Game 40: Canadiens 2, Lightning 4

I was looking forward to a decisive win by les boys, I've grown tired of all the cooing about Tampa, I don't see what all the fuss is about.  Sure, Stamkos and Hedman, but then what?  Well, we're going to hear more about those guys, they easily put an end to our six game winning streak, winning it 4-2, and it wasn't that close.  

Carey Price had what I thought was an uneven performance, based on the abridged game I saw on RDS' Canadiens Express.  He seemed to bobble pucks, give up little rebounds, and flub saves that he normally makes seem easy.  He's allowed the occasional off game, I'll indulge him this one.

Another pillar who won't be excused so easily is P.K. Subban, who took a rookie penalty by engaging with an opponent while on the bench.  While he served his two minutes, Tyler Johnson scored an easy goal and tilted the game definitely in Tampa's favour.  Before that, the Canadiens had hammered away at the Lightning and seemed to be a goal away from breaking open the floodgates.  Add in another minor penalty for P.K., and again his undiscipline, his lack of focus hurt the team more than his talent helped it.  

Deflating loss for this fan, who couldn't wait for this big four-pointer.  Trouble is, it's the Lightning who took advantage.

Will the Canadiens be under-represented in next year's World Junior Championships?

One question I had last night while watching the Canada-Denmark game was what the Canadiens’ representation would be at next year’s World Juniors. This year we had a healthy crop of prospects, with Zach Fucale, Jacob de la Rose, Arturri Lehkonen, Martin Reway, and near-misses like Mike McCarron and Nikita Scherbak. Jérémy Grégoire was held up as a shoo-in if not for his injury, although I’m not so sure watching the forward corps on Team Canada, but then again I’ve really never seen him play, so what do I know.

Next season though, I can’t think of anyone in our system who might make it. All the current prospects will be graduated, save for young Mr. Scherbak. He may be in Hamilton and loaned out to the Russian team, but since they passed him over this year, I don’t think that’s likely. His exclusion is a baffling decision we attribute to strategic or chauvinistic reasons, but I suspect may be due to his lots-of-heat-little-light showing at the Canada-Russia junior All-Star series earlier this year. In any case, we don’t have any guaranteed returnees this year, like we did at last year’s tournament.

I think that’s another indication of how ‘lucky’ the Canadiens got in the 2012 draft, with many picks high in the draft order, and gathering up numerous touted prospects who ‘fell’ to us. Again, I’ll mention that during his end-of-draft recap press scrum, Trevor Timmins was asked how he felt about picking up so many ‘value’ picks, which experts and mock drafters had ranked much higher. His answer was something like “Did we really?”, or words to that effect expressing interest and mild surprise. In essence, the Canadiens were operating off their own list, and were unaware of/uncontaminated by Central Scouting’s and other resources out there.

Conversely, last summer’s draft was devoid of a second-round pick, and the Habs were slotted low in the order. Further, the Canadiens this time didn’t snap up consensus prospects, but guys more off the radar, long-term projects who don’t necessarily quicken the pulse. So we don’t have obvious WJC candidates for the 2016 tourney.

And players picked up in the 2015 draft will not be likely to make it either, since we’re told again and again how it’s a “19-year-olds’ tournament”. While star players from smaller hockey nations like Switzerland or Denmark are guaranteed to make it, Canadian or American players need to really be exceptional to make it the season after they’re drafted.

Making lemonade, I’ll accept our meager hopes at the World Juniors for the McCarron-Sherbak-de la Rose-Fucale in Hamilton tradeoff, callup-ready kids who’ll make the Bulldogs more formidable and hopefully boost the Canadiens like the late-eighties version was with great young talent from the Sherbrooke Canadiens.

Game 39: Canadiens 4, Penguins 1

-- The sound on the Sportsnet broadcast was execrable at the start of the game.  Dave Randorf, who was obviously calling the game into a tin can on a string from the bottom of an aquarium, was inaudible for much of the first period.  Meanwhile, the sound coming from the ice surface was screeching loud.  Every skate blade biting into the ice, the thud of the puck off the boards, that was miked way, way too loud, it drowned out everything else.  

I wanted to start up a Twitter account just so I could yell at those clowns to get it right.  Completely unacceptable that they fumble something as simple as this.  

Tom Cruise has a movie sound production company that has some ties to his Scientology racket, and when he was defending his practice of forcing studios to employ them, he argued that sound is even more important than the image, that it affects human beings on a visceral level, and that you really notice it when it's done wrong.  Now, I don't trust anything Tom Cruise says ever, but being subjected to this amateurish effort made his divagations more creditable.

