"Habs are a pain in the ass to play against", Mark Recchi.

[BLONG7]

I hated the Chelios and 2nd for Savard trade when it happened. Chelios was a recent Norris trophy winner who could play 30 minutes per game and was pure nasty to play against. Savard was small and in decline. He had nothing to do with our 1993 Cup win which he watched in a suit.

Another horrible Serge Savard trade was Claude Lemieux for Sylvain Turgeon.

Yes...the Turgeon-Corson trade was brutal. It was a typical Reggie Houle trade. Like you said, Houle would always include a prospect as a throw in even though he was already getting fleeced on the NHL'ers involved. Furthermore our drafting was horrendous during that period and we never replenished the bare cupboards. The Houle era was by far the worst era ever for the Habs.

Reggie was being TOLD by that doucebag Ronald Corey what to do.........Reggie was the front man for a sad sad time for the Habs. None of which was his fault. He did not want the job, but he was a good foot soldier. Ronald Corey and the previous Mol$on regime ruined the Habs at that point, and now it's another Mol$on and Bergevin........more sad times.

 

[Schooner Guy]

Reggie was being TOLD by that doucebag Ronald Corey what to do.........Reggie was the front man for a sad sad time for the Habs. None of which was his fault. He did not want the job, but he was a good foot soldier. Ronald Corey and the previous Mol$on regime ruined the Habs at that point, and now it's another Mol$on and Bergevin........more sad times.

Yes Ronald Corey was an arrogant clown and the Houle/Tremblay hirings were his stupid doings but if Houle didn't want the job, why did he take it? There were only 26 teams in the NHL at that time. Surely there was someone else in the hockey world who would love that job or in the Habs hockey operations who would have taken that job on an interim basis. Houle hadn't even been working in hockey since his retirement as a player ~15 years before and wasn't familiar with players around the league. This is why he kept trading for former Habs.

In any event, it was an awful time to be a Habs fan and makes today's regime seem almost peachy. The Houle era also followed an extremely weak period of drafting by the Savard regime where we were getting a David Fischer calibre pick in the 1st round almost every year (i.e. Mark Pederson, Eric Charron, Brent Bilodeau, Terry Ryan, Jason Ward etc). Serge Savard was too arrogant to interview players. His thinking was that they were the Montreal Canadiens and knew better than other organizations. They sure as hell didn't when it came to scouting/drafting.

 

[BLONG7]

Yes Ronald Corey was an arrogant clown and the Houle/Tremblay hirings were his stupid doings but if Houle didn't want the job, why did he take it? There were only 26 teams in the NHL at that time. Surely there was someone else in the hockey world who would love that job or in the Habs hockey operations who would have taken that job on an interim basis. Houle hadn't even been working in hockey since his retirement as a player ~15 years before and wasn't familiar with players around the league. This is why he kept trading for former Habs.

In any event, it was an awful time to be a Habs fan and makes today's regime seem almost peachy. The Houle era also followed an extremely weak period of drafting by the Savard regime where we were getting a David Fischer calibre pick in the 1st round almost every year (i.e. Mark Pederson, Eric Charron, Brent Bilodeau, Terry Ryan, Jason Ward etc). Serge Savard was too arrogant to interview players. His thinking was that they were the Montreal Canadiens and knew better than other organizations. They sure as hell didn't when it came to scouting/drafting.

Reggie was a good company man so to speak.....that's why he took the job.
As for today's regime, they are way worse...they are clowns who pretend to know what they are doing, and failing miserably. No plan no vision....move the goalposts to allow more time and so on...
Condos and Cash, is where it's at these days for Mol$on. A bad owner...where results mean nothing, and money is everything.

Anyhow, Recchi says the Habs play the Pens tough....just not the Red Wings!

 

[Schooner Guy]

Reggie was a good company man so to speak.....that's why he took the job.
As for today's regime, they are way worse...they are clowns who pretend to know what they are doing, and failing miserably. No plan no vision....move the goalposts to allow more time and so on...
Condos and Cash, is where it's at these days for Mol$on. A bad owner...where results mean nothing, and money is everything.

Anyhow, Recchi says the Habs play the Pens tough....just not the Red Wings!

As bad as things are, there's no way we're in worse shape now. This is a bit of recency bias at play. During the Houle years, nothing was done well. Drafting was terrible, trades were terrible, the cupboards were completely bare, attendance was awful and nobody wanted to go to the Habs.

Today's brass have at least made some good trades and have built up a half-decent crop of prospects. I don't have any confidence in it translating to success on the ice but Houle left us with absolutely nothing. I'm in no way propping up Molson and MB but Sergei Zholtok was literally our best player in 1999-2000...Houle's last year as GM.

