Game 51: Canadiens 6, Devils 2

Due to my incompetence setting up the programming on my PVR, I recorded the Leafs-Oilers game last night, so I had to watch the Canadiens 6-2 win against the Devils this morning on the TVA Sports re-broadcast.

Ah heck, it's Gary Bettman's fault, what with his labyrinthine hockey deal he cooked up for Canadiens fans.  Thank you Gary, feeling very well-served as a hockey fan, and I can't wait for your lockouts to have their effect so that ticket prices start coming down.

And I trust you when you say that you'll watch the ticket campaign in Las Vegas closely, with an open mind, and as you strenuously, repetitively point out, no decision has been made yet.  Of course not.

This is my first time giving these TVA clowns a shot, but I've been assured they're actually quite good, comparable to RDS' work, which is surprising to hear.  Félix Séguin is the play-by-play caller, and former Senators goalie Patrick Lalime handles the colour work.  They do sound different than Pierre Houde and Marc Denis, but approaching it with a bettmanesque open mind, I do admit that they're very well-spoken, and don't fall prey to benoitbrunetisms where they mangle their pronunciation, or mariotremblaytry by bludgeoning the language.

An off-putting note happens when anthem singer Cherylyn Toca appears, with a new blonde coiffe.  It's not trashy or anything, it's well executed, but jarring compared to her previous appearance.  Despite the change in appearance, she acquits herself of her duties quite well.

There really is no business like show-business.

Noticed in the first period:

• Jaromir Jagr swooping around in the offensive zone on the Mike Cammalleri goal.  I'm not in favour of acquiring him, I think the mercenary would cost too much, but he would help the Canadiens in their Top 9, they're thin now with René Bourque gone and P.A. Parenteau out with a concussion.
• Devils centre Scott Gomez streaking in with the puck into the Habs' zone, then hitting the brakes along the sidewall and looking to pass the puck.  Where/when have I seen that move before?
• David Desharnais carrying the puck into the Devils zone, with three opponents converging upon him like a moth to a flame.  Maybe there's a good reason he passes all the time...
• Jacob de la Rose looking big and rangy out there, finishing his check.  I'm favourably biased in his case, want the big kid to succeed, we need a player like him in our lineup.
• Gabriel Dumont throwing a good hit on Tuomo Ruutu.
• David Desharnais taking a shot on net while Max Pacioretty rushed and screened the goalie(!)
• Dale Weise confounding his critics by accepting and delivering passes and generally belonging on that line.
• P.K. Subban on the ice whenever Jaromir Jagr was used, and both trying to control the puck behind Carey Price's net.  P.K. playing well, strong, authoritative with the puck.

First intermission show is okay.  I generally like Michel Bergeron, but he's relatively unclear in trying to convey his frustration with P.K.'s routine during the warmup.  The second panel does well, I'm pro-Patrice Brisebois, wish he'd stayed with the Canadiens' organization instead of making the move to broadcasting.  A pleasant surprise is Paul Houde, who I liked back in the day, was very funny and had a multitude of impersonations and impressions.  Good to see him again.  Quick interview with Gabriel Dumont, good to see the kid in the NHL, hope he can contribute as a right-handed defensive centreman, something we're lacking currently.

Noticed in the second period:

• Félix Séguin begins with a quick video segment of a miked-up Lars Eller acting as the veteran on his line with Christian Thomas and Jacob de la Rose, at practice earlier in the day and during the first period.  He's praised for the leadership and mentorship he provides the rooks.
• P.K. is in the game.  Early on, he's well-positioned in his zone, in the slot area, facing out, while the Devils have the puck.  The puck squirts loose and he corrals it with one hand, on his backhand, and quickly feeds Tomas Plekanec with a short pass, and the Canadiens are off on a 3-on-2.  He and Andrei are having a good game breaking out of their zone.
• P.K. at the left faceoff circle and two guys (Max and Brendan Gallagher) crowding the net makes for an effective powerplay, and a goal by Andrei Markov.
• Failed Leaf, failed Oiler Mark Fraser fails to clear his zone with a weak backhand while killing a penalty.  P.K. intercepts it with his torso like a third baseman blocking a bouncing ground ball, and uses a strong backhand to feed Lars Eller.  One timer, back of the net.
• Maybe using Lars on the wing with Tomas is formative, it limits his options, curtails his propensity to overthink and overhandle the puck.  Use your size and shoot Lars, we need you.
• Alexei Emelin and Tom Gilbert are an effective if somewhat spendy third-pairing, a vast upgrade on a Douglas Murray-Raphaël Diaz pairing.  Tom Gilbert still overreacts too often though, icing the puck and giving it away in his zone when under pressure.  We expect more from a guy who was brought in because of his reputed ability with the puck and at making the first pass.
• Brendan misses two golden opportunities to pot a goal.  He's going through a cold stretch, but a lack of effort is obviously not the issue.

