Game 17: Canadiens 5, Bruins 1

The Canadiens won a game tonight that they were supposed to win, against a depleted Bruins team missing notable players Zdeno Chara and David Krejci, fatigued after playing the previous night in Toronto and traveling to Montréal, and led by an excitable, exasperated Claude Julien.  So they went out and beat the Bruins resoundingly, pulling away with a 5-1 rout.

For once Carey Price didn't have to be heroic, just solid in the first, until his teammates found their range.  In the meantime, he was only beaten by a flutterpuck by Dougie Hamilton that dipped and swooned on the way to the net.  After that, he barred the door, and he didn't need help from a couple of posts and crossbars, there was no luck involved, it's like the Bruins never came close afterwards.

The real star of the game was Dale Weise, who picked up a Gordie Howe hat-trick and a couple of pats on the back from Michel Therrien on the bench.  He crunched Gregory 'Sonny Boy' Campbell along the boards, who objected to this treatment and came seeking redress, but instead got what-for.  He scored on a penalty shot, sniping between the legs of Niklas Svedberg, who was spelling a grateful Tuukka Rask.  To finish off, he set up Max Pacioretty's first goal with a nice back pass on a rush in the Bruins zone.

Jiri Sekac is a revelation, almost playing too well to believe.  We all want to keep our expectations in check, Fabian Brunnström being forefront in our minds, but the results he's getting, both personally and in his linemates Lars Eller and Brandon Prust's improved performance, are undeniable.  Mr. Sekac scored again tonight, on the rush, while walking around a hapless Bruin defenceman, and sniping the inside of the far post. 

L'Antichambre host Stéphane Langdeau said after the game that Lars Eller is playing like the ceding of René Bourque to Hamilton had removed a piano off his back.  I would have gone with an anchor around his neck as the analogy, but it's such a change in his game now that he's buzzing all over the ice with Brandon Prust and Jiri Sekac.  He's doing less fancy stickhandling and charging the net more.  When he has the puck he shoots more, and goldarn it, it's going in.  Good for him

Nathan Beaulieu scored another knockout, against Matt Fraser, a player in a similar weight class, so it should have been an even matchup.  Instead, Nate hit him right on the button and dropped him.  I was skeptical of the reports of Nathan as a gritty, tough player, due mainly to his problems with conditioning.  I thought maybe he was tough when playing against junior players, but as a Bulldog I'd see only indiscipline, penalties when he lost his cool and would crosscheck or slash, but not many bodychecks or fights.  Well, once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, will a third time turn it into a trend?  Nate, who was slotted in the Yannick Weber-memorial position, the hallowed twelth-forward/seventh defenceman, got little ice time at first but more at the end, maybe as a 'REE-ward!' from Boss Hogg.  He put it to good use and set up Jiri Sekac's goal.

Max, who sometimes launches lots of shots at the net and is frustrated at coming close but not converting, notched two tonight, one of which on a lucky bounce from a nice play from David Desharnais.  These things will tend to even out over a season.  If he goes through dry spells once in a while, but pots two against the Bruins every time, I'll take that.

Sergei Gonchar played well.  He seemed to settle things down on the powerplay, although he didn't connect on anything.  Much was made on Sportsnet that he had coffee with Michel Therrien this morning to feel things out, and that these two have a good rapport from their Penguins days.  It dawned on me that Sergei may be a Francis Bouillon equivalent, a security blanket for Michel Therrien, a veteran on the blue line he can trust.  As a fan and draft nerd who wanted the kids to get more icetime, this is a little frustrating, but Marc Bergevin insists you can never have too many defencemen.  We may be happy about this acquisition when the injuries inevitably hit.  Right now though, I'm not happy.  I wants my rookie defencemen, and I wants them now!

What can we say about P.K.?  He's so smooth and polished in front of the cameras, says that he wants to be team captain, but tonight played like a punk.  He slewfoots a Bruin, interferes with a Bruin when he commits a turnover, and then fronts Milan Lucic after the latter delivers a bodycheck.  P.K. jawed at him, crosschecked him fully in the chest, with the refs very nearby, and deftly avoided Mr. Lucic's invitations to drop the gloves and have a go.  For $9M P.K., and since you're not exactly filling the net, and since you painted yourself in that corner, you kind of had to dance there.  Just grab the guy, try to get inside, wrestle him to the ground, do something for heaven's sake.  I hate when you get booed as a rule in opposition rinks, but with a showing like tonight's, I can see why a Bruins fan would boo.

But not too many flies in the ointment in this great win, which brings our record to 12-4-1.  We spend a lot of time looking for warts and picking at scabs, but les boys keep winning, which is kinda nice, when we take a step back.

Canadiens deal away Travis Moen, acquire defenceman Sergei Gonchar.

I'm not doing handsprings over the Moen-Gonchar trade, but I admit the logical cool-headed types who point out we're freaking out over a swap of spare parts have talked me down off the ledge.  Yesterday, when I found out Marc Bergevin had unloaded Travis Moen's contract, a day after making a decision on René Bourque, I was overjoyed.  Only, I then took the gift horse to the dentist and started nitpicking.  So yeah, I'll take this as a tweak, another step forward.

About the Montreal Gazette's Stu Cowan's article in which he mentions that Alexei Emelin and P.K. don't communicate, it's not necessarily a language barrier issue, although that probably plays a role also.  The important communication between defencemen who play well together isn't so much lengthy palavers in the dressing room, or one of those discussions on the bench when dmen motion with their hands and point and nod a lot.  What's most important is the on-ice communication at crucial times so that both work as an effective pair, as a unit.

