Ryan White fills a need in the Canadiens' roster

A while back I did some research on Ben Maxwell and Milan Lucic to see how they were ranked coming into the draft. Doing so I stumbled across a Ryan White writeup, wherein he was described as a high-energy player whose coach trusted him to play center in pressure situations and always seemed to be around the puck. It was an eye-opener for me, but what really surprised me was the fact that he was ranked the #7 prospect in the WHL, higher than both Mr Maxwell (#12) and Mr. Lucic (#14).

The writeup did state that despite winning most battles, Ryan was not an ideal physical specimen, and needed to dedicate himself to his conditioning. So it’s refreshing that apparently he’s one of the kids who gets it, as opposed to Benoit Pouliot, and it shows that there is hope for someone like Ian Schultz, who apparently is not well-conditioned. Mr. White’s success story is also refreshing in light of the torrent of negative comments from posters who castigate Canadiens’ management for poor asset management and development.

This is a clear steal for our club. Here is a player who showed character and produced in junior, but who ‘fell’ in the draft, maybe after a poor showing at the combine. Having to parade shirtless before scouts may not have helped his stock, but we were lucky to scoop him in the third round. Good work by our scouting staff on that one, it kind of reduces the sting of David Fischer and Ben Maxwell being drafted in the first and second rounds.

One thing which worries me is that a lot of posters here in the HIO community, who may reflect the average Montreal fan to some degree, seem to stress the importance of Ryan’s pugilistic prowess above all else. In light of his performance in Calgary and Hamilton, I think we should consider him to be more of a Mario Tremblay type of player, one who will hit and go into the corners and show character and passion and pot a timely goal, instead of reducing the expectations to him being a cruiserweight.

http://www.hockeysfuture.com/prospects/ryan_white

Alexei Kovalev slams the door on his way out

Alex Kovalev is not the great player he thinks he was.

Alex Kovalev is the kid in the back of the class who is really smart and doesn’t need to pay attention or do any homework and still gets an A-, but all the while he messes around and distracts the other kids and drives the teacher mental.

Alex Kovalev is the diva wide receiver who makes 60 catches for 1100 yards and 7 touchdowns in a season, but lets another 15 passes clang off his hands, who doesn’t block on running plays or when another receiver gets a grab, who argues with the HC, OC and QB about play selection, who thinks the quarterback diverts too much attention from him, and who runs routes half-heartedly when he’s not the primary receiver, and causes an interception when the QB goes from his hot receiver to his second or third option and launches the ball into the waiting arms of the safety, who is camped where the WR should have been. After said interception, said diva wide receiver will make a great show of being furious by tackling high, most likely with a grab of the facemask, and will then stalk back petulantly to the sidelines, kicking turf and hurling his helmet at the bench. He will then be agitated and inconsolable, until the sideline camera is no longer pointed at him.

Alex Kovalev is that insanely hot girl you work with and you wonder why she’s single, and who you end up taking her on a date and you can’t believe your luck, and when you’re sitting down to dinner at your favourite steak house, she goes on and on about this other Italian place this other guy took her to, so you ask her if maybe she doesn’t like steak and would like to go somewhere else, but she says no I like steak it’s just I’ve never been here usually I go to the Keg for steak, and your waitress is standing there while she goes on about the Keg, so you make nice with the waitress because you’re a little embarrassed and want your dinner to come saliva-and-snot-free, but your date gets jealous and defensive and starts treating the waitress like dirt and you very coldly, so that you can’t wait for the night to end and you would bolt and leave her stranded there but you remember what your mom and dad taught you so you tough it out and as soon as you can you bring her back home and give her all the platitudes about how everything was great and you’ll call her but both of you know you won’t call.

Alexei Kovalev is that sullen teenager sitting on the bus with her purse on the seat next to her as the bus slowly fills, with other riders trying to make eye contact with her to silently implore that she put her purse on her lap so that someone else may make better use of that seat, but who resolutely stares off in the middle distance and when, after two or three throat clearings and excuse-me’s, has to be asked point blank with a please and thank you to remove her purse, which she does but with an annoyed expression for the impertinent other rider.