Boo Sportsnet.

Thank you Gary Bettman.

-- Bad giveaway by Nathan Beaulieu very early in the first when he lost the puck, which set up a scrambly desperate minute in our end, and I feared a social media meltdown if the Pens scored as a result.  Nathan got some grief and a spell in Hamilton after a bad giveaway earlier this season.  Good thing that nothing came of this one, and Max scored shortly thereafter to open the scoring.

The thing is, they are completely different plays.  The last giveaway against these same Penguins was an error of obstinance, knowing what you're about to do is the wrong thing, what your coaches keep telling you not to do, to choose the easy, safe play instead, but you take the risky option anyway, and it comes back to bite you.

Tonight, the giveaway was a flub, a bobble of the puck.  It's an error of execution, not a lack of effort or resistance to coaching or common sense.  It's comparable to dinging your dad's car after he lends it to you.  Sure it's frustrating, but these things are going to happen with young drivers.  The previous game's giveaway, that was akin to your dad telling you you couldn't take the car, but you take it anyway and wreck it and alcohol and the police are involved.  That one is harder to forgive.

-- Speaking of meltdowns, PenguinsInsideOut must have imploded at the announcement that offensively-gifted young defenceman Derrick Pouliot was a healthy scratch.  Michel Therrien is evidently out to ruin him, even a decade after leaving Pittsburgh. 

-- A little surprising that Chris Kunitz, who was kind of jammed into the Team Canada forwards corps for the 2014 Olympics, against the healthy skepticism of Canadian fans, due to his being putatively irreplaceable on Sidney Crosby's wing, is now on a third line for the Pens.  What happens in 2018, now Steve Downie has to be on Team Canada?

-- Speaking of giveaways, Sergei Gonchar tried to get cute and do a pass through the middle too in the first period, instead of hammering it off the boards on his backhand.  Sure enough, it ticked right to Evgeni Malkin, who passed to Brian Rust and forced Carey Price into making a strong glove save.  Sergei banged his stick on the ice after the play, knowing he'd done wrong.  But he's a decorated veteran, and that's where the scrutiny ends, really.

-- Aside from his half-hearted drive-by and skate-away spearing of Steve Downie, P.K. played a strong game, especially in his own zone, breaking up rushes, notably on Kris Letang with a great pokecheck.

-- I forget what a profound cretin Steve Downie is.  He fights Andrei Markov to the net, with Andrei having the inside track on him and trying to push him away from the crease.  Mr. Downie gets real low and resists and barrels into Carey Price, long after the puck was frozen and the whistle sounded.  When he gets called for a goalie interference, he swears and tantrums to the penalty box, where he punches the glass with his bare fist.  

-- Mike Johnson of Sportsnet had some questionable opinions during the telecast.  While he termed the above-mentioned penalty against Steve Downie questionable when it was really cut and dried, he advocated for a penalty against Brendan Gallagher on the play that Max Pacioretty scored the game's first goal.  He repeated a few times that Gally was in the blue paint, whereas his own network's camera shots clearly showed that his skates remained outside the whole time.  Only in the overhead camera shot did it seem like he was in, because he banked inside on his turn.  

Conversely, Nick Kypreos and Kelly Hrudey had some praise for the Canadiens' system and how much the players bought in and hustled and played a five-man defence, in stark contrast to the preceding segment where Nick Kypreos skewered the Leaf's Phil Kessel without really having to say too much, instead just by rolling video of his loafing during the previous game against the Wild.

-- Without Travis Moen or Mathieu Darche chugging along, or René Bourque drifting, man are the Canadiens fast in the forwards.  They backcheck and cause turnovers and they're off in the other direction instantly, it's great to see.

-- We've often said that Alexei Emelin was younger and played more physically than Josh Gorges, and had more offensive skill, although the latter didn't quite show up on the scoresheet.  You saw flashes of his ability with the puck, but it didn't quite click, we were still waiting.  

On his goal to seal the win, Alexei took the time to get closer to the net and for his forwards to get in position to block Marc-André Fleury's vision, before he let a rocket go that found the top corner.  Often Alexei will let go a quick wrister that will create a rebound, or at least an opportunity, but here he made the most of this occasion.

-- And can we put to rest the notion that Michaël Bournival has no offence, and is just a new version of Tom Pyatt?  He's a heady player, has speed to burn, and that adds up to trouble for defences.  He didn't pick up a point tonight after his two-goal effort yesterday, but played well with Lars Eller and Jiri Sekac in the third period, and his forecheck helped create Alexei Emelin's goal.