This will be Defenceman 101 for those who have played or coached, but maybe it will clarify the matter for some.  Let's say I've hit someone in the neutral zone but now the puck is being dumped behind me in my corner, with opponent forwards racing after it.  It's on my side of the ice, normally it would be my responsibility to go in the corner and retrieve it, while my partner covers anyone going to our net for a pass, and will stay in front of our net to defend.  In this case though, I'm flatfooted, and there's no way I'll get there first, while my partner was hanging a little further back and already has a head of steam, so he'll make the right decision and yell out: "I got it!", and race to my corner.  We now both know what the other is doing.  He's getting the puck and trying to pass or skate it out of our zone, and I'll take the front of the net.

Once the crisis is over and our forwards are racing out of our zone, and we're lazily following after them, we'll assess that they have the puck well in hand, and decide to revert to our preferred position, me on the left, he on the right, so one of us will yell out "Switch!" and we'll swap sides as we skate up to their blue line.  We can also use 'switch' if we're on our natural side on the blue line, but I'm with a partner who feels more comfortable on his opposite side because it allows him to set up for one-timers, and we feel it's the right time and situation to set up for one of those.

Other calls we may use are when we're being swarmed in our zone and I'm headed to the corner to dig for a puck.  I'll probably have a second before I get tattooed into the boards by an opponent, so I won't have time to frantically swivel my head left and right and hem and haw and ponder the situation.  Meanwhile my partner has a better overall view of the situation, and can make that decision for me, like an infielder can help a teammate camped under a pop-up by telling him where to fire the ball when he catches it, whether "Home!" or "Second!" is the best option.  In our case, my partner will tell me "Par la bande!" to bang it off the boards or glass and hopefully out of our zone, or "En arrière!" if the choice is pass it to him or the centre behind our net.

Once I've played with a partner or a couple of different partners for a while, I'll know their tendencies, where they'll head in certain situations, how they'll tend to be aggressive or conservative in certain situations.  I'll certainly recognize their voice, so if they're behind me and I need to make a quick decision with the puck, he'll yell "Ici!" so I know that he wants the puck, he's a good option for a pass, and the sound of his voice will tell me if he's just beside me, or right behind the net, or all the way in the other corner, and I'll pass the puck with the appropriate amount of force.

These are some of the basic calls we'd use on the ice at my very basic level, I'm sure there are others and more advanced ones in the pros, even set plays for breakouts that they've practiced.  The communication isn't that language dependent, we'd use French in minor hockey, but in my adult rec league we'd tend to use English, although the two D partners I'd play most often with were francophones so we'd lapse into French sometimes.

The thing that's more important is actually using the calls, talking to each other all the time.  Letting your partner know that he's being forechecked hard ("On you!") or that he's got time to be fancy with the puck ("You have lots of time to be fancy with the puck!").  Your partner letting you know that someone is sneaking in behind you when you're defending the front of the net.  Your coach will tell you on the bench or in the room if you're doing a good job ("Way to talk to each other on the ice") or remind you to do more of it ("Let's get some chatter going, talk to each other").

So P.K. and Alexei have to build an understanding of each other's styles and tendencies, a repertoire of callouts for their own use and situations, to cover for example the fact that in the offensive zone, they may defer to P.K. to shoot, except in these circumstances, etc.  Alexei and Andrei Markov seemed to do this well, and it may have to do with the comfort level of the language being the same, and also that Andrei is steady as they come, and the unquestioned leader on that pairing, what he said goes.

For example, Andrei tends to be aggressive in the offensive zone to pinch in to support and maintain the attack, and in the neutral zone, he has a great sense of passing lanes and will lurk, goading an opponent into making a pass, then spring forward and cut it off, almost like a safety hanging back to fool a quarterback and then jumping a route for an interception.  When it works out it's great, but when it didn't it meant that Andrei was often caught at a standstill in the neutral zone and in a poor position to go retrieve a puck in his own corner.  What developed a couple of seasons ago was that Alexei invariably was the one who would retrieve the puck, I don't think they even called "Switch!", they just did it routinely, based on Andrei declining speed, his reluctance to crash and bang in the corners with his wonky knee, and Alexei greater size and toughness.  They were sympatico, working as a unit.

P.K. has a more shall we say unorthodox style, he's a more difficult player to find a partner for.  The Senators had this issue with Erik Karlsson, and went out and acquired Marc Méthot at the cost of a big young winger, just to provide him with a big, tough, steady-eddie partner to fill in the gaps.  Apparently that worked out great the first year, but they've struggled a bit since, and now Chris Phillips is the player called upon to complement Erik Karlsson.  The thing is, the Sens' captain is a great talent, but he's not easy to play with.  As unpredictable as he is to opponents, he may be the same to his partner, and so may P.K. be.

Josh Gorges and Hal Gill were decent partners for P.K., they came with flaws but there was a clear delineation of duties, they took care of the stay-at-home stuff, and P.K. could roam wild and free.  Alexei may be having trouble adapting to that, his style was supposedly more aggressive in the KHL.

What Sergei Gonchar brings is a bit of a headscratcher.  Does he get a tryout on P.K.'s flank, in the hope that he's the puzzle piece that fits, the patch job that will hold for now?  Does Nathan Beaulieu get to stay on the second pairing, which Éric Desjardins opined might be the better situation for him, compared to the third pairing that tends to see more crash and bang?  Does Jarred Tinordi ever become the ideal partner for P.K., the Hal Gill 2.0, "now with added punchiness"?  Can he do so while playing in Hamilton, does Magnus Nygren serve as the 'scout team' P.K.?

Until the experiments cease and we have more set pairings, it will be even more important that the defencemen talk to each other on the ice, to let each other know where they are, what they intend to do.  It's not going to be a telepathic link between them, they need to play years together to get to that point.