 

[BLONG7]

As bad as things are, there's no way we're in worse shape now. This is a bit of recency bias at play. During the Houle years, nothing was done well. Drafting was terrible, trades were terrible, the cupboards were completely bare, attendance was awful and nobody wanted to go to the Habs.

Today's brass have at least made some good trades and have built up a half-decent crop of prospects. I don't have any confidence in it translating to success on the ice but Houle left us with absolutely nothing. I'm in no way propping up Molson and MB but Sergei Zholtok was literally our best player in 1999-2000...Houle's last year as GM.

Bergevin missed the playoffs 4 of the past 5 years.....even Reggie didn't do that. Reggie had to get payroll down to 20M for the team, and MB has 80M to spend, and resources galore. Bergevin is a clown...
Now you are gonna say we did not miss the playoffs this year, but we really did....everyone knows it.

We will agree to disagree here, Reggie was a likeable guy who was asked to do a job he wasn't qualified to do............Bergevin is an arrogant clown, and produced the same results....no playoffs no vision....and he also is not qualified to do the job....
The RESULTS are the proof.

 

[Redux91]

People are gonna laugh but, my X factor is Drouin. When the chips are down, he brings it. Mediocre regular seasons aside, We saw with him our own eyes take over a couple playoff series at 22.. Will be interesting to see if he can replicate that somewhat, Would be nice if Domi found another level with this as well
And Suzuki well, i just love the kid, the number 1 C weve waited ages for.

 

[VirginiaMtlExpat]

Mark Recchi says the Canadiens are a pain in the butt to play against | @Home - Sportsnet.ca

Well...he IS a proctologist....

I've just the solution he needs.

 

[CrAzYNiNe]

Habs are a pain in the ass to play against because they are no better than mediocre at best. The other team comes into the game thinking “how can we lose to this team?”. Well guess what the likelihood that the Habs we will win against a team in regulation? Its a 26% probability they win. Doesn’t bode well for the Habs in a playoffs without 3on3 OT... A crappy team hard to play against? Sure why not. Doesn’t mean anything about the quality of the team, only that they have barely any talent they rely on boring tactics that teams hate playing against. Pens in 4.

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

As bad as things are, there's no way we're in worse shape now. This is a bit of recency bias at play. During the Houle years, nothing was done well. Drafting was terrible, trades were terrible, the cupboards were completely bare, attendance was awful and nobody wanted to go to the Habs.

Today's brass have at least made some good trades and have built up a half-decent crop of prospects. I don't have any confidence in it translating to success on the ice but Houle left us with absolutely nothing. I'm in no way propping up Molson and MB but Sergei Zholtok was literally our best player in 1999-2000...Houle's last year as GM.

All the bolded are patently false

Andrei Markov
Mike Ribeiro
Michael Ryder
Francois Beauchemin

All drafted in 98 under Houle.

One of them is unarguably our best dman in the past 25 years and our present cupboard doesn't have ONE prospect that seems to even have that potential.

Regency bias? I'd say memorial bias on your part.

Houle also made a few good trades, like getting Souray.

 

[montreal]

All the bolded are patently false

Andrei Markov
Mike Ribeiro
Michael Ryder
Francois Beauchemin

All drafted in 98 under Houle.

One of them is unarguably our best dman in the past 25 years and our present cupboard doesn't have ONE prospect that seems to even have that potential.

Regency bias? I'd say memorial bias on your part.

Houle also made a few good trades, like getting Souray.

Markov wasn't that well know when he came over though and was passed over in the '97 draft. Ryder was twice sent to the ECHL as I remember saying after his 2nd stint there that he wouldn't make the NHL. Whoops. Beauchemin wasn't that much of a prospect at the time either if I recall.

Imo there's no doubt that our farm system was a joke until Andre Savard came on board in 2001.

We do have several prospects that are close to Subban's level in terms of what he was in the OHL at least, since it's too soon to say yet for guys like Norlinder, Struble, even Brook but that's not a debate that needs to be had here.

I hate the MB/Molson era but Houle is worse for me no question. When you trade away that many great players and have shit to show for it, you can't get any worse then that. One good draft doesn't save him although if we don't draft Price things could have gone very different for us as well as he's clearly propped up the organization and made us look better then we are.

 

[LaP]

John Leclair says hi too along with a ton of other young players we traded before they came into their own. At one point young player being traded was the sign they were about to break out. Painful.

As much as i loved Leclair he was dominant for 5 years and a half only. That was a bad trade mostly because of Desjardins. Leclair+ for Recchi would not have been a bad trade at all.