Alex Kovalev is the guy at the gym who uses the squat rack to do biceps curls with a 35 lbs bar. When you ask him to scram, he apologizes that he only has five more sets to go. When you insist that he take his pencil-necked, gym-etiquette-devoid self and go do his, ahem, arm curls somewhere more appropriate, he rolls his eyes and sighs and mutters under his breath as he slinks away. Later when you’re on neutral territory and have had time to take a few deep breaths, you’ll attempt to explain to him that a squat rack is a safety device used when training with large amounts of weight, and not just a convenient way to avoid having to pick up your weights off the ground, but you won’t be successful since he will interrupt and tell you no worries, it’s all good, whatever, no harm no foul, barraging you with passive aggressive hokum instead of listening and entering into a conversation.

Montreal needs a facelift

I'm a proud native Montrealer and defend it and the province of Quebec against the inanities that sometimes spout out of the mouths of some unenlightened Canadians here out West. Having said that, the state of the roads and bridges and tunnels in Montreal is shocking. It really does look like the Third World, or a post-Apocalyptic movie set with all the graffiti. I can't help but notice the cracks and patches in the concrete, the rust stains, the visible re-bar where chunks have fallen off. Calling the surface itself a patchwork is a misnomer, it's more of an agglomeration of patches with the original matrix long gone. Oh, and a hell of a lot of patches are missing too.

Last time I was in town visiting my girlfriend who lived for a while on Berri above Sherbrooke. It was a great neighbourhood with a nice feel, except for a lot of buildings in the walking area that are really rundown. Not old, not heritage, just run down, needing a lot of maintenance instead of a sloppy coat of paint on top of the previous 16 coats of paint. Another thing was the graffiti, again it's everywhere, and my girlfriend was so inured to it that she didn't notice it anymore, whereas it jumped out at me. Some private residences had some on their walls, and it remained for the two weeks I was there. It seems like it's an accepted part of urban life, instead of a blight that needs to be stamped out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, I meet a lot of visitors in Whistler and when I can I get in a plug about going to Montreal, mention all the great things you can do and see. On my last trip I took in the Jazz Festival's many outdoor concerts, saw Zachary Richard at Place des Arts (great show), took Bixis everywhere and loved them, had some smoked meat at Schwartz's, bagels at St-Viateur and Fairmount, took in a couple of fireworks shows, rode the Metro and marveled at how easy it was to get around compared to Vancouver...

I see unemployment in Quebec being perennially high, the economy being in need of stimulus, and an infrastructure that needs massive overhaul. I wonder why the province can't attack these three things at once, in a massive project way way bigger than Baie James was.

Cincinnati Bengals might go winless in 2011

Montreal Canadiens fans crucify their team for relatively anodyne reasons. Every decision is under the microscope. Whether a signing or trade or draft pick, most will usually cause at least two factions to coalesce, each trying to convince the others that they are wrong, and all believing that management stuffed the call, or the preceding decision that forced the current one.

We're lucky we're not fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. They are a hard-luck franchise that has trouble attracting free agents or retaining their own players, and have to specialize in reclamation projects such as troubled tailback Cedric Benson. They play in a homely cold-weather Rust Belt town. They used to have a charmless homefield in Riverfront Stadium. Now the city and fans are on the hook for funding the brand new Paul Brown Stadium essentially on their own. The deal is so bad that the Wall Street Journal wrote an exposé on it, and the report is being used as a cautionary tale in other cities negotiating to build their own new stadiums.

Now their quarterback Carson Palmer has chosen to retire rather than continue risking his life in futility. Team owner and General Manager Mike Brown, who is the son of legendary team founder Paul Brown, and who is depicted in a popular Cincinnati comic strip as a Charlie Brown character, refuses to trade Carson.

Sports Illustrated feature writer Michael Rosenberg is a lifelong Bengals fan and has written many columns on their tortured history, has another another article currently which agonizes over the Carson situation. The best line is when he states the following: The Bengals have abused their fans so much over the years, they might as well hold an annual Punch Your Customers In the Face Day.

One 'outside the box' way to improve the Canadiens

I think that a big part of the long-term success of the Montreal Canadiens would be to hold the league accountable for its refereeing. If I’m Mr. Gauthier, I have a couple of AV guys going over each game’s footage and catching all the penalties which weren’t called, on both sides. In my mind’s eye, every time an infraction is called a 2 or 5 minute is added to the game’s tally, pinball machine style, complete with sound effects. The video guys also pour over other games and highlight inconsistencies.

These video documents are provided to the league with frequent phone calls and visits to the offices in New York to drive home the message. The league won’t cave, but you can pressure it and deviate it slowly from its present course, kind of like a tugboat working on a huge freighter. At least it counteracts the barrage of misinformation and cretinism from the Philadelphia-Boston-Toronto Axis of Evil.