René Bourque, mercifully, is assigned to the Hamilton Bulldogs

So after being placed on waivers on Sunday by the Canadiens, René Bourque has cleared through waivers, with no team deigning to claim his services, at a cap hit of $3.3M for this season and next.  With rumblings that the salary cap may not rise next season, and René nearing 33 years old and being on the downslope of his career, and taking into account this tweet by Arpon Basu

Аrpon Basu @ArponBasu · 2h2 hours ago

Rene Bourque in a #Habs uniform (reg. season only): 141 GP, 21 G, 18 A, 39 pts, 15:35 TOI/game.

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise to us.

René has been assigned to the Hamilton Bulldogs, with Michel Therrien assuring everyone that no further decision has been taken in his case, that no doors have been closed, and that it's important he report with the right attitude.  Again, Arpon Basu quipped that it's not as if attitude has been a problem in his case, no sirree...

I’ll say one thing for René, he got Marc Bergevin to be patient, to give him every chance. In any other case, Marc Bergevin has been decisive, he cuts the cord when it’s time. When dealing with Scott Gomez, Tomas Kaberle, the coaching staff when he took over, he was respectful, but didn’t mess around. Last summer when doing the post-mortem press conference at the end of the season, he held out hope that Brian Gionta could be re-signed, but was quite clear that others wouldn’t be back, including Thomas Vanek. So he wasn’t waffling based on how much they would want to re-sign, he had a clear path in mind and took it.

In René’s case, he and Michel Therrien gave him all the time in the world. I think that speaks to the fact that he wasn’t a dressing room cancer, that he must have been a good teammate to be around. I think Marc Bergevin and Rick Dudley may have had some insights on him from the Blackhawks organization, and it caused them to take their time, it contributed to their approach. Last season around playoff time, he offered up the anecdote that he’d told René he didn’t want to trade him and see him score thirty goals for another team.

So we have to assume that they exhausted every avenue, and tried every way they could to get him going, or to obtain something in return, like they did for Louis Leblanc, another player whose situation they didn’t allow to fester. Like Yannick Weber a couple of summers ago, they offered him up to any team that might want him, then let him go. That is, they tried to let him go, if another team had claimed him.

It was hard to imagine a team claiming him based on his potential and physical tools. Contenders are all pretty close to the cap, and can’t blow any cap room on a project. Teams that do have the cap room do so for a reason: they’re cheap. They won’t waste their precious revenue on a flyer.  Try explaining that to Charles Wang.  Actually, bad example, but the point remains.

The fact that he did get assigned to Hamilton rather than a more draconian solution, as was concocted for Scott Gomez, is another indication that the brain trust doesn’t ‘hate’ René, they don’t feel as if he’d pollute the atmosphere down there, as they may have feared with other players or malcontents. So maybe there’s the glimmer of hope that the demotion spurs René to give full effort to come back to the NHL, that he does work hard and just deals out hits and shoots pucks at the net. Instead of remaining in the perplexing fog he’s mired in right now.

Because he seems to strike me as a decent guy, not a preck or anything. For some reason he lacks the focus or confidence to really give 100%, but he seems like a good, popular teammate, has a cool story of growing up on a small native reserve. I’ve always pulled for René, but can’t disagree that it was time to make a decision, to try another avenue with him.

One more thing that is puzzling about René is that he didn’t need to re-invent the wheel, or go all John LeClair on us. He just needed to play a simple game, be sound positionally, cover his man on the wing, and lurk around the net, block the goalie’s view occasionally, pot a couple of goals, and dish out a couple of hits a game to be an exceedingly valuable player who’d earn himself a Shane Doan-type deal two summers from now.

It’s not like he has to be Jarred Tinordi, play tough and mean, but don’t take stupid penalties, especially during close games, which they all are. And play your position, stay back, but close the gap mind you, and pinch in the offensive zone to support the forwards, but don’t caught. Lay out some big hits, but don’t get suspended. And the penalties, careful, now we’re down to 5 d-men with you in the box for 5 minutes. And make the simple play, but get the puck out of the zone with a good first pass. Play hard, but pace yourself, don’t wilt in the third period.

What’s a bewildering array of choices and traps for a rookie like Jarred is comparatively so easy for a veteran winger like René. All he has to do is skate and use his shoulders and lurk around the net, hope that one in ten shots get through.  We weren’t asking him to be Jarome Iginla, just somewhere around Ryane Clowe or R.J. Umberger would have been more than enough.

I think most of us tread lightly on this issue, but agree that René’s problem isn’t fading skills as much as a mental, dare we say psychological block. The Canadiens have Docteur Sylvain Guimond on staff to deal with the sports and performance psychology angle, which a lot of athletes need and find helpful.

Trouble is, some people don’t click with everyone of their coaches and trainers, and maybe Dr. Guimond couldn’t reach René. Maybe there’s a sports psychology specialist in Hamilton who can work with René on a new process to get ready for games, to eliminate negative self-talk, to increase focus and reduce background noise, etc. Just as Carey Price seems to have found a better match working with Stéphane Waite than with his predecessor Pierre Groulx, maybe so can René with a different specialist.

Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of Dr. Guimond, I don’t like his too-frequent appearances on RDS, he’s verging on media-whore territory. A lot of his comments are trite and very few provide insight, I now fast-forward when he’s on L’Antichambre.

So in a way, René not getting claimed by another team can be good news.  In a month or so after a couple of season-ending injuries strike around the league, all of a sudden a couple of desperate teams may ante up for him.

For example, Vancouver's 'third goalie' Jakob Markstrom cleared waivers early in camp, the Canucks gambling that other teams would feel comfortable with their own players and prospects, so that they wouldn’t take on his one-way contract. They won their wager. If the Canucks tried that today, five teams would snap him up.

So we could moan that we didn't get a clean break from this situation, and that we didn't rid ourselves of his cap hit, but come the trade deadline, René could be an asset who can be flipped for a draft pick, or, glass two-thirds full, comes back to Montréal re-focused and re-energized.  Fingers crossed.  Clutching our collective rabbit's foot.  Standing in line to buy a bridge from a Nigerian prince.