-- Five road games, five wins, not too shabby.  If only these clueless coaches of ours were replaced with other coaches + translators, our team would surely march to the Cup.

Marc Bergevin and Jean-Jacques Daigneault, allies of Nathan Beaulieu and Jarred Tinordi.

Marc Denis delves into Nathan Beaulieu's encouraging progress these last few games.

He calls Jean-Jacques Daigneault and Marc Bergevin “les alliés”, the allies of Nathan, rather than his opponents or enemies. He makes the point that both vaulted to the NHL immediately after junior, then after a lengthy stay were sent down to the minors.

Before Nathan was sent down to Hamilton the last time, they both sat down with him and explained that while there was no end date, that he was being sent down on an open-ended ticket, and even though Sergei Gonchar and Bryan Allen had been acquired, that they hadn’t thrown in the towel in his case, weren’t giving up on him, ‘not a bit’. He just needed to prove that he was an NHL’er, to force their hands, and to remain completely positive in his attitude.

It’s a refreshing angle on this issue, we often read posts in which Nathan and Jarred Tinordi are being glued to the bench or sent to the pressbox for ‘making one mistake’ by mean Michel Therrien. We tend to gloss over that there is a lot of organizational experience, lots to draw from when grooming young players, young defencemen, and that these guys aren’t adversaries, that they actively root for Jarred and Nathan, they want them to succeed, that their own jobs actually depends on it.

World Junior Championships: Canada 5, U.S.A. 3

Thoughts on the game, as I try to catch up on the sports programming on my PVR during a busy holiday season:

-I don't like Max Domi.  What is he clowning around for, diving and yapping and goading and threatening and douching all over the place?  I can't deny his talent, I won't, but I'm so glad he's not on my Canadiens.

-During the 2013 draft I had a mini-meltdown about all the undersized artistes we were drafting, showy players who other teams gave a wide berth to but somehow we were snapping up, a month after we'd been Gryba'ed by the Senators.  My contention was that we needed to get bigger or continue to get gooned by Daddy Campbell's rigged league.

One of the players I was distraught over, in that we'd passed him up, since he'd had some very nice pre-draft writeups, and since he lasted until late in the fourth round, while we were stocking up on mighty mites Arturri Lehkonen, Sven Andrighetto and Martin Reway, was Hudson Fasching.  In my admittedly uninformed fan's opinion, I felt if we're going to take a flyer on a Martin Reway, which Trevor Timmins likened to taking a homerun swing, why not take that flyer on a character kid like Mr. Fasching who happens to be a 6'2" 200 pounder?  If we connect on a longshot, at least it will be on a player who can withstand the National Homicide League.

I've just seen Mr. Fasching in action during the first period, and, uh, man is he ever slow.  Like chugging, ponderous Ryan Walter or Stan Smyl slow.  And I understand why he might land in the 'No' pile for the Canadiens from the outset, that there's no way he'll fit into the system, might as well draft a longshot who might actually be able to contribute if he pans out.  No matter how much Mr. Fasching 'falls' in the draft.

It's like if Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys had a chance to add a 295 pound scrappy intelligent guard who can move to their roster.  They wouldn't even consider it.  They don't need or want spunk or pluckiness, they want massive, infinitely strong 350 pound man-mountains who'll blow holes through any defensive line.  The crafty guard can't do what they do.  Meanwhile, Mike Shanahan's zone-blocking scheme back in Denver was entirely predicated on smart, adaptable, mobile offensive linemen who can pull and block linebackers and safeties in the second level, they'll snap up our hypothetical smallish guard, and thrive with him on their roster.  It's not that one player is intrinsically better than another, just that some can do the job for some teams but not others.

Some NHL teams will fall all over themselves to draft a Brian Boyle or Frédéric Gauthier, and turn their nose up at a Brendan Gallagher, simply due to their organizational philosophy, and it's not necessarily right or wrong.  The Flames won a Stanley Cup with Joel Otto and Dana Murzyn.  We eliminated the Big Bad Bruins last season with Brian Gionta, David Desharnais, Brendan Gallagher, Daniel Brière, Francis Bouillon and Mike Weaver on our roster.  Two seasons before that, the year they were shamefully awarded the Cup, we took them to overtime in Game 7.

Not right or wrong, if the game isn't rigged, if the referees let them play, meaning, if they let the skill guys do their thing without getting held or slashed to a standstill by anti-hockey pluggers.  If the skaters can use their speed to counteract the big players' strength, it's an interesting game, a clash of culture, a study in contrasts.

