MoontoScott
Registered User
- Jun 2, 2012
- 7,808
- 8,519
Ruel was horrible at line matching which is to say he didnt do it. Lafleur was seeing Hunter and Lumley lots, Habs had 2 of the games on home ice.
Sevigny comments was out of this world dumb. That kind of thing should never happen and the Oilers made him pay.
Habs didn't do much in 80 or 81 in playoffs and were a spent force.
Lafleur and Robinson were pretty good in the series and basically all the offensive chances the Habs had seemed to go through them. Rejean Houle was decent as well.
Thing is the 81 Oilers were already a very exemplary forward line up. Just because the NHL didn't know who some of these guys were was the leagues own problem. Callighen grossly underrated player, Kurri coming into his own, and Gretz had even more liberty playing with a couple players that were good defensively as well. The Oilers had all kinds of speed to throw at the Habs and Hunter, Lumley, Weir, Kurri, Hagman, Anderson, Callighen, they could shut it down as forwards and really limit time and space out there. The Oilers had the speed, great defensive forwards, they hardly even used Unger, they didn't have to. Plus they had Sather on the bench knowing exactly how to stop the Habs.
You could just see it in the series all the time. The Habs were good at getting space, creating some distance to make plays. But against the Oilers who closed excellently they were really taking all the play making time away and forcing turnovers. So many times in that series Lafleur or Robinson would make a pretty good rush only for the play to fail. The same plays work against a lot of other slower clubs. Habs were shocked that the Oilers had better speed, and moved the puck faster.
Shout out to Siltanen as well. The NHL didn't even know who this player was. he was better than Coffey still at that stage. For those of us that followed the Oilers up from the WHA we knew this to be a solid squad. Took the NHL some time to notice it.
What did Sevigny say? Whatever it was, if I was going to face Gretzky et al. I would have kept a lid on it.
Why did the Oil part ways with Siltanen? I don't remember but yes he was better than Coffey at this stage of the game.