Game 14: Canadiens 4, Wild 1

Last year during the playoffs, I realized that the Canadiens were no longer just the plucky team that halaked its way past stronger opponents, that knew just the way to beat the Bruins, but was actually formidable, when Lars Eller and René Bourque were playing like the big skilled players they can be, and when Alex Galchenyuk was finding increased confidence in his abilities.

Last month I felt when watching the Habs against the Oilers that we were the clearly better team, and it gave me pause, since I couldn't remember the last time I felt we were dominant, on paper and on the ice.  Was it back when Chris Chelios was on defence and Patrick Roy was in goal?

During the first period, I didn't feel that sense of superiority.  Les boys were tight, probably feeling pressure due to their recent insuccess.  Again, as they've done so often this season, they found their legs as the game progressed and the shots and the goals came, later, in a 4-1 win against the Minnesota Wild.

A great example of this was P.K. early in the second period getting a pass from David Desharnais in the offensive zone inside the blue line, and nothing in front of him except for a dogpile right in front of the Minny goal.  Instead of walking the puck in and making something happen, P.K. just cranked it from there.  Not a bad play, but suboptimal, and probably precipitated in part by the antsy crowd at the New Forum lately.

P.K. did show good awareness on this sequence though, holding off on his shot for a second while P.A. Parenteau picked himself up off the ice.  It gave him time to get in position for a deflection or rebound, and more crucially, to get his noggin out of the line of fire.

The revelation tonight was the play of the Sekac-Eller-Prust line.  Jiri Sekac and Lars Eller both scored, and all three had two points on the night.  On both goals, they set themselves up with some strong play along the boards, digging for the puck and cycling it among themselves until they could make a strong play on net.

Lars' goal came when the puck came to him in the slot, and I wondered whether he shot instantly because he was too tired to try anything fancy.  And I hoped that the lesson would sink in, to take the puck towards the net is more likely to turn out well for him than his stickhandling escapades.  Sure enough, in the third he had a relapse, taking the puck along the boards away from the net, and dangerously along the blue line.  Nothing catastrophic ensued, but I guess Lars is into progressive rather than epiphanic learning.

So when Jiri was left out of the lineup, Habs fans were patient at first, then anxious to see him back playing as the healthy scratches accumulated.  We can guess that he'll now be in the lineup for the foreseeable future.  He drew compliments from analyst Greg Millen, who noted what we all see, that he is a big guy who skates well and has a nose for the net.  So we won't get carried away with this latest Lars Eller line, it may be a flash-in-the-pan like Dale Weise on the #1 line, but let's ride this pony and see how far it takes us.

And while I've brought up Greg Millen, I have to note how annoying Bob Cole is, an incessant drone of sentence fragments and bafflegab.  "Oooooh, and it was too long, ...  this opportunity,... the pass from Eller, couldn't...  be completed.  By Prust."  His excited nonsensical patter made me realize another reason why Pierre Houde is so good: he speaks in complete sentences.

Another gem, after the Jason Pominville goal to make it 1-1:  "The game started as a tie.  Scoreless... then Gallagher scored..., and now..."

And this one: "The pace continues at a brisk pace."

As for a brisk pace, David Desharnais was at it tonight, skating well and making plays, dishing off to his teammates for scoring opportunities, and even ringing a shot off the crossbar on a 2-on-1, probably freezing the astonished goalie by not choosing to pass.  Later on, he created the fourth goal, scored by Max Pacioretty, with a behind-the-back blind drop pass to P.A. Parenteau.

Which led me to wonder, how does a David Desharnais-denier celebrate such a goal?  Is it like the Wicked Stepmother would celebrate an achievement by Cinderella?  Like I would a meaningless late touchdown by the Chargers if it meant that frigging guy won the office pool?  Like a CEO attending the Christmas party at a branch he's going to close in the new year?

Generally, do you root against the player specifically, but for the team to do well, or for the team to fail so as to prove your point about the player?

Nathan Beaulieu had a good night, in that I didn't notice him except when I really paid attention, and he and Tom Gilbert seemed to play well together.  On one sequence, he had the puck behind his net, no one was rushing him, and he took a couple of seconds to survey the scene.  David Desharnais wheeled around behind the net to 'launch' the play, faked picking up the puck but left it for Nathan, who then didn't hesitate and fired the puck to his right where Tom Gilbert was waiting in the corner, and they were off out of the zone.  And I couldn't help but think that Jarred Tinordi would have overthought that, he would have looked for a stretch pass for some reason, and hesitated, and eventually would have caused a turnover.

Another thing Nathan didn't overthink was when Stéphane Veilleux came poking his nose in his business, after Nate cleared the front of Carey's net after a whistle with an enthusiastic crosscheck.  Mr. Veilleux approached as if to obtain more information on the matter, and Nate shook his gloves once, quickly dropped them, then dropped the Minnesota forward with an emphatic right, and then added a couple more for good measure.

Now, much like Homer Simpson evaluating mayoral candidate Sideshow Bob in the voting booth, I went through a mental arithmetic: "Hmm...I don't agree with his Wild-maiming policy, but I do approve of his net-clearing policy." [votes for Nate]

So a big win, one we were meant to have, at home against a Zach Parisé-less team that Ottawa had just easily handled.  We can hope it rights the ship and we accumulate the points during the rest of this homestand.

24 CH, 2014-15 season, Episode 3: Notes

Good episode dealing, briefly, with the 7-1 shellacking in Tampa, but also with the big win against the Bruins in the home opener, and the win against Colorado after the celebration of equipment manager Pierre Gervais' 2500th NHL game worked.