So Hudson Fasching, I wish you well, but I guess Trevor Timmins had his reasons after all, I'll now ruefully allow.

And I don't wish you that well either, being Sabre property and destined to play against us frequently.  I'm going to go as far as hoping you can attain Mike Hough-level career, but no more.

-Speaking of incompetent refereeing, why the heck wasn't Anthony Duclair given a penalty on the opening faceoff, after jousting with his opponent and giving him a clear, blatant crosscheck to the neck in full view of everyone?  Did the refs think it was an isolated incident, that was certain to never recur during the game?  Did they think that since the American forward took the crosscheck with equanimity, and since he didn't require immediate hospitalization, that the crosscheck they saw was a mirage?

A lot of the post-whistle shoving and jawing and nonsense, almost entirely provoked by the Canadian team, could have been averted had the refs sent a strong message that this would be a hockey game, not an intimidation game, especially since no one was going to have to account for his actions, with everyone visored up and fighting being forbidden in the game.

I'm a proponent of banning fighting in the NHL, but only if the league polices incidents of slashing and spearing and other dirty play with zero-tolerance.  If they let that stuff slide, then I have to agree with Brian Burke, the rats will take over, definitely.

And it's not rocket surgery, there are two dozen HD cameras covering every square foot of the rink during every game.  None of those calls are ever truly 'missed'.  Install a video referee, and give out penalties and suspensions like candy, and the players will learn, the thugs will flush out of the system, teams will build their rosters according to the way the game is refereed, and there won't be fighting, and it won't be needed.  Players won't need to police themselves, they'll be able to focus on hockey, and not look over their shoulder to guard against an approaching Steve Ott or Matt Kassian.

-Samuel Morin seemed more effective than in the early games I saw him play.  Late in the first, he skillfully pokechecked Jack Eichel on a rush by the latter, and then cleared the puck out of his zone with an easy pass to his outlet man.

-Near the end of the game, I was ready to opine that I'd understand if Coach Groulx chose to go with Eric Comrie over Zachary Fucale the rest of the way, he seemed solid enough, with none of the scrambling and bobbles I thought I saw from the Habs prospect.

Then Dylan Larkin scored that late goal, and I changed my mind.  That was a weak goal, and a lapse in concentration that's hard to overlook when evaluating the Canadian goalies.  I'll let my natural rooting interest take over, and advocate for Zach, everything being equal.

-I would gladly take either of Darnell Nurse or Madison Bowey on the Canadiens' prospect pool.  Man those two can move, and hit, and are talented with the puck.

World Junior Championships: Canada 8, Slovakia 0

Thoughts after watching the game unassiduously:

-Martin Reway was fairly invisible. Sure, he didn’t have a lot of help, his team was being swamped, but where was the fire, the passion, the temper that we hear about? It was incumbent on him to set an example, to lead his team, and I’m not sure I saw that, he played down to their level.

-Good to see that Team Canada went with skill rather than a ‘third line’ and grinders and heart-and-soul guys. No more Sutter hockey.

-Frédéric Gauthier is unimpressive, sticks out like a sore thumb. Big, but ungainly. Made sense that he was demoted to the 13th forward slot, and that his line started to click once he was taken off it.

-Samuel Morin seemed a giveaway machine, a lot of his passes were to Laveuglette, or straight to an opponent. His mobility is fine, just needs to add some stick skills I guess.

-Max Domi was a little punk the last game I saw, I think the exhibition against the Swedes, when he tried to blindside Jacob de la Rose but got the worst of it and then faked an injury on the ice. When it didn’t take, he went to the bench but jawed and threatened the Swedish bench. Add in a giant tomahawk of a slash to the top of an opponent’s shoulder (!), and a four-letter profanity that echoed through the rink, and I thought the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Tonight though, you have to give him his due, you can kind of see what the fuss is all about. He’s wearing the right colour jersey, so I’ll cheer him on for now.

-Zach Fucale got the shutout, was lucky on the shot that hit the shaft of his stick, and there were a couple of scrambles. You need luck to blank the opposition I guess. The encouraging thing was that he didn’t flub shots with his glove hand like the last game he played, when pucks would clang out of his glove for unforgivable rebounds. Tonight every shot that he could glove was handled cleanly. Way to go kid.

-I’ll be interested to see what the boys think of Jake Virtanen. Very impressive kid. Maybe the Canucks get another kick at the Cam Neely can, and this time they don’t trade him to Boston for a damaged-goods former star they’re looking to unload.