Second intermission is hit and miss.  Panel discussion discusses Lars Eller's goal.  Paul Houde with a recitation of the career accomplishments of Jaromir Jagr.

Noticed in the third period:

• On the Jacob Josefson goal, Tom Gilbert gets caught, first trying to 'close the gap' on a Devil about to receive a lobbed clearing pass.  He stumbles and falls, which allows the Devil to streak in and deke out Carey.
• Gabriel Dumont out killing the Alexei Emelin penalty, a good mark of confidence by the coaching staff.
• P.K. is having quite a game, can-openers the Devils defence by dancing along the blue line, which leads to Tomas Plekanec's second goal.
• Max Pacioretty has made fun of his own slapshot in the past, but he is covering for a pinching Alexei Emelin when he inherits the puck at the offensive blue line.  He goes for a waist-high backswing, almost half-hearted slapshot, but New Jersey goalie Keith Kincaid bobbles it and Dale Weise, who was lurking in front of the net, taps it in.
• Dale Weise pots another goal on a slick pass from Max, from the corner to in front of the net for a bang-bang goal.  
• The Canadiens have millions of fans, and millions of critics and wannabe coaches.  The coaching staff, trying to come up with a way to get the offence going, experimented with Dale Weise on the right with Max on the first line.  They were pilloried for it on social media, but for now the experiment is bearing fruit. 
• And again, I've made light of Dale's ability to convert chances, he was known as a Canuck as a player whose high-energy style created lots of chances, but was perpetually snake-bitten and liable to miss wide-open nets.  Maybe he's finding his range, gaining confidence.  Certainly playing with better linemates helps, he'll get more and better opportunities, and looser coverage from opponents.  Kudos Dale.

Mildly disappointing for me as a viewer is that the entire game didn't quite fit in the allotted time scheduled, so I missed the last couple of minutes, and the Three Stars.  Too bad, apparently P.K. did well in the on-ice interview portion (surprise, surprise...)  I assumed that TVA Sports would adjust the content to fit the entire game in, but got burned, should have extended the recording time.

Overall, a good job of broadcasting the game by TVA Sports, to my mild astonishment.  The camera work and technical aspects were airtight, I didn't notice any blunders like with Sportsnet's hack jobs.  And, Louis Jean didn't breathlessly interrupt the program with breaking news that Larry Carrière had been arrested for DUI at the wheel of a rented Porsche in Ottawa.  Aside from a few too intrusive banner ads during play, it was a solid effort.

And the Canadiens, after a couple of hiccups against the Coyotes and Sabres, get back on track and take care of a team they should beat easily.  Next up, the Evil Empire.

Dustin Byfuglien-Evander Kane faceoff latest in a long line of instances of teams policing themselves.

There's been some discussion about the rift in the Winnipeg Jets' dressing room, with Dustin Byfuglien taking it upon himself to throw Evander Kane's offending sweatsuit in the showers.  I think it’s missing the mark a little bit to call his actions childish. Teams police themselves in different ways.

Terrell Owens was such a divisive force in the Eagles locker room that Hugh Douglas tried to take him on in a fight. Reportedly, Mr. Owens took the time to go to his locker to don shoes, for traction on a slippery floor, and then jumped Hugh Douglas and gave the bigger player all he could handle. That wound festered until he was suspended and eventually evicted from the Eagles. A few Eagles commented that Hugh Douglas not being able to put Terrell ‘in his place’ doomed any chance of the situation being salvaged.

A few seasons back, P.K. Subban showed up late-ish for the first practice of training camp, and got on the ice a few minutes after everyone else did. Brian Gionta aimed a slapshot in his direction that boomed off the boards, and barked at him: “You’re late!” P.K. apparently retorted that he kind of had to go to the bathroom, but that wasn’t acceptable. Obviously, if your arrival at the rink is so close to practice time that a visit to the throne makes you late, then you need to revisit your time appreciation.