Working behind the scenes is key, but the threat of staged leaks us always hanging, as is the nuclear option of releasing these videos to the public openly.

Best part of our plan is that this lobbying effort is pushing the game in the right direction. Second-best part is that the Canadiens can afford this, have the resources and footage available for every game with multiple angles, and it doesn’t count against the cap, so you’re essentially improving your team for free.

Hockey dreams

So we got the good news that Andrei was rehabbed and good to go, and that we had just signed him to a four-year deal, and we were all happy and cheering and laughing, crowding around him on the ice. The team feels real good, and so do I because we will be paired together this season. It’s a good match, he’ll be the puck carrier and he’s a righty, I’m lefty and I’ll cover him when he takes off. I never go much further than the opposition blue line anyway.

Last year was tough but we made it through somehow. Alain Moreau injured his knee right at the start of the season, and he tried to baby it and come back a couple of times, he played maybe five games all year, but without any success, he was not effective, and it hurt. He’s big and strong and has good offensive instincts, good in the corners, think Robert Picard if he had delivered on his promise, so it’s a huge missing piece.

So it was down to three of us on defence. Normand Chevrette is our captain and best player, he’s the tallest guy in the league but skates with elegance and deceptive speed, think Larry Robinson but with the temperament of Jean Ratelle or Jean Beliveau. He’s good defensively, but he’s so smooth that aspect of his game doesn’t really stand out, with his long reach he just pokes the puck off the opponent’s stick and he’s off skating down the ice with it. Jean Farly is his counterpart, shorter for a defenceman but he skates all day, he’s fast and smooth and effortless, think Bryan Leetch or Phil Housley. He has a wicked wrist shot and slap shot, so much so that our coach Mini tabbed him to take a couple of penalty shots during the season, even though we have some forwards with good scoring touch.

And then there’s me. I’m big and slow, kind of like Craig Ludwig but without his panache, and when I have the puck I zip it to my right where Jean or Normand can do something with it, or I bang it off the boards into the opponents’ end. This gets so predictable that whenever I do get the puck the opponent wingers skate over to the boards right away and body up on them, trying to block my flip, so once in a while I pass up the middle to a centre to keep them honest.

All season long we essentially roll with three lines and three defenceman. At first our coaches think this won’t work, that we’ll get gassed, so they put a forward on D but now we have a guy back there who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and our forward lines are all jumbled, and it’s not effective. We give up on the experimentation and find our gear. The three of us really pace ourselves, we have tonnes of ice-time so we can choose our spots to make the big hit or rush the net. The forward lines run like clockwork and Roger, the cerebral assistant coach, keeps on them to backcheck constantly to help us out. Jean and Normand Chevrette get most of the powerplay time, and I get to play almost the entire penalty kill shifts, that’s one facet of the game my ‘style’ fits well. We do surprisingly well and make it to the finals but lose against Plomberie Langlois, they just have more horses than we do.

So you can imagine how stoked we are to have Andrei back. Me and him talk about what we’ll do and decide that we’ll play our regular position, but switch up after the faceoff during power plays and he’ll play left and I’ll be on the right side, I’ll be ready for one-timers off his setups. My shot is Svobodian, with Gingras-esque accuracy, but I’ve been working on it all summer, banging pucks and tennis balls at a piece of plywood propped up against the garage door, I think I may surprise a few goalies. My dad is pissed at all the damage to the door though, I guess I missed the plywood a few times, and he yells at me pretty bad. I know Sidney Crosby didn’t get that kind of treatment for wrecking their washing machine, and Wayne’s dad used to flood a rink for him to skate on in their backyard every year, nothing was too good for him. This lack of parental support just may hamper my playing career.

Anyway, we have to stop celebrating because the season is about to start, the new Forum is packed for the first game and is rocking. We skate back to the bench and realize we kind of goofed because the doors haven’t been installed yet, we’ll need one per defenceman. The hinges are already up and I’m pretty handy with a toolbox, and I’m not on the first shift anyway, so I offer to put them up. The puck drops and I get down to business, but quickly realize that I can’t install six doors on one doorway and one set of hinges, they won’t be able to swing past each other for one, so I’m really stumped, but then realize that they’re not really doors, they’re more like tabs or toggles, we’ll flip them forward or back depending on who is on the ice, kind of like those ‘In-Out’ boards you see in offices, it’ll help us keep track. The toggles are about the size of draft beer tap handles, white with our name printed in red, and I will put them in vertical order according to our depth chart, which means I’ll be the fourth name down, but when I look up I realize Andrei is no longer on the bench, he’s on the ice, and now he just scored. Everyone is crowding around him and congratulating him. I’m a little sour that he didn’t wait for me, and that the coaches sent him out there without me, and now I’m really worried that I’ve lost my defence partner, and I’m looking at the guys on the bench to see who I’ll end up playing with, but now I wake up and I’m all wound up and it’s daylight outside anyway so I might as well get up, and can this darn season get going already? I used to dream of Elle McPherson or Marge Simpson or the breakfast waitress at the Wildwood, but this is ridiculous.