Clayton Stoner doesn't face supplemental discipline for his hit on Max Pacioretty. Of course.

News item:  Report: No hearing for Stoner’s Pacioretty hit

How many ways could a referee have called the Clayton Stoner hit a penalty?

1) Interference. Max didn’t have the puck, wasn’t eligible to be checked. That rules and application have mutated to the point where a player now has an official, objective 0.8 seconds to ‘finish his check’ is deplorable. I understand the concern that a player may be in the process of checking an opponent a split second before he releases the puck, and in such a case the hit is unavoidable. In Mr. Stoner’s case, however, he took two extra steps to get there.

In the NFL, there was a lot of handwringing about this fact, how Mean Joe Green or Jack Youngblood, when they were about to hit the quarterback, couldn’t halt their momentum suddenly, that some collisions were unavoidable. This turned out to be a non-issue.

The standard now is that if the quarterback has the ball you can hit him. Even if you hit him as he releases the ball, you can hit him as long as it’s simultaneous. If you get there a split second late though, you’re expected as a defensive player to hold up, to ease off so as to minimize the collision. The more time you have, the more you’re expected to do this, to the point where defensive players now kind of bear-hug and hold up the QB when they’re late, and prevent him from falling to the turf. If you’re very late, like more than a step, it gives you time to avoid any contact whatsoever.

There’s no objective time measure of this, it’s obvious when watching the game, as the refs see it, and as it’s recorded on video. The onus is on the defensive player to get there on time, or to not hit the QB. In that grey area, the defensive player does his best to not give the QB an extra shot, to err on the side of caution, since the refs will definitely have an itchy flag itching to fly out.

2) Hit in the back. We can get into an ‘angels on the head of a pin’ argument here, but I’ll submit that Max was hit in the back. I’ll understand a Ducks fan for countering that the hit was on the side 7/8ths or whatever.

To say that Max was “admiring his pass” is the ludicrous stance of the truculence brigade. Max just made a pass to a teammate and wants to know if it’s coming back to him, if it’s going to the other point, so he can react accordingly. If he constantly has to have his head on a swivel to prevent getting mugged by Mark Stuart or Eric Gryba with a claymore, then we might as well dig foxholes in the ice and bring in the armour. Max was trying to make a play with the puck, the Ducks defenceman was scrambling to lay the lumber.

3) Crosschecking.

Rule 59 – Cross-checking

59.1 Cross-checking – The action of using the shaft of the stick between the two hands to forcefully check an opponent.

59.2 Minor Penalty – A minor penalty, at the discretion of the Referee based on the severity of the contact, shall be imposed on a player who “cross checks” an opponent.

59.3 Major Penalty – A major penalty, at the discretion of the Referee based on the severity of the contact, shall be imposed on a player who “cross checks” an opponent (see 59.5).

59.4 Match Penalty – The Referee, at his discretion, may assess a match penalty if, in his judgment, the player attempted to or deliberately injured his opponent by cross-checking.

59.5 Game Misconduct Penalty – When a major penalty is assessed for cross-checking, an automatic game misconduct penalty shall be imposed on the offending player.

59.6 Fines and Suspensions – When a major penalty is imposed under this rule, an automatic fine of one hundred dollars ($100) shall also be imposed.

If deemed appropriate, supplementary discipline can be applied by the Commissioner at his discretion (refer to Rule 28).

4) Boarding. What Clayton Stoner did easily qualifies as boarding.

 A boarding penalty shall be imposed on any player or goalkeeper who checks or pushes a defenseless opponent in such a manner that causes the opponent to hit or impact the boards violently in the boards. The severity of the penalty, based upon the impact with the boards, shall be at the discretion of the Referee.

Some will say that I’m living in a dreamworld if I think hockey will be refereed the way I describe it should be. And I am. I do dream of an NHL which features skill and speed and offence and spectacular tic-tac-toe goals, while still providing lots of contact and thrills. But it won’t happen until the NHL GM’s and the head office relax their stranglehold on the neck of the sport they purport to love.

An apologia for Manny Malhotra.

Habs fans were over the moon with Manny Malhotra early this season as he lightened the load on Tomas Plekanec, played superb defensive hockey and penalty kill minutes, and had a significant positive effect on the team's faceoff prowess.

As the season proceeds though, his non-existent offensive production has drawn more critical attention.  The very reasonable question is posed whether the team would be better off taking him out of the lineup entirely and replacing him with someone else, anyone who can chip in a goal now and then.