Recently while we were feting his jersey retirement, we learned that Guy Lapointe made it a habit of cutting the laces off the skates of teammates who were cutting it too close to practice time, with the intent that the extra time needed to re-lace the skates would put the offender definitely over time. Apparently Scotty Bowman would look the other way when the sheepish player slinked onto the ice, letting his veterans police this matter.

I had a similar experience in a long-term training situation, with a bunch of guys cooped up for too long, and a controversial class member who was like sand in the gearbox. Late in the session we were out for beers, and someone took the guy’s Russian-mobster-style warmup jacket and tried to flush it down the Legion Hall’s toilet. The look on the manager’s face as he brought out the jacket, and the jacket’s owner when he understood what happened, were unforgettable. The message got through to him.

So yeah, we can say that Dustin Byfuglien should have talked to Evander Kane instead of soaking his clothes, but I’m sure a few guys tried that, and it was time to step it up a notch. The message to him would have been clear. It’s not just the coaches and management and the fans and the press that have had it, it’s your own teammates. And obviously, that stung him pretty bad.

Evander Kane for Zack Kassian: Should the Jets and Canucks swap their troubled wingers?

With Zack Kassian burning a hole in their pocket, I wonder if the Canucks can flip a healthy big winger to the Jets for their ailing one?

The Jets would be relieved to put an end to the saga.  They are desperate to stay in the playoff race. Zack Kassian is a big body who fits in well with their team philosophy, and could pitch in and try to fill the big hole at forward caused by Evander Kane’s absence. Zack could be rejuvenated in a new environment, maybe start to play as he was projected to when the Sabres took him in the first round.

It might be a tough pill to swallow for the Canucks, to give up an asset for no immediate help while they’re themselves in a playoff race against these very Jets, but in the long term adding Evander Kane to their roster next fall would tick off so many checkboxes, with his speed that fits in well with the team makeup, and his scoring that would go a long-way to re-establish their balanced scoring identity. A line of Kane-Bonino-Burrows would bring a tonne of speed and give opposing defencemen fits. On top of that, he’d bring size and toughness, which the Canucks need, and which Zack Kassian didn’t reliably supply, taking undisciplined penalties one game, then disappearing for five. Evander Kane would have a chance to be a hometown hero, and maybe a lot of the discipline issues dissipate with the change of scenery.

Even in those terms, I don’t think the Jets would accept this trade even up, the Canucks would have to chip in some sweeteners, maybe a prospect/pick. But the backbone of the trade is there, it makes intuitive sense. It’s a little bit like when the Canucks acquired Roberto Luongo, they had a big piece to swap in Todd Bertuzzi that they needed to move anyway. So many other teams would create a hole in their lineup to acquire these guys, here both teams would be able to salvage something out of the mess they’re in with this trade.  They're both like tourists about to leave a foreign country: they hold currency that they need to spend now.

But this idea just may be crazy enough to work. Both teams get to move on from a player who has been a headache and unhappy and needing a change. Both end a soap opera. Both teams get what they’ve given up, a big winger with offensive skills, so there is less of a sting.

Jonathan Bernier toskalas a long clearance.

I often despair that kids don’t play baseball anymore, they’re enrolled in soccer by deluded parents. And I often wonder why so many goalies have a weak glove hand.

I allow that the trappers they use are massive nowadays, more like a pool skimmer than a first baseman’s mitt, so maybe they can’t feel the puck in there, control it. That’s why so many pucks rattle around in a goalie’s glove and bounces free. We saw that happen to Zach Fucale in the leadup games to the World Juniors.

But jeez Louise, Jonathan Bernier, this isn’t complicated, an impenetrable mystery like who the heck did Nelson Scandella play for, and was he the cousin of Sergio Momesso?

On a ground ball, or a pitch in the dirt, any infielder or catcher knows you can’t trust to catch it with your hand, you get your whole body in front of it. You block the path with your shins as a shortstop, you get on your knees in the dirt for a catcher, you take it on the thighs or chest protector. Hopefully.

Monsieur Bernier, don’t nonchalantly try to pick off the puck with your extended glove, like you’re reaching for more TP. You’re a pro hockey goalie, act like it. Else you end up next to the Vesa Toskala video on YouTube for the rest of all eternity. Which you kind of did.

But you’d know all this if you’d have had the chance to play baseball growing up, every day all summer long, like we used to.

