would make a difference.

Today? Not so much. The coaching still sucks, they need more than one centre, the defence is embarrassing, there isn't a single quality LD on the club, many players are injury prone, the youth isn't as good as it was, and the best years of Price are likely gone.

That's why adding a 1C seems like a fix but it isn't. It's only fixing one problem. This team is fundamentally broken and rotten to the core. It needs to be completely overhauled. That takes years.
 

Milhouse40

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Aug 19, 2010
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Yes Chicago and Pittsburgh didn't get top picks to turn it around either....
It's not about tanking. It's about not being stuck in the middle where we have been for 20+ years. Then we end up with the 15th overall pick which is an ok player.
And lets be clear about Toronto - they got a generational centre superstar in Matthews.
You need top 5 picks that connect. We screwed up Chucky - or he could have developed into a centre that we need.
TOP talent is not signing here. They don't want to play for the Habs. It's not a draw. So we need to build through the draft.
OR we can keep going round and round and 10 years from now, we can have the same convo about "retool" again.

You need pick to connect....don't have to be a top 5 pick.
McAvoy, Carlo and Pastrnak for the Bruins
Point, Gourde and Johnson for Tampa

This year's draft is good example....if the Habs pick 4th, they will get a good player, but he's probably won't be what the Habs need (Center or Off. LHD).

Unless there's a trade, after this year's draft, the Habs will have picked 8 players in the top 2 rounds in 2 years. How much more prospects is really needed?

St-Louis are building with lower than 20 overall (Thomas, Kyrou, Parayko, Fabbri)
For crying out load, Tampa are getting top quality player from undrafted player.

For me it's all about getting what the teams needs.
Trading Price, Weber and what not will only make even more holes to fill and after 7 years, the Habs can't even filled the holes at center....even with 3 pick in the top 5. How the f*** they will be able to fills even more holes.

Of course....having a dumb management is creating this mess.
 

Phozzwald

Registered User
Oct 16, 2007
278
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Newfoundland
Huh? So because we have 9% chance less than Buffalo we have a good chance? What in the heavens? No matter Buffalo's odds, we still have less 10% chance. Our % of getting #1 overall remains the same, despite Buffalo.
Just because Jersey had an 8.5% chance of winning a lottery - and won - it doesn't mean we have a good chance since we have those same 8.5% odds.

No you’re right. Shouldn’t have said a good chance. Moreso that 4th best odds isn’t bad. When you look at all the percentages. There’s not a huge gap. But you are correct, 8.5% is not really a “good” chance. Really none of the odds for any team are good.
 

Electricity

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Aug 22, 2016
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I feel like the odds of getting Tavares are quite a bit lower than the odds of getting the 1st pick, and even if JT comes, the Habs would probably just switch places in the standings with the Isles next year.
I mean, this year the Islanders had some nice offensive pieces(Lee, Barzal, etc.) and a "serviceable" defense, and Tavares, and where did that get them? :ha:
 

Phozzwald

Registered User
Oct 16, 2007
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Newfoundland
what the heck have you been watching?

we are not that far off?.....LOL!

thats like saying the moon is not too far from the earth,

and why are you assuming price and weber are still able to produce?.....did you even watch this team this past season?

price and weber are both on a very steep decline.....it aint gonna get any better

What evidence do you have to support Price and Weber are on a steep decline?
Why would I Not assume Price and Weber can still produce. The team had an off year, both players battled through injuries. Last season Price finished 3rd in Vezina voting. Weber finished 6th in Norris Trophy voting and had 16 points in 26 games while playing on a fractured foot. There’s no reason to believe that both players won’t return to form next season.
 

Phozzwald

Registered User
Oct 16, 2007
278
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Newfoundland
I feel like the odds of getting Tavares are quite a bit lower than the odds of getting the 1st pick, and even if JT comes, the Habs would probably just switch places in the standings with the Isles next year.
I mean, this year the Islanders had some nice offensive pieces(Lee, Barzal, etc.) and a "serviceable" defense, and Tavares, and where did that get them? :ha:

I wouldn’t call the islanders defence serviceable and they have the worst goaltending in the league
 

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