Things heard at the hockey game

I was on another site and contributors were asking what are the stupidest things you've ever heard while watching a hockey game. I had two stories to chip in.

My uncle, who was a bit of a wag, would shout: “Tuuuuuuue” (Kill) whenever a Canadiens was lining up an opponent for a check. He was very proper and droll, so even as a boy I knew he was kidding and mocking other blood-thirsty fans, but he cracked me up every time. He would start real low with the ‘u’ and drag it out, sometimes while polishing his glasses. This was the same man who would excitedly exclaim: “S’il avait pas manqué le filet, elle etait dedans!” (If he hadn’t missed the net it would have gone in!), or “Si le gardien l’avait pas arrêté, c’était un but certain!” (If the goalie hadn’t stopped it that was a sure goal!) He would make these absurd pronouncements as if they were profound, and made watching hockey a hilarious event.

One other was told to me by my buddy Scott who grew up a Jets fan. He said the Winnipeg Arena could be very quiet, with reserved but knowledgeable fans watching the action. One night he had tickets in the upper reaches of the arena, and nearby there was an enormous fan with a grease-stained jersey stretched tight on his belly. He had a booming voice that carried well, and he would shout his observations at strategic moments, the usual stuff about the Jets sucking. At one point however, during a lull in the action while players waited for the faceoff, the fan stood up again and took in a deep breath. “Neufeld!…”, he thundered, in a deep low voice, with a slight pause to get everyone’s attention, “…you’re a n*****!!!!”

Now Scott is a good story teller, and he has been caught embellishing a couple of times, but he swears this ricocheted around the arena and that the players on the ice heard it and shuffled around, embarrassed. Ray Neufeld was also waiting for the puck to drop, but didn’t react. The good people of Winnipeg in the area absorbed this and there was a hush in the crowd, as they sat there in disbelief. A couple seconds later, a couple of fathers and concerned citizens in the crowd, some of who had already talked to this guy and had asked him to keep his mouth in check a little, turned on him and started to let him have it. The creep shot right back and swore at everyone trying to talk sense into him, they started swearing back, it very quickly escalated into a shove by the creep. He instantly was swarmed by a half-dozen men who pounded him and got him to the ground, until security showed up and dragged him away, to a standing ovation from everyone in the section.

Hockey fights and profit

There is out there the perception, and some say the myth, that 'Americans only watch hockey for the fights'. More properly, I think the myth is that the casual hockey fan will buy tickets or tune in because of fighting, and will lose interest if it is purged from the game. The 'clinching' argument is always that nobody goes to the bathroom or to the beer stand when a fight breaks out.

I think this is a fallacy. As an analogy, I can say that motorists always slow down and gawk at a motor vehicle collision scene, but that doesn’t mean we should not work to eradicate them. People are curious, and two people fighting will always have shock value, like the collision, and will pique their interest. That doesn't mean it is desirable.

Living near Vancouver, I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ over the years to see the Canucks play the Wild, and I will tell you that most of those were yawners, and that when a fight started everyone was jolted awake and stood up and screamed. To me that doesn’t prove that fighting is good for hockey, it proves that grinders and checkers slow the game down to a dull dullness. If we encourage artistry and skill, we will be entertained by the game itself, rather than by a sideshow.

Owners are apparently fearful that banning fighting would hit their bottom line. I say that, as always, the NHL is laughably short-sighted, and are giving up a lot more money by allowing fighting. If the game was allowed to be as open and spectacular as it could be, casual fans who are turned off by stifling defensive hockey and thuggery would flock, and would more than make up for a few dinosaurs who can’t get their fix of violence and stop watching. What would you rather watch, two guys wrestle and hit each other in the helmet, or Alexander Ovechkin scoring on his back?

http://watch.tsn.ca/featured/#clip502770

Trouble for the Oilers?

Sheldon Souray states that the organizations he played with during his career, New Jersey and Montreal, are “top shelf”, but he specifically excludes Edmonton.