02:00  Shot of Manny Malhotra and P.A. Parenteau sitting on the bench observing the game, taken from the inside front of the boards facing in, that weird perspective a water bottle would have.  Suddenly, as if cattle-prodded, P.A. is up and over the boards, it takes a fraction of a second, when it's his turn to hop on for a change.  Quite the contrast with the lazy changes at a drop-in game, where a guy will lazily skate up hoping you're ready to get back on the ice, and you shut him down.  "Too soon buddy, I just got off.  Give me a minute."

08:00  Hall of Fame Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden passes the torch to Carey Price during the home-opener pre-game ceremony.  Very appropriate choice of players, certainly compared to last season, when Daniel Brière ended up being involved.

Great seeing Ken Dryden in the bleu-blanc-rouge again.  I forgive him his Maple Leaf divagation.  Good seeing Guy Lafleur offering his thoughts on a big game against the Bruins, and managing to keep his foot clear of his buccal orifice.

09:25  Two titans shaking hands when Ken Dryden greets anthem chanteuse Ginette Reno.  The cool thing is, being a curious and open-minded sort, I have no doubt that Mr. Dryden knows exactly who she is.  They were both mega-stars in Québec in the seventies.

09:45  Another angle of the Alexei Emelin hit on Milan Lucic.  Awesome.  I'll look at that over and over again, and not tire of it.  Clean shoulder check that dumps the Boston loose cannon on his keister.

The actual game against the Bruins is given relatively short shrift.  Maybe the producers felt that everything has already been said and written about it.

10:35  Montréal mayor Denis Coderre interviewed on the game between periods.  He takes care to predict that David Desharnais will score, which feels forced.

11:20  Jiri Sekac's first NHL goal, with shots of his happy family in the stands.  Couldn't help but notice that it's Jarred Tinordi who gathers the puck and flips it to a Canadiens staffer for safekeeping.  It further confirms his team-player status.

13:15  Classic Claude Julien head-shake and facepalm combo after a Brendan Gallagher goal.  Priceless.

14:30  P.A. Parenteau is the player of the game for his two-goal night.  Instead of the puck ceremony we've seen so far, they've come up with a red and blue satiny robe like boxers wear before bouts.  Dan Lacroix still handles the camera work though.  Good shot of Andrei handing off the honours.

15:00  Travis Moen presents Pierre Gervais with a gift from the players in honour of his 2500th game played, he gets a case of wine, and probably not the cheap stuff I give when I'm invited to dinner somewheres.

Lots of testimonials follow.  He used to be the equipment manager for the Sherbrooke Canadiens when Michel Therrien was a player (something we forget about), they won the Calder Cup together.  Tomas Plekanec reveals that even though he was at the Olympics as a Team Canada staffer, he sharpened Tomas' skates there too.

19:05  In the Colorado game, a microcosm of P.K.'s season so far.  He takes a needless penalty, and compounds it in my eyes with a simulacrum of innocence for the referees' benefit, who don't buy it.  Then, stepping out of the box, he scores that sublime, laughter-inducing goal of his, where he veers around the net and then dekes out the goalie.  What can you say?  Sure, he's taking too big a bite out of our salary cap, but what can you say after that goal?

19:50  Former teammates P.A. Parenteau and Alex Tanguay line up next to each other for the opening faceoff of the third period.

"What's up Tangs?"

"Ça va bien, toi?"

"Ça va, ça va."

"Ç'tun peu tough avec une hanche de bois..."

"It's a little hard to do this with a wooden hip", Alex Tanguay says, cracking up P.A.

21:15  After the win, P.A. Parenteau passes on the robe to Pierre Gervais in honour of his milestone, and he gets to sit in the middle of the team photo commemorating the win.

Game 13: Canadiens 0, Blackhawks 5

Remember last season when Marc Bergevin went into the dressing room after the horrible game against the Capitals, and told every player they had to be there to answer questions from the journalists, that there would be no hiding from the cameras in the physio room?  I guess tonight they will receive the same treatment, because it was the same kind of effort, a lackadaisical, uncoordinated 5-0 loss against the Blackhawks.

Before the game, Vincent Damphousse returned to the subject of Alex Galchenyuk at centre versus on left wing.  He again used himself as an example, seeing how he was a high-scoring centre in junior but started his pro career as a winger, and did quite well there.  He explained that as a twenty-year-old, Alex could focus on developing his game without worrying about defensive responsibilities, a Tomas Plekanec could handle that aspect.  He mentioned how Alex was explosive as a winger so far this season, and even lead the team in hits, but when asked to play centre against the Flames played his worst game of the season.

Mario Tremblay chimed in to support Vincent's analysis, saying that when the team put Alex at centre and Lars Eller at left wing, it was weakening itself at both positions.

During the four-on-four in the first, Lars earned kudos from Pierre Houde for his work in front of Corey Crawford's net.  Mr. Houde asked whether this would be a constant for the Canadiens going forward, that it was a sorely lacking component on this team, and that Lars has "le physique de l'emploi", the size for it.

Second period sees some back and forth, lots of icings.  On one sequence, Nathan Beaulieu tries an overly ambitious pass out of his zone, when he had two very easy options I could see right on the screen.  As a result, Mike Weaver has to make a great play to thwart a 2-on-1.  Maybe Nathan is feeling the pressure, thinking he has to rack up points, instead of just playing safe, dependable hockey.

René Bourque streaking into the opposition zone, but putting on the brakes and trying a centering pass instead of driving to the net with that big body and skating ability of his, kind of created that situation that almost trapped Nate.  His centering pass didn't connect, and the Hawks went the other way on a zone break with it.  Later, René was unlucky, returning deep into his zone to support the 'D', and partially blocking the pass from the corner by Kris Versteeg, but it still bounced up so that Krueger could bat it into the net.

Another isolated moment that goes unnoticed, David Desharnais winning a puck battle against Ben Smith in the corner.  He used his stick a couple of times but soft-pedaled it and avoided the hooking penalty.  Instead, he gained positional advantage and squatted down low and dug the puck out.