I don’t denounce ‘advanced stats’, or claim that I find all I need to know ‘just by watching the game’, but something that seems immediately apparent to me is that the Canadiens are a much stronger team this season, and a lot of that seems to derive from the strong faceoff performance the team has demonstrated.

A few years ago during the Gomez era, we’d lose lots and lots of draws and collapse into a shell, it was our M.O., with Hal Gill and Josh Gorges blocking shots, it was like the Alamo after every faceoff it seemed. We could rely on losing the draw and then ‘defending’. A faceoff win was a refreshing surprise.

This season, amazingly, we’re winning a lot of faceoffs, some games we’re downright dominant. Some of that can be attributed to our centremen growing more mature. There was recently a chart or article that showed that centremen improve their FO% as they age generally, even well into their thirties, that as they accumulate experience and grow stronger physically they win more and more on average compared to their younger counterparts.

A lot of that success in my calculation is also due to Manny taking on the toughest assignments, and Tomas and David and Lars and Alex facing relatively easier competition compared to last season. It’s a cascade effect. Our centres from last season have climbed down a notch in the degree of difficulty of draws they face, and have shown consequent dramatic improvement, more than can be shown by a simple age progression according to the charts.

So yeah, to my layman’s eyes, the Canadiens are quantitatively better at faceoffs, but also qualitatively better as a whole, we go on the attack rather than chase the puck and get banged up in the corners and block slapshots and get injured, etc. And it’s hard to tease apart the cost-benefit of the addition of Manny to our roster, but I would say it’s hard whichever way you want to make the argument, good or bad.

We have to fold in his other contributions, his size and physical assets, his leadership and experience, his dressing room presence, the domino effect he has on other centreman in terms of their improved faceoff performance, among others, and subtract his abysmal production thus far, to get a full picture of his value to the team. To reduce him to only his faceoff prowess, and say that's all he brings, is to caricature him as a player.

Game 34: Canadiens 4, Senators 1

Random thoughts on the Canadiens' 4-1 win against the Senators.

1)  I really enjoy watching Jiri Sekac play.  He acts like he wants the puck and when he has it he takes it to the net with authority.  He's big and rangy and swoopy when he skates.  Eye candy.  

In the '80's we went away from the Flying Frenchmen days, we had a bunch of big thumpers on our roster, Steve Rooney and Dave Maley and Ryan Walter and Lucien DeBlois, and they weren't the most exciting team to watch objectively.  Sure we rooted for them, cheered them on, it was great to see them beat the Nordiques and the Bruins, but after our game we'd get to see the Oilers take on the Canucks or the Jets or Flames, and it was end-to-end hockey, fast-paced and high-test adrenaline stuff.  And I caught myself wondering if I didn't enjoy watching those games rather than watching my team play.

I'd resigned myself after the Bruins' tainted finals win and our debacle against the Senators in 2013 that if we wanted to win, we needed to size up, at the expense of skill and our viewing pleasure.  But watching our team now, I'm not sure that'll be the case, that I'll have to endure some snoozers like when we'd pound the Whalers into submission.  Not when we size up with the likes of Alex Galchenyuk, Dale Weise, Max Pacioretty, and the aforementioned Jiri Sekac.  

Maybe we can measure up to the big teams and win, but still play an exciting brand of hockey.  Maybe we don't need to turn heel to win, to adopt the tactics of Abdullah the Butcher or Michel 'Justtice' Dubois.  We can remain as pure as the Frères Rougeau if we watch each other's backs, and triumph in the end.

2)  I'm having trouble keeping up with the lines we're putting on the ice.  Now Brandon Prust is on the Tomas Plekanec line?  Was it Christopher Curtis who first coined the phrase "Michel Therrien's blender"?  I don't know how much latitude he'll have to play mixmaster for the next few games, since he committed to the Alex Galchenyuk transition to #1 centre and stated that they'd need to be patient with him, and the Lars Eller centering David Desharnais and P.A. Parenteau also needs to be evaluated on a somewhat extended term.  

3)  Not too much spark coming from that Lars Eller line tonight though.  It's not an immediate success, like the Two and a Half Men line, or the kid line of Alex, Lars and Gally from last season, combos that seemed like winners from the first game they were put together.

4)  "...Karlsson with the puck, being perniciously pursued..."

"...a Subbanian spinerama..."

Is Paul Romaniuk getting into a rhythm, finding his groove?  Never had a problem with his delivery, his intonation, but he was halting at the beginning of the season, a little rusty, hesitant when trying to identify players.  Tonight's effort was pretty good, with no glaring errors.

