Some thoughts after the exciting win against the Capitals, and prior to a matchup with powerhouse Tampa Bay at the Nouveau Forum on Saturday night.
That energy, that rocking rollicking house, back in 2010 or so, I thought that might be one of the biggest draws for attracting free agents, that opponents might think, when the Canadiens are flying and they can't hear themselves think, that it might be nice to play at the Forum in the right colours, instead of their dead barn in Brooklyn or Sunrise or wherever. The last couple of seasons, with the plodding Claude Julien approach, with the team quitting on Michel Therrien, missing the playoffs two out of three seasons, maybe that electricity was absent. Maybe it will return. If this season keeps going this way. Which it won't.
2) I wonder if Noah Juulsen might be sent back down to Laval for half a season when David Schlemko returns. Noah's played well early, but now there are a few stumbles, a couple of bruises, maybe we send him down to regroup. Let him play bigger minutes, on special teams. Let things shake out, the trade deadline happen, then call Noah back up for the playoff run. But that's the Armchair GM in me talking, who hoards his precious assets, who wanted to send down Jeppu, which is not going to happen.
3) Maybe instead of doing that we waive Karl Alzner, in the faint hope that another team picks him up, takes his unwieldy contract off our hands, but that is a lost cause. We would never be that lucky.
Sometimes a player has an off year, confesses to a poor summer of conditioning due to (excuses), maybe a nagging injury in season, not adapting to his new environment. I always fear the player who signs a big huge 'last' UFA deal and subsequently comes off the 'funny vitamins', as Lenny Dykstra used to say. Now that their financial future is assured, the player's own health and future become paramount in his mind. What with a guaranteed contract and all...
Loui Eriksson is a suspect in my book, had 2-3 bad seasons in Boston, then his good resurgent pending-UFA season. Immediately upon signing a contract and arriving in Vancouver, he resumes the suck, and is now coasting through his awful (for the team and fans) contract. Not that he floats, or doesn't try, just that his, uh, downgraded training methods have taken 10% off his fastball. He's now a tomato can, instead of a reliable 30-goal scorer.
Albert Pujols is another. I couldn't believe what a beast that guy was, carved out of stone, he looked like a superhero. I'd catch glimpses of him during SportsCentre and, stupidly, think to myself "Well, there's a guy who's just naturally huge and big and strong, that's why he's slugging all these homeruns." Fast-forward to him signing that crazy contract with the Angels that'll last until he's 45, and you hear that age has caught up to him, that his numbers are way down. Then you see him again and at first don't realize who he is, he looks completely different, shrunken like a raisin. The Popeye forearms, the massive jaw, all that has gone away. I was at the pub idly watching a game, and I literally didn't recognize him when they showed him onscreen.
Anyway, I'm on a tangent, I don't think that's what is going on with Karl. He was already tailing off his last season in D.C., playing a mix of second and third-pairing minutes, being scratched in the playoffs. I was ready to pardon his first season in Montréal, thought maybe the adaptation in a bad situation was a little difficult, maybe he'd go home and train in Kelowna with Shea and the boys with redoubled intensity, after finding out that half-measures wouldn't work with the fans here.
But he came in this year and said all the right things and was given the opportunity and... zip. Nothing. No change. The system is different, and other players have responded to the change, maybe it's better-suited to them (Mike Reilly, David Schlemko), but it's meant no improvement for Karl. He is what he is. There's no there there.
At this point, I would have stomached him being a third-pairing penalty-kill guy, that we'd chew through the bad contract that way, but even that's not sustainable. We'd get better production from most other lefties in the fold.
His buyout is unwieldy. Most seasons he'd cost a mere $1M cap hit until 2025, which we can handle, but 2020-21, the year of the Looming Lockout, he's paid mostly in bonuses (there's some good agenting), so he'd cost us $4.2M on the cap. And $2.2 the next season. I'd be reduced to rooting for a lockout. I wouldn't care how much he gets if it doesn't affect the cap in a cancelled season, but 4 mill of dead money is untenable if hockey is being played. Again, in a lockout we could spend our get-out-of-jail-free card amnesties, one on Karl, one onCarey oops, I mean Andrew Shaw, and we're cruising again, wiser, never to repeat the errors of the past. Jamais plus!
A friend bats around a putative trade with Edmonton for Milan Lucic, and that has one upside, which is that you can hide a forward in a lineup more easily, bury him on the Bottom 6, maybe use him as a netfront specialist. Milan would have a purpose, a heavyweight menace who can do the second wave of the powerplay, but Karl has no use, you can't hide him on a defensive rotation, he gets exposed. He's a prototypical defensive defenceman, a dinosaur these days, and at that he doesn't even bring the nasty and the justice, like an Erik Gudbransson can. I'll take a Jared Tinordi on my squad, who can throw down, but not a Hal Gill, a mastodon pacifist.