P.K. Subban pushing/tripping a Blackhawk in front of his net, while Chicago is globetrottering in our zone, then taking a look at the refs to see if he's earned a minor.  During the whistle, we see him talking to a ref, who tells him to pipe down and get back to the faceoff circle, in clear terms.  Not a lot of love for P.K. from this ref, and seemingly most others.  P.K., stop arguing, campaigning, lobbying, stop looking for a ref's decision during play.  Play the game, play hard, and stop looking so damn guilty.  And hush.  Let your play do the talking.

I'll say this for P.K., he delivered a hard shoulder check that stopped a Blackhawk in his tracks.  It was a nice change from one of his bee-sting butt checks that often miss and leave the opponent free and clear.

But then again...

On Chicago's third goal earlyish in the third, P.K. was kind of aimless on the play, hanging in the corner behind the goal line, and left Brad Richards unattended, unfettered in front of Carey Price, from where he deflected Patrick Sharp's shot.

I often say that the coaching I received playing hockey is obsolete nowadays, things like “don’t try to block shots, you’ll only tip it past the goalie, let him make the saves.” One thing that still applies though is “That guy in front of the net? That’s your guy. Don’t leave him an inch of room.”  Brad Richards must have been wondering where everybody was, he was so lonely all alone out there by his lonesome.

P.K. did better later on, leaving Jonathan Toews little room in front of the net, being all over him until the whistle went.  That's great, but we shouldn't be applauding instances of solid basic plays from P.K.  With the amount of cap space he is taking up, he needs to be the absolute stud defenceman who plays thirty minutes and barely breaks a sweat, makes everything look easy.  With the amount of the budget he eats up, he doesn't allow us to have a Kevin Bieksa or Jay Bouwmeester on our second pair.  He needs to eat up the lion's share of icetime while being error-free and producing points.

And I won't break down the fourth goal by the Hawks, other than to mention that it was scored by Patrick Kane on a Jonathan Toews assist.  There's no real defence on that pair, they're going to get their share eventually.

As for the fifth, well the boys are just axing for a bag skate now....

After the game, Vincent Damphousse was saying the team and the young veterans gave up in the third period, that Carey Price gave René Bourque a stare after the Patrick Kane goal for his lack of effort, and that P.K. is -7 over the last couple of games.  He and Mario Tremblay couldn't settle on who to blame, the offence which can't score or the defence which can't stop anyone, allowing 11 goals in two games, and now ranking as the worst in the league.  Mario Tremblay rattled off that Alex Galchenyuk has one point in five games, Tomas Plekanec has none in eight.  Alain Crète helped him along: "Desharnais, Pacioretty, Gallagher, ..."

Game 12: Canadiens 2, Flames 6

Michel Therrien has tinkered with his lineup during the great start to the season, stating that he didn't want to wait for things to go wrong before he made adjustments.  It's hard to argue this general point, tuneups are necessary to prevent complete breakdowns.  So on the first game back at home after a three-game road trip which saw the team gather three points out of a possible six, and the team score only three goals, he jumbled up his lines to try to spark the offence.

So Dale Weise jumped up to the first line with David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty, Alex Galchenyuk moved to centre with René Bourque and Brendan Gallagher on his wings, and Tomas Plekanec continued with P.A. Parenteau, but inherited dispossessed centreman Lars Eller on his left wing.  To finish off, Jarred Tinordi sat out in favour of Nathan Beaulieu on the third defence pair.

We've talked about how Michel Therrien very often during the last two seasons took what were at first glance debatable decisions, but which almost invariably would turn in his favour.  The obvious example was his surprising use of Peter Budaj, starting him against tough opponents, against the Bruins, and getting wins out of it.  Tonight though, his bold line shuffling produced nothing, aside from a listless, asynchronous lineup, and a 6-2 defeat at the hand of the little-engine-that-could Flames.

Flames defenceman T.J. Brodie was signed to a five-year contract last month worth $4.65M annually, which raised some eyebrows.  He showed Canadiens fans tonight that he is very much deserving of such treatment, that he is a rising star who doesn't get much press playing in Calgary, but would be hyped like a Michael del Zotto or more if he played in a large media centre like New York.  He had three assists and was named the game's third star, but in my book was the first.

Meanwhile, P.K. Subban is not nearly playing to the level of his $9M/year deal.  He's certainly not the goat of the loss tonight, but he needs to be the best Canadien night in night out.  Instead, he's the most mercurial player, capable of brilliant and boneheaded play from one period to the next.  And that's unacceptable at his pay grade.  He needs to be Larry Robinson, the guy who when he's on the ice, the other team doesn't have a chance.

Instead, the boys on L'Antichambre discussed how P.K. is the most penalized player in the league in terms of two-minute minors.  If he accumulated these by crunching guys with bodychecks, I wouldn't mind, but the embellishment penalties, the lazy trippings, the inopportune slashing penalty he got tonight are an indication of a player who's not fully into the game, who's not giving everything he has to win.

I'll say it again:  I want P.K. to stop worrying about the refs while play is underway.  Stop looking at the ref after every hook and every hit you dish out.  Play the game until the whistle blows.  Every time you look at the ref, you're giving the impression that you're guilty of something, that you should be penalized.   Conversely, when someone hooks or trips you, stop gesturing at the refs hoping for a call.  The other team hasn't stopped playing, they're still trying to score on you.  Ignore the hook you're victim of, fight through it.

Play hard.  You've got a couple years of playing hard ahead of you, and of not diving ahead of you, before the refs lose the bad impression they have of you.  Might as well start now.

Alex Galchenyuk got hit in the mouth with a high stick early in the game, and got a fat lip out of it.  He seemed stunned on the bench afterwards, like he wasn't having a great day, and in hindsight that moment might have been a snapshot of what the whole team was about to go through.

