Rinse. Repeat.
- Getting ready for a Habs game these days is like prepping for a visit to a proctologist.
- Why was Charles Hudon sent down while Tomas Plekanec continues to centre 4th line players like Paul Byron and Torrey Mitchell? Plekanec looks miserable (one shot on goal, 29% on face offs). He’s dying out there – pointless in seven games. He hasn’t scored a goal since netting two against Tampa Bay over a month ago (15 games). If the Habs hope to deal Plekanec they’re not making it any easier by playing him with offensively challenged line mates.
- Did the Canadiens get anybody for Devante Smith-Pelly? (In six games with New Jersey Smith-Pelly has four goals and six points.)
- Mike McCarron needs to be a lot more than a “protector” (his word) for his teammates.
- I liked Darren Dietz – even with the two penalties.
- Mike Brown did well in his scrap with Shawn Thornton. But he might have been fortunate that veteran linesman Pierre Racicot put a bear hug on Thornton to end it. The Panthers enforcer was clearly pissed and accused Racicot of playing to the Bell Centre crowd.
- Sven Andrighetto was flying. Forget that -3.
- When the Habs go shopping for a back up goaltender next season (if they have any money left after signing Steven Stamkos HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA) they couldn’t do much better than the guy who was in goal for Florida. Al Montoya is a 31 year old unrestricted free agent with a season save percentage of .924.
- Michel Therrien likes the Panthers in part because “they got high draft picks after losing”. Correct. One of those picks was Alexsander Barkov, selected second overall in 2013 behind Nathan Mackinnon. Barkov was drafted as a centre. He’s played the position at 18, 19 and now, in his third full NHL season, at 20. How does he look in the middle between Jonathan Huberdeau and Jaromir Jagr?
- Alex Galchenyuk will get Therrien fired. (And what’s with the reference to playing Galchenyuk and Max Pacioretty together for “three games…without any scoring chances” as he did late last week? It’s total bullshit and he knows it. Therrien has referenced the move on at least four occasions this season. The first time was immediately after he broke them up by saying “two games was enough. There’s no chemistry” even though Brendan Gallagher was injured and the games were against Boston (Patrice Bergeron) and Detroit (Pavel Datsyuk). Later on, when he finally put Galchenyuk between Gallagher and Pacioretty and it worked (surprise!) he made reference to playing them together earlier in the season for “two or three games”. Last week it suddenly became three games. Maybe by next week he’ll further revise it to four games. This is a desperate attempt to justify a poor coaching decision.)
- Kudos to Paul Hollingsworth of TSN who had the cojones to ask Therrien about a report earlier in the day by Renaud Lavoie of TVA that the Habs have no intention of replacing Therrien at the end of the season. “I haven’t talked about that with Marc” was Therrien’s response. The Habs Media Relations department didn’t like the question. Here’s a suggestion for Donald Beauchamp and Dominick Saillant – If you’re going to prep your coach it might be a good idea to let him know that as a 15-32 season (since Carey Price went down and out) mercifully closes out there are going to be questions about his job security. Even if it takes somebody to fly in from Halifax to do the asking.