5)  Gary Galley however, had this clunker: "Maybe he re-aggravated an ongoing injury..."

Ugh.  Re-aggravate.  Always loved that redundancy.  You can aggravate an injury.  You can re-injure something.  But to re-aggravate an injury means something pretty specific.  That you got injured, then you aggravated it, meaning you made it worse, and then later on aggravated it again.

And don't get me started on the much overused techno-babble flavour-du-jour word 'ongoing'.  

Or the inherent contradiction in that phrase.

6)  I figure Alex Galchenyuk gets all the chicks, but not if he keeps getting high-sticked in the kisser like that, pretty soon he'll look like Réjean Houle.

7)  The Sens aren't so easy to hate when Chris Neil and Matt Kassian and Zenon Konopka aren't on their roster.  It makes even cementally-shod Eric Gryba kind of adorable, trying to keep up to the play, getting all winded from the slashing and the hooking and franticing.

8)  I liked the sober goal celebration by Tomas Plekanec to make it 3-1 and put the game away.  Not too much to get excited about when you beat a clearly inferior team that played the previous night and three games in four nights.  You took care of business, but nothing to do cartwheels about.  Nice.

9)  Also liked that Michel Therrien put out the fourth line for the last powerplay to end the game.  No sense getting the Sens all riled up by rubbing it in at that point, and it was a good opportunity for Manny Malhotra to pad his point totals.

Game 33: Canadiens 1, Anaheim 2

Canadiens Express thoughts on the Canadiens 2-1 loss to the Anaheim Ducks, I had to pirate the Saku Koivu ceremony on a stream that was difficult to find, with popups and delays, etc.

Thank you Gary Bettman.

Right at puck drop, I heard some low boos when Ryan Getzlaf was on the ice, and I was puzzled as to why.  I guessed that he was getting the business from the fans since he's the best player on the Ducks team.

Now, I dislike the practice of booing the opposition's best player as a matter of course, putatively to get them off their game.  I don't think Sidney Crosby or Jonathan Toews or Erik Karlsson deserve this treatment, we should appreciate their effort and artistry, as hockey fans.

Then I realized that the New Forum crowd was booing René Bourque, and to me that was just as dumb.  René underperformed for most of his stay here, he on some nights, and even some long stretches of games seemed to be sleepwalking, but I think it was beyond his control, it wasn't a conscious decision to play soft, uninspired hockey.  Certainly compared to Michael Ryder or Andrei Kostitsyn or Thomas Vanek it didn't seem so.  Those guys seemed to not care whether the team won or lost on some nights.  René was just lost in a fog in my opinion, and not to get too technical.

So yeah, disappointing showing for René while he was here, but he did have these enticing peaks in performance, when he dominated games.  The Tampa Bay series last spring for example.  He can still get it done under the right conditions.  So why would we do anything to add any further motivation, on his return to Montréal?  Why not let sleeping dogs lie?

It's not as if René was not likable as a person.  He was a popular teammate, thoughtful and humble when cornered by the press, we can wish he could have done more, but I don't think he did anything to draw the average Hab fan's enmity.

Speaking of big forwards who underwhelm, Eric Tangradi, who some may have thought could perform the role that Travis Moen did lately with the team, and I may have verged on that position myself, showed tonight definitively that he's not at all at that level.  During a sequence that Pierre Houde said lasted almost three minutes, he and Manny Malhotra and Michaël Bournival were backed up in their zone, unable to clear out.

Mr. Tangradi at first looked like he wasn't playing smart, by just staying in his position rather than pressuring the puck, and letting the Ducks cycle it easily along the boards.  Then I realized that it wasn't a tactical mistake, he's just immobile.  And on top of being slow, he was gassed early on in that sequence.  It seemed inevitable that the Ducks would burst through and they did taking a 1-0 lead.

After the game, Guy Carbonneau and Benoit Brunet both discussed the wisdom of having him in the lineup, and sending down Sven Andrighetto to the Bulldogs.

Based on my edited viewing of the game, Nathan Beaulieu and Tom Gilbert were effective and are rounding into form as a pairing.  One situation I noticed was when Andrew Cogliano was skating the puck out of his zone, trying to get it under control.  Instead of backing off, both defencemen stayed close, and Nathan actually skated right up to him and pokechecked the puck off him before he could get his wits about him.  All that was left was for Tom to skate after the puck in his zone and calmly retrieve it.