But the obvious downside is that Milan makes $6M and his contract runs until 2023, while Karl only makes $4.6, until 2022. Out of the frying pan into the fire...
So we can't outwait Karl's contract, as we did with the Scott Gomez and David Desharnais contracts to a degree for example. For a while they could earn their icetime if you disregarded the cap-hit. And we can't trade Karl, nobody would take him, they'd have a worse contract they'd want to unload. If that exists.
The best hope would be a Dave Clarkson-type trade, where a team that's stuck paying real dollars to a guy on IR would rather pay those real dollars to a guy who's actually performing on the ice. Maybe Florida or Phoenix has one of those guys, who we can put on LTIR and we can avoid the cap implications, but I can't think of one offhand.
Or, maybe Karl gets fed up and retires, gets a case of the 'Hossa itchies' and collects his salary as a gentleman farmer in the Okanagan. Send Joey Crusher and Lowblow to pay him a visit: "Nice neck you got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it..."
But he came in this year and said all the right things and was given the opportunity and... zip. Nothing. No change. The system is different, and other players have responded to the change, maybe it's better-suited to them (Mike Reilly, David Schlemko), but it's meant no improvement for Karl. He is what he is. There's no there there.
At this point, I would have stomached him being a third-pairing penalty-kill guy, that we'd chew through the bad contract that way, but even that's not sustainable. We'd get better production from most other lefties in the fold.
His buyout is unwieldy. Most seasons he'd cost a mere $1M cap hit until 2025, which we can handle, but 2020-21, the year of the Looming Lockout, he's paid mostly in bonuses (there's some good agenting), so he'd cost us $4.2M on the cap. And $2.2 the next season. I'd be reduced to rooting for a lockout. I wouldn't care how much he gets if it doesn't affect the cap in a cancelled season, but 4 mill of dead money is untenable if hockey is being played. Again, in a lockout we could spend our get-out-of-jail-free card amnesties, one on Karl, one on
A friend bats around a putative trade with Edmonton for Milan Lucic, and that has one upside, which is that you can hide a forward in a lineup more easily, bury him on the Bottom 6, maybe use him as a netfront specialist. Milan would have a purpose, a heavyweight menace who can do the second wave of the powerplay, but Karl has no use, you can't hide him on a defensive rotation, he gets exposed. He's a prototypical defensive defenceman, a dinosaur these days, and at that he doesn't even bring the nasty and the justice, like an Erik Gudbransson can. I'll take a Jared Tinordi on my squad, who can throw down, but not a Hal Gill, a mastodon pacifist.
But the obvious downside is that Milan makes $6M and his contract runs until 2023, while Karl only makes $4.6, until 2022. Out of the frying pan into the fire...
So we can't outwait Karl's contract, as we did with the Scott Gomez and David Desharnais contracts to a degree for example. For a while they could earn their icetime if you disregarded the cap-hit. And we can't trade Karl, nobody would take him, they'd have a worse contract they'd want to unload. If that exists.
The best hope would be a Dave Clarkson-type trade, where a team that's stuck paying real dollars to a guy on IR would rather pay those real dollars to a guy who's actually performing on the ice. Maybe Florida or Phoenix has one of those guys, who we can put on LTIR and we can avoid the cap implications, but I can't think of one offhand.
Or, maybe Karl gets fed up and retires, gets a case of the 'Hossa itchies' and collects his salary as a gentleman farmer in the Okanagan. Send Joey Crusher and Lowblow to pay him a visit: "Nice neck you got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it..."
4) Meanwhile, Jacob de la Rose has four games played as a Wing, no goal, no assist, no point, no PIM, -1. Last game I checked, he had one shot on goal, one giveaway. I think that's the game the Wings put up 7 goals.
How long before the Wings put him back on waivers, and we get to claim him back and stick him in Laval? Although, with the preamble I just provided, my ardour cools.
5) And the Rocket needs the help, another loss last night, against the Utica Comets. The Rocket scored one in the third to make it 3-1, but according to the TSN 690 boys calling the game, it wasn't that close, the Comets dominated. The Joël Bouchard paeans have slowed to a trickle.
Nikita Scherbak was having a mini-meltdown during the game, got into a slashfest at the end of the game, with an extra skater on to try to tie the game, and then he pushed and pushed, even though the refs didn't want to award any penalty. He landed in the box or the dressing room.
If there are indeed scouts from all over scouting the Rocket to have a look at Nikita, we're not getting a second-rounder back for him. Heck, maybe we can now sneak him down to the AHL, if he keeps playing the way he has the last two games.
Cale Fleury got the third star though...
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