So it's now official:
Montreal Canadiens Playoff Chances
Lost to NY Rangers 2-5, playoff odds unchanged at 0%
It's all about the wheel now. Officially.
Our lottery odds have ticked up from 5% to 6%, but that's a race we can't do much to improve our lack of success, too many points in the bank, too many games fumbled away to Buffalo, too many Washingtons and Anaheims tooked by surprise.
Four spins in, we get Jets-Canadiens-Leafs. Man, Toronto will just not go away. They're tough, they're resilienty and adequaty for the job, this stripped down to the studs joke of a team, perfectly impotenty for the job, all season long, never mind the late-season scoring surge by Nazem "I'll O.J You" Kadri.
Seven spins in is Oilers-Canadiens-Flames.
We should break for a disquisition by Gary Bettman on how teams are not intentionally sabotaging their rosters, losing games on purpose by icing the worst possible combinations of hopeless players they can muster:
“Our teams don’t tank,” Bettman said in a one-on-one interview with Postmedia News on Wednesday following the conclusion of the GM meetings. “If you’re a team that knows it’s not going to make the playoffs and you want to start focusing on the rebuild, you’re going to do certain things unrelated to the draft that are going to give you assets that are going to help you develop for the future.”
Fifteen spins in, we get Avalanche-Canadiens-Oilers. A troubling number of times, we get leapfrogged like this and pick ninth or tenth, not even benefiting from our recent plungette in the standings.
Twenty-six spins in, and we're going in the wrong direction, now it's Oilers-Jets-Canadiens. But me, give up? Prepare to admire me, for I'm made of much sterner stuff than that.
Twenty-eight, Carolina/Québec-Montréal-Edmonton. That would be a good way to kickstart a rivalry.
I wonder how Peter Karmanos, owner of the Hurricanes, and the man who stole the Whalers from Hartford, yet landed in the Hockey Hall of Fame, is doing with his whole "I want to sell you my team but retain control of it so I can still get to play with my shiny toy and write off my coke-whores but have you pay for it" plan?
Twenty-nine, Sabres-Oilers-Canadiens, and that's it, I don't have the strength to go on. It's written in the stars. We're cursed. What's the point of even trying?...
From the Charlotte Observer:
Karmanos announced last September he would like to sell some or all of his majority interest in the team but wanted to continue to run the franchise – to sell his cake and eat it too.
At least one group of local investors was considering putting together a bid, but apparently lost interest because of Karmanos’ insistence on retaining control. Team president Don Waddell confirmed Karmanos and Hurricanes executives have met with other potential buyers who went as far as signing non-disclosure agreements, but obviously nothing has come of it so far. Nor is anything expected anytime soon.
“We’ve entertained some people here, but as we sit here right now, there’s nobody I can identify and say it’s a strong group to buy the team or a piece of it from Mr. Karmanos,” Waddell said Tuesday.
It is Karmanos’ prerogative to get the best deal for the franchise but the longer this drags on, the more danger it presents for the team’s future here.
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