Our ideal partner for Nathan would have been a big tough defensively-oriented steady-eddie type who would stay back and cover for him while he charged to the attack, kind of what the Senators had in mind when they traded for Marc Methot so he could play alongside Erik Karlsson and mind the store.  We don't really have that guy in our arsenal right now, so maybe Tom Gilbert is a good option.  Together they're going to be mobile and effective in puck retrieval situations, and to make that proverbial first pass out of our zone.

The game, and a good chunk of our season potentially, turned on a typical NHL play, one where an undertalented player "finishes his check" against a more skilled opponent.  Clayton Stoner, who was in the Ducks' lineup because Sheldon Souray, François Beauchemin and Eric Brewer were on the injured list, hit Max Pacioretty in the back, a full two strides after Max had passed the puck, projecting him awkwardly into the boards.  Max left the game and didn't return.  No penalty was called on the play.

This is the kind of suicidal thinking that is keeping the NHL from taking flight, the idea that a Clayton Stoner must be allowed to do this, to equalize things a bit, or else he's going to get eaten alive, like Tim Gleason did on Tuesday when the Hurricanes were in town.  Somehow, Colin Campbell and Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, guys who hung on to an NHL career because they were allowed to live in the margins of lax refereeing, now set the agenda, and hammer the point ceaselessly that hockey is a rough and tumble game, that bad things are going to happen, that you need to keep your head up.

This is how an Antoine Roussel and a Jordin Tootoo has a career in the NHL.  Somehow the game is tilted towards them and away from the Max Paciorettys and the Teemu Selannes.  Hockey is the only game that does that.  Basketball, baseball, football, all foster a more offensive game with their rule-making to make the sport more exciting and fan-friendly, and as a corollary safer for the players.  This is how a Clayton Stoner, a fringe player who has four goals to his credit in 255 games in the NHL, has a more important effect on the game than a young star like Max Pacioretty.

After the it's-all-good business as usual non-call, Dale Weise tried to get some retribution by throwing a few hits, and drew a penalty from Patrick Maroon when the latter pushed Dale in the back, with the puck nowhere near.  Of course, Bruce Boudreau was incensed at the call.  I guess he would have been arguing that Dale dived on that call, and I have to wonder how it wasn't clearly, obviously a case of interference, in anyone's eyes, how this was up to debate from any observer, regardless of whether Dale had fallen or not.

David Desharnais tied the game up during the ensuing powerplay, he had to play sniper with Max unavailable, and he demonstrated again on that play that his shot is effective from in close.  We all know this, he just needs to believe it.

Unfortunately, the Ducks took the lead again soon after, on a nice shot by Matt Beleskey from the slot.  At first I thought Carey went down early, but on replay saw that he was in the Reverse VH position and guarding the post against Richard Rakell, who was coming in along the goal line.  Carey had to be up tight against his post and low, so the quick pass in the slot gave him no chance.

Down 2-1, the Canadiens tried to take the advantage, but any last gasp chance was nullified by a P.K. Subban interference penalty with two and a half minutes to go.  P.K. didn't play it smart on this one, Pierre Houde had remarked that he was lucky to not have received a penalty on a slashing he dished out seconds before.  We can guess that the refs were loath to hand out a late penalty, as is the custom in the NHL, but that their attention was drawn to P.K. on that play, that he was on super-duper double probation for the rest of his shift.

Instead of playing it cool and being a good boy, of capitalizing on this indulgence, he doubled down and threw a pick on Devante Smith-Pelley, a player he'd clashed with all game long.  P.K. tried to act nonchalant, as if they'd just happened to collide in the neutral zone while his teammate tried to skate away with the puck, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Again we have to call into question P.K.'s situational awareness.  Down one goal, late in the third, it wasn't the time to continue his little battle with Mr. Smith-Pelley.  This is the kind of dumb penalty that was completely avoidable.  He should have been concentrating on getting the puck into the Ducks zone, on getting his shot to the net, instead of his in-game rivalry.

The RDS boys were discussing other elite NHL defencemen, and explained how guys like Shea Weber and Drew Doughty are in the vast majority of cases the reason you win a game, while P.K. this year has often had at best a neutral influence, if not being the reason we lose.  It's one step forward, one step back with our boy this year.

The Sven Andrighetto decision may be reversed almost as soon as it was taken.  Apparently Max was taken to hospital after the game, so we'll have a big, big hole on our Top 6, one that Lars Eller's return will not start to fill.  Maybe Sven doesn't get to unpack and comes right back to Montréal.  Or would it be Charles Hudon who gets a kick at the can next?