On the first goal scored by the Flames, we saw Max and Nathan zero in on Johnny Gaudreau in the corner, eager to deliver a hit, and I thought that maybe they thought he was an inviting target, or a player who should be checked hard to counter his speed, but also that they might be trying to avenge Alex's cut lip.  In any case, the kid was dangerous all night, picked up two assists and was named the second star.

Dale Weise did quite well on the first line, but the other line changes weren't as fruitful.  If anything, the boys seemed confused, and this may have been the reason for the too-many-men penalty, that they didn't know which line, or which incarnation of which line, was supposed to be on the ice.

So not a great night for the boys, after a difficult road trip, and they're still not finding the net.  I don't know if Michel Therrien will continue with the lines he tried tonight, or if he'll go back to a more conventional lineup, but we have to wonder when Jiri Sekac and Michaël Bournival will find their way onto the lineup.  If we're not scoring, it would seem that such an injection of speed could only help right?

Canadiens draftees would benefit from picking up the French language.

If you’re a parent or agent of a player who just got drafted by the Canadiens, and the kid is even moderately smart, don’t you immediately get him a Rosetta Stone French language course, and use the two or three years of development in junior/AHL as an investment in the kid’s career? Aren’t you failing in your duty if you don’t?

Learning a language has come a long way since the Berlitz days, or language schools. Computer self-directed courses are amazing, really anybody can learn any language to some degree. I took a typing course in high school and it was such a slog to attain even basic proficiency. Fast-forward ten years, and I’m working with two Russian émigrés who bought themselves a typing tutor program with their 386′s at the Try’n'Save, and within a couple of months they were as agile on the keyboard as I was. Whistler has a few language schools, and they’re still doing okay, mostly because their market is rich kids from rich families who want an excuse to go to Whistler, but friends in the business say they’re feeling the bite, because the computer courses are so effective. Possibly, even a hockey player could benefit from them.

If the kid gets to Montréal with Ken Dryden-level French verbal skills, it does two things. First, it’s almost as if he has a de facto No Trade Clause. He becomes important in terms of being able to connect with your fans, your market, so the team factors that into the equation of how valuable an asset he is. Of course, this isn’t bulletproof, in that Maxim Lapierre or Mike Ribeiro get traded away when they’re too much trouble, but a loyal soldier like Francis Bouillon possibly extended his career by one or two years because he had this additional skill, which a Mike Komisarek or Chris Campoli did not.

Also, and more importantly, don’t you stand to double your kid’s earnings if he can do all the PR and commercial work in French? Instead of the stilted commercials we saw last season with Brendan Gallagher, where he gamely but inelegantly speaks his lines phonetically, imagine if he’d been able to throw down more naturally?

In the olden days, with players believing that they might stick with one franchise their entire career, it made sense for Steve Shutt and Murray Wilson to at least attempt to pick up some French. Larry Robinson, Bob Gainey, and Ken Dryden got further in this quest, and were able to do some basic interviews between periods. There has followed since then decades in which players didn’t make that effort, possibly since they thought Montréal would be a temporary stop, and I get that. I get that Saku Koivu shouldn’t have to learn a third language, when English was already his second language.

This may be a stretch, but imagine what a towering lovable goofball Michael McCarron could do in the ad world if he could get by in French. He’d make a killing. It’s such an untapped potential, such an opportunity, that I wonder why player agents aren’t all over it.

Game 11: Canadiens 2, Canucks 3 (OT)

Some disjointed thoughts about the Canadiens' 3-2 OT loss to the Canucks, which I attended.  I'm cobbling this together from posts I made on hockeyinsideout.com.  I didn't have a pen at the game to jot down notes, so there's not much structure to how these flow into each other, or what I paid attention to and what I remembered.

-Sea of bleu-blanc-rouge jerseys, home and road versions, it seemed like a 50-50 split in the barn.

-Nice touch by Michel Therrien, letting B.C. boy Brendan Gallagher and former Canucks Dale Weise, Mike Weaver and Manny Malhotra start the game. Carey Price got a huge ovation when he was announced also.

-Carey makes it look so effortless. Someone sitting nearby commented to me that you could really see the difference in how smooth Carey was compared to the more aggressive style of Ryan Miller.

-Early on, P.K. is putting on a show right in front of our seats, and I’m yelling-cheering “P.K.! P.K.!” To counter, a wag behind me yells out “Ne pas! Ne pas!” I look at him, and he shrugs at me and makes a face, as if to say: “I don’t know what I’m doing, this is all I remember from high school French class.”

-I was surprised to see Lars on a line with Brandon Prust and René Bourque, I thought he’d be a healthy scratch.

-Canadiens dominated the game early on, but that advantage ebbed as the game went on. Road fatigue again?

-I admit I wasn’t expecting another comeback from them, I was yawning when they tied it up, I was ready to head home, not for O.T. Great play by Weissy on the tieing goal.

-3 points out of six. Four would have been nice.

-No one in my section really saw the Alex Burrows hit on Alexei Emelin.  After the goal, we all wondered why he was being attended to, and taken to the dressing room.  No replay shown on the Jumbotron.

-The next day, TSN 1040 hosts Dave Pratt and 'Bro' Jake are kind of at a loss to explain the hit or defend Alex Burrows. They agree with each other that while technically he won’t be seen as a repeat offender by the League, that it’s entirely par for the course for him. They’re even playing a clip of him saying he didn’t intend to hurt Alexei, and that he’s glad he came back to action and looked alright, and then satirically repeating what he said: “Oh, since you didn’t intend to hurt him, well then it’s not a problem…

-Watching the game live, Travis Moen was very slow, noticeably so.