Game 48: Canadiens 1, Capitals 0

The rope-a-dope Canadiens, who hang around and depend mostly on six or eight miracles by Carey Price to keep them in it and win late, and who were on hiatus Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, were back this morning to face off against the Capitals as part of the traditional back-to-back matinées on Super Bowl weekend.

They were up to their old tricks, getting outshot 9-7 and 17-6 in the second, before turning it on and winning the shot battle 15-10 in the third and 2-0 in overtime.  Max Pacioretty scored on a two-on-two rush with Tomas Plekanec, tipping in crossing pass from his centre, giving the Habs the 1-0 win.

Max was full value again today, playing 22 minutes, being a constant menace with his breakaways, especially while killing penalties, and unleashing seven shots at Braden Holtby.  His growth, the full expression of his potential and physical gifts, is a treat for Canadiens fans.

Carey Price had the Capitals shaking their heads at times, especially in the third period.  He made some amazing, Capital-deflating saves, and pulled a Patrick Roy by letting his posts bail him out three times.  After the game, as usual, he skated around looking for children to flip a souvenir puck to, in his role as the first star of the game.

The Galchenyuk-Desharnais-Gallagher line has been too quiet lately, and Lars Eller was marked for another beating on L'Antichambre.  Like me, the panel members were crestfallen at his non-event of a three-on-one shorthanded break, in which he didn't find a way to pass off to Tomas Plekanec or Andrei Markov, waited for an opening, an option, and ran out of room, flipping a puck weakly at Braden Holtby when he was right on top of him and no longer had any angles.

The panel members were suggesting that he should move to the wing, where he could still use his skating and size but with more limited options and decisions to take.  They believe that with his tools, he can be a very effective left winger, one who'll charge the net and shoot more, instead of hesitate with the puck on his stick, hemming and hawing until an opponent takes the puck away from him.

I think, with the struggling Coyotes coming into town tomorrow after a game in Ottawa today, that this might be a good time to shuffle things up, and try to jump start Lars by putting him at centre with the kids.  I don't necessarily think this is a long-term solution, but it might give all these guys a boost, putting them in a new situation, but one that they've had success with in the past.

I noticed Nathan Beaulieu again today using his mobility, his agility to good advantage.  He was standing in front of his net when a puck directed at the net got deflected off to the side board.  Nate spotted it and took off after it instantly, and easily corralled it and cleared it.  This is an area that a Josh Gorges excelled at, and where Hal Gill or a Bryan Allen or Douglas Murray struggled.  It's a truism that Nathan is an offensively-oriented defenceman, and will struggle on defence, but that's usually said when we mean banging in the corners or mucking in front of the net.  Clearly, Nate, along with P.K. and Tom Gilbert, other 'puck-movers', doesn't struggle at puck retrieval.

Finally, I tried to avoid pointing out the obvious flaws in Sportsnet’s coverage of the NHL, since these are already well established, but since it’s topical on social media, I noticed a couple of failings again today.

On a strictly technical point, they screwed up again during the Habs’ game. I’ll repeat, I’m not an broadcast TV expert or sophisticate. I only notice all these errors and goof-ups because they stand out, compared to the HNIC and “La Soirée du Hockey” and the RDS broadcasts. It’s kind of like dinner at the restaurant, you don’t really notice the chef(s) or waitstaff unless something goes wrong.

This afternoon, the rink sounds they had from their ice-level microphones weren’t synched with the image. I didn’t quite understand why the action seemed off, until the first post hit by Alex Ovechkin, I think. As he prepared to one-time the puck, you heard the ‘ping!’ off the post clearly, a clear beat before the puck actually got to the post. So much so that I knew the shot had gone off the post before it had been shot.

“That’s odd,” I thought, and hit rewind on the PVR, and I wasn’t dreaming. They flubbed it. Every shot that hit the post today was pre-announced as such. You’d hear the ping before the shot.

And that’s why the game seemed off, like I was watching the game on a poor stream, because Tom Gilbert would race off to a loose puck, battling to get to it before Brooks Laich, and you’d hear their sticks clashing before they got there.

I don’t know if Sportsnet is just needing a season or two to figure things out, or they’re running with a skeleton crew loaded with interns who’ll work cheap, but their broadcasts are larded with dead mikes, errant camera shots, highlights being run in reverse or fast-forward or in some comical instances both. The camera will purport to follow the puck carrier in an iso-shot, but the bottom half of the player is cut out, giving us no insight on his puckhandling. They’ll run a highlight, with a scrawl and banner with a misspelled headline blocking out the action they’re trying to show us.