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/stars/post/_/id/11627/stars-hope-motivated-sheldon-souray-pays-dividends

First, the LA Kings's General Manager Dean Lombardi rants about their conduct during the Ryan Smyth trade, and now this. Is it a statistical blip, or is this something indicative of something broken in Edmonton?

I want the Canadian franchises to be healthy, and Edmonton has me worried. Sure they have young talent, but they are almost automatically excluded as a free agent or trade destination because they are a small-market, cold-climate destination. If their management team and organization is also viewed as bush league, what happens five years down the line when the Canadian dollar weakens and Taylor Hall et al all become free agents and leave?

The secret to a small-market team is for word-of-mouth between players to praise it as a place to work and live. Montreal doesn’t fit the label of small-market, but we suffered in the past with players refusing to come here, and that seems to no longer be the case. Players who are here want to stay here, and they tell their colleagues as much. Edmonton seems to be headed down the path to disaster.

Does anyone have any insights into the Oilers situation? Is this a Steve Tambellini problem? I remember his work with the Canucks, he was seen as a bright young executive and set to do some good work for whoever hired him.

The need for size at centre in the NHL

It’s the stuff hockey wet dreams are made of, the big skilled tough centre who will lead the team to the promised land. He wears the captain's 'C' on his chest and feeds deadly snipers on his wings a steady diet of soft saucer passes in the other team's slot. He wins faceoffs, is responsible in his zone and can drop the gloves and give an opponent an attitude adjustment.

We Canadiens fans have been whining of our need for a “gros joueur de centre” since the late 70′s, even while we were winning Cups. We had Peter Mahovlich, all 6'5" of him, but he wasn’t physical enough we said, and when he started to stickhandle he’d stop skating and lose the puck. We eventually traded him away, but that's another story.

It was such a big problem that we passed over magical Denis Savard for Doug Wickenheiser in the 1980 draft. Denis Savard had grown up and played junior hockey in the Canadiens backyard, in Verdun. Instead of drafting the hometown favourite, the Canadiens instead drafted Mr. Wickenheiser, himself a phenom out of Regina who had scored 89 goals the previous season. What cinched it was that Mr. Wickenheiser, at 6'1", was three inches taller than Mr. Savard. I remember as a kid reading in La Presse how Le Professeur Ronald Caron crowed about this selection and said Mr. Wickenheiser would soon centre Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt for years.

It didn't turn out that way. While Mr. Savard was a perennial All-Star and possibly the most spectacular player in the NHL for a time, Mr. Wickenheiser played three uninspired seasons in Montreal, and was traded partway through the fourth, a denouement welcome by all parties.

We have had the big centre in Montreal occasionally but then we’d not appreciate them as much as they deserved. I think of Bobby Smith, who didn’t score enough we said, and Pierre Turgeon, who should have been more of a scrapper with his size we thought. His skill set was not enough, we wanted him mucking in the corners with Basil McRae and Dwight Foster.

The obsession with size doesn’t stop with centres though, and it’s not just the Canadiens. Nobody ever brags about how they just drafted a great small winger. Nobody trades for a small defenceman because he’s small. If you have an underperforming tall goaltender and an overachieving small goaltender, who do you keep?

I was looking at the 1987 draft last night, because that’s what I do on Friday nights, and again saw how Theoren Fleury lasted until the 8th round, the 166th pick, two picks after the Canadiens drafted Will Geist. He was coming off a season in the Western Hockey League during which he scored 61 goals, and 43 the previous one. Obviously production wasn’t a problem. If he had been 6’1″ 195 lbs he would have been drafted early in the first round. If he had been 6’4″ 225 lbs he would have bumped Pierre Turgeon for first overall.

Obviously the way the NHL is constituted now, how the game is played, and seeing how the Canucks were mugged of the Cup by the Bruins and the Head Office in New York, size will continue to be a deciding factor in how players are drafted and developed. Guys like Etienne Brodeur and Martin St-Louis will continue to go undrafted despite their production.

Another basic element though is what we as human beings feel when confronted with people of large size. It brings us back to when we were kids and had to crane our necks to look up to our cousin who was over six feet tall, even taller than dad, or that neighbour down the street who is a policeman who plays rugby and is so big he almost can’t fit in his Jetta. Large men catch our eye, and when a scout or GM sees a player of size, he will favour that player over the smaller one who is probably a little better. It’s a visceral reaction that is hard to ignore, and we’ll keep ascribing a disproportional value to it.