-About the powerplay, the perimeter passing, and again after watching it live: the passing and wheeling around was entertaining, the Vancouver fans were getting antsy, but you noticed as it went on that there wasn’t one guy who was slavering for the puck, an Alex Ovechkin or Mike Cammalleri who really, really likes to score. It seemed more like “You take it”, “No, YOU take it”…

P.K. is endlessly spectacular though, when you get a chance to watch him in person. Our seats were in line with the Vancouver defensive zone, right at the blue line, so I got to admire P.K. and Andrei first and third periods. Unfortunately, the Vancouver forwards, like everyone else, are right on top of them and won’t let them wind up. P.K. shot way more wristers than slappers last night.

So I will revivifysurrect the campaign to gift the Oilers with Travis Moen and assorted odds and ends in order to obtain Nail Yakupov, a player who admits he doesn’t really like the checking and blocking and whatnot, that he never wanted to be a defenceman, that he’s a forward. If he scores us 40 goals and acts as the triggerman on the powerplay, it will make the loss of Travis’ considerable penalty kill talents palatable.

-One thing about the Sedin line scoring the OT goal is that they were invisible for most of the game. I told my colleagues that they were in for a show with how they’re clicking with Radim Vrbata, I’d seen them together in a pre-season game against the Coyotes and they were spectacular. Last night, I’d miss entire shifts of theirs.

Sure enough though, as they’ve done so often in their career, the Sedins were the silent assassins who you don’t see until it’s too late and they’ve scored to beat you late or in overtime.

-Jarred Tinordi was on the ice for the Canucks' first two goals, so he picked up a -2 there, but he was relatively blameless on both.  The first was a two-on-one on the giveaway-hit by Alex Burrows sequence involving Alexei Emelin, and on the second he was positioned properly playing the onrushing Brad Richardson, who made a smart play shooting through his legs to fool Carey.

Regarding the defence corps, I’m going to take the ‘glass half-full’ approach and say that we’re doing better than expected, seeing as Marc Bergevin declared he’d be okay with a small step back in the standings, in terms of results, to allow the kids to integrate the lineup. So we substituted Tom Gilbert for Josh , kept Mike Weaver, but didn’t add the one or two trusty veterans that some are now clamouring for. Rubber, meet road. This is the d-squad we have. Let Nathan and Jarred fight to force their way onto the roster.

The tweak now will be for Marc Bergevin and the coaching staff to come up with a plan, a resolve, to ease off an Andrei Markov and give Jarred all he can handle, and Nathan also. We all agree that ‘drei can’t be asked for 30 minutes of play regularly, he’ll tail off, or have to pace himself.

I’m sure these discussions are happening. Post-game, they’re looking at the game sheet and saying “Câlice, he played that much again. We can’t do that.”

“Yeah, but after the (penalty, injury, …), we didn’t have a choice. We put (young or otherwise unsuitable option) out there earlier (in the same situation, against a specific line, …) and he almost killed us. We had to double-shift Andrei in the third, or else we lose the game…”

“Still, we can’t play him that much. So what do we do?…”

And so on.

Jarred, from my perch, looked really confident out there, didn’t embarrass himself. Let’s start transferring the load on him a little more.

RDS hockey telecasts are vastly superior to Sportsnet's

I watched the Canadiens-Oilers game last night on Sportsnet, and found the product less than ideal.  Here are some of what I perceived were the issues:

The Sportsnet broadcast team I was unfamiliar with, the onslaught of ads during the broadcast, during the action, with every line change having a sponsor, which had to be bloviated on by Gene Principe, usually running over the puck drop.  The tinny echo-ey classic schlock music in the arena, miked very loud, continuously during the timeouts.  The comparatively muted crowd noise.  The weird camera placement, which at Northlands are set up facing the penalty boxes instead of the players' benches.

For comparison's sake, I'm watching the condensed version of the game, a program that RDS calls "Canadiens Express", where they take the game and show an edited, one hour version.  And I have to say that RDS does a much, much better job than Sportsnet with the broadcast.

For starters, Pierre Houde and Marc Denis are unmatched as a broadcast team, no one in hockey is better.  You have to go to Al Michaels and Chris Collingsworth maybe, to find another team that works so brilliantly together, so effortlessly, the team being even better than the individual components, as great as they are.  The Sportsnet crew from last night wasn't bad, but Gene Principe kept barging in with his self-indulgent puns, they were heavy on the yuks and light on actual knowledge and info.

 The product placement is much more palatable.  The stats line which is shown when introducing the goalies has a carmaker logo contained in it, but it's not flashing and bouncing around.  It's actually integrated in the show, as opposed to clashing with it.

During the game, we could clearly hear the crowd noise, the "Let's go Oilers!" and "Go Habs Go!" chants, the oohs and ahs as the play went back and forth, it contributed to the excitement.  Conversely, during breaks in the action, the director turned down the arena mikes, so the screechy treble-y arena rock that grated on the ears on the Sportsnet broadcast wasn't omnipresent on RDS, just some innocuous background noise.

And am I dreaming, or is the camera work much better on RDS?  The placement is the same as with Sportsnet's, but it seems smoother, less jerky and confused.  I may be dreaming, but for me, the sign of good camera work is evident when watching a game by the fact that I don't notice it.  I see what I want to see and don't miss anything.  Sportsnet's work sometimes engender seasickness, but the RDS shots are silky smooth.

Again, it might just be confirmation bias, a case of me wanting the camera work to be better, and judging a shared camera feed as superior since it has the RDS logo on it, but that's the way it feels.

And how great is Pierre Houde?  In the first, he says "Là il y'a une mauvaise chute de Parenteau, mais l'arbitre a levé le bras.  On impute la responsabilité au défenseur des Oilers."

Translated:  "There is a bad fall by Parenteau, but the referee has raised his arm.  Responsibility is imputed to the Oilers' defenceman."

It's a joy to listen to him.  But now I have to make do with Paul Romanuk.  Thank you Gary Bettman.