Post-Game Talk: Habs lose game 3. Leafs lead 2-1

[417]

I'm pretty sure it hasn't always been this way. The only constant in life is change. Nothing is static. Everything eventually falls apart. Even stars.

Again ..hope you're right but there's just something different about the organization and goalies.

Even guys like Hurt or Thibault or Hackett had almost cult like followings here.

We just love that storyline.

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

But they have been trying to recreate it with the wrong ingredients. Damphousse and Bellows were not Lemieux or Greztky but in the category "not good enough for HOF but damn close to it" they are some of the first names to come to my mind. Muller and LeClair were big but also skilled. LeClair at 50% was almost as good as Anderson at 100%. The guy was a monster like a real one. In the playoffs of 92-93 he was playing very well on the 2nd line. Then you had an injured Savard who was past his prime but he was not that old at 31. People always act like if he was not part of the team because he was injured but he was still part of the healthy lineup and you always have injuries it's part of the game. Defense was meh but had some good young guys. The team had more skills than people give it credit imo.

That D had two exceedingly good PMDs in Desjardins and Schneider. The whole transition was strong in the playoffs especially because of those two. It was a strong lineup from top to bottom. Probably the most complete team in the league that year.

 

[That Habs Fan]

But they have been trying to recreate it with the wrong ingredients. Damphousse and Bellows were not Lemieux or Greztky but in the category "not good enough for HOF but damn close to it" they are some of the first names to come to my mind. Muller and LeClair were big but also skilled. LeClair at 50% was almost as good as Anderson at 100%. The guy was a monster like a real one. In the playoffs of 92-93 he was playing very well on the 2nd line. Then you had an injured Savard who was past his prime but he was not that old at 31. People always act like if he was not part of the team because he was injured but he was still part of the healthy lineup and you always have injuries it's part of the game. Defense was meh but had some good young guys. The team had more skills than people give it credit imo.

JJ Daigneault was the 4th most offensively talented dman on that team...how pathetic is it that he'd probably be our best offensive dman this post-season? This post-season we essentially have Petry and 4 glorified Douglas Murrays.

 

[LaP]

That D had two exceedingly good PMDs in Desjardins and Schneider. The whole transition was strong in the playoffs especially because of those two. It was a strong lineup from top to bottom. Probably the most complete team in the league that year.

It's true that offensively speaking MS was pretty damn good. I would say better than Petry. He also had sandpaper to his game. I remember one time he was not happy with a player and they were both crossing path behind the net and MS clotheslined him hard. Was dirty but well ...

 

[LaP]

JJ Daigneault was the 4th most offensively talented dman on that team...how pathetic is it that he'd probably be our best offensive dman this post-season? This post-season we essentially have Petry and 4 glorified Douglas Murrays.

I dunno about JJD being the 4th. It's been a long time and i was still relatively young at 16. I agree he was underrated offensively. He was not playing a lot with us but he had some mild offensive success before coming here. Haller was a good prospect. He never was able to achieve his potential outside of that one 92-93 season but he had skills. Same for Hill it took him lot of time to develop and he did it outside of Montreal but he was a good kid. It was a super young defense.

Desjardins 23 years old
Schneider 23 years old
Brisebois 21 years old
Haller 21 years old
JJD 26 years old
Odelein 24 years old
Hill 22 years old

Imagine having a young defense like that now rofl. Man that would not last 20 games with the current management.

 

[Mackiaveli]

You seem to not apply the same level of criticism when considering the Habs as some of the exagerations in your analysis of some of those teams, especially the four I had bolded.

The loss of Drouin will be noticeable, but ultimately negligible. Same for Tatar and Danault, especially when you consider the depth we have in our middle 6 (Toffoli/Anderson/Suzuki/Kotkaniemi/Gallagher/Caufield is our remaining top 6). Armia and Lehkonen are great role players, and surely one or both will be back to fill in our bottom 6. Evans looked more than capable to play 3C this year, and the Habs will be modestly adding 10-12 million in cap space.

KK and Suzuki will absolutely continue to improve. Poehling and Ylonen both look ready to make the jump, and Weber can't get much worse than he has been the last 20 games. Price will be the same goaltender he has been this year and the year before that, we haven't seen any signs of general regression from him. Generally, one would think that the additional ice time for KK/Caufield as opposed to Danault/Tatar COULD lead to a lot more offensive opportunities, at the cost of defensive viability. Again this is all assuming that the Habs make NO changes to their front office or additions via trade/UFA which I would imagine both are possibilities

Toffoli/Suzuki/Gallagher
Anderson/Kotkaniemi/Caufield
Lehkonen/Evans/Armia
Byron/Poehling/Ylonen

Edmundson/Petry
Romanov/Weber
Chiarot/X

Price
Allen

I don't think there is a bad scenario for us in the upcoming expansion draft, but I could be mistaken. I imagine they take Allen, but it would be great to pay them to take Byron or Chiarot instead. Losing Danault basically means our 2/3C slot gets a bit weaker. Losing Tatar AND Drouin means our LW position gets a bit shaky. Ovechkin is probably staying in Washington, but Saad and Landeskog are both pending free agents. Ryan Nugent Hopkins can play LW and C and is available as well. Hamilton, Edler and Martinez are all available this summer as well and would be notable upgrades over what we are icing currently. Lots of big trade opportunities with our gluttony of young ELC talent and draft picks that we could move + whatever we could get for Drouin and Lehkonen ... Montreal is not in a spot where losing two players means we should expect to finish bottom 5.

 

[sandysan]

Requiring Price to basically stand on his head to keep the game close shouldn't be part of the process.

Saying that NOW is a little disingenuous, no?

Carey, Carey, Carey price Y'all

 

[Kimota]

I got the tattoo long before Dum Dom...loved that movie, creepy as Hell...goes with the Demonic Toys theme on my left arm...

View attachment 438906

...young and stupid, I was...well, younger and just as stupid LOL...

Well that's a good way to scare off thieves at night!

 

[BigDaddyLurch]

Well that's a good way to scare off thieves at night!

...and Grandkids!!...

 

[durojean]

Correct, but the reason they weren't traded was so that we could make a playoff push and contend. Unless we lose in 5, not trading Tatar/Danault was fine. If we lose in 5, then Bergevin is a goofball and he should be fired.



This is idealistic. In the actual NHL, teams are not going to just let you dump money on them. If you look at our players that we would want to move to dump their money (Byron, Chiarot, Weber) teams are going to ask us to pay them to take that money on. If we were to sign Tatar and Danault to extensions, we would not be trading them within 365 days for cap space - that just very rarely happens in the NHL. What we effectively lost by keeping them is a couple of late 2nd round draft picks or VERY late 1sts. What we got in return was a playoff run.

I don't think it is that idealistic. We can both agree that Tatar and Danault should have some kind of value around the league. Especially last year before COVID where Tatar had a career year and we were going absolutely nowhere and probably towards a top 5 draft pick. There was no reason then to keep Tatar and I'm fairly sure we could have gotten at least a 1st for him. Same thing for Danault but we will probably keep him so there is no point for that.

A good DG would have seen in advance and traded Tatar then, A lot of us were advocating for that then.