Today, one of their teasers on the scrawl was that the “Leafs Look End Losing Streak”. No, I didn’t forget a word, that’s what it said.

And it didn’t get caught after a while, it ran for hours like that. No editor caught it before it went up, and no one saw it while it played on their screens over and over and over.

Thank you Gary Bettman, that twelve-year monopoly will serve me very well as a fan, and it may just reduce ticket prices to games while no decision has been made on a franchise in Vegas.

Another much more obvious problem was the in-between post-game show with Jeff Marek and John Shannon, who are good broadcasters, and P.J. Stock, who as expected wrested the controls of the ship from them and divebombed it into the ground.

He simply has nothing to bring to the proceedings, trades on his meager credentials for cheap laughs, goes into unfunny skits such as when he pretended to be talking on the phone to Dr. Phil, setting up an appointment for a colleague.

At one point, Jeff Marek, trying to bring things back on track, asked him about the best goal he’d ever seen scored, and after trying to veer off-topic, P.J. was forced to provide a Mario Lemieux anecdote. The very next question, the host asked him about the hardest he’d ever been hit, and you know that he was leading to something, trying to segue into another subject, but trusty P.J. brought the show to a screeching halt by blurting out: “My mother!”

Needle scratch off the record. P.J. beams to the camera. Ain’t he a card?

John Shannon, repeatedly throughout the show would look down, trying to quell a smirk, weary of the non-sequiturs and interruptions and absurdity coming from his left.

In “La Ligue Nationale de l’Impro”, the Quebec-born precursor to the much-reviled improv theatre genre, players wore hockey jerseys, had to play as a team, and cooperate with adversaries. Failure to do so would bring the very arch Yvan Ponton, acting as the referee, to blow on his kazoo and subtract points for the very grave infraction of ‘cabotinage’. Strictly translated, it means ‘goofing around’ or ‘acting like a jerk’, but it has a very negative meaning in French, not that of just regular people occasionally letting off steam. In the LNI, it meant that you weren’t working with the others to move the scene along, you weren’t playing well with others, to the detriment of everyone.

Anyway, if the scene was set in a kitchen, and you joined in and said “No actually, this is a spaceship and I’m the captain!”, you’d get kazooed quickly, that nonsense would get annulled, erased, and the previous scene which was building was thereby allowed to resume, oblivious to the previous interruption.

Today, while watching Sportsnet NoonDaySportsnetHockeySportsNewsCentral, I kept expecting Yvan Ponton to march into the frame and kazoo P.J. Stock back to the Stone Age.

Even Roger Goodell, Gary Bettman can't screw this up.

From a profile on Roger Goodell in GQ magazine:

Eric Winston, an offensive tackle for the Bengals and president of the NFL Players Association, says the NFL is simply too popular to screw up, and that its recent success has come in spite of Goodell’s leadership, not because of it: “You could be the worst bartender at spring break, but you’d still be killing it.”

This article is recommended reading if you haven’t had a chance. It’s relevant to our discussions here, when some of us forgive Gary Bettman his foibles, his condescension to journos and the fans, his smarmy lectures, his reliance on his trusty, sole go-to nuclear option of a lockout, his treatment of the game as a commodity rather than a sacred trust, ‘because he raised league revenues’.

I’ve always contended that a trained monkey could be a league commissioner nowadays. Pro sports is in extremely high demand from media companies. While TV shows’ ratings are dropping, from the heyday of the seventies when there were only three networks, to today with the multi-channel universe and Netflix and streaming and other illegal options and PVR’s with their commercial-zapping properties, pro sports have risen in importance disproportionately. They’re a TV product that needs to be consumed immediately, since it rapidly grows stale. If you’re a true fan and want to follow along with Bruce Arthur on Twitter or the Headmaster’s Liveblog, you need to be watching as it happens, commercials and all.

These shifts are occurring in other media. Sales of movies (videos, Blu-Ray, I-Tunes, etc.) have cratered, but video games are now a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Movie genre segmentation is occurring as well. New releases are aimed at teens with 3-D frenetic action sequences to draw them to the theatre, while more sedate offerings are getting harder to finance and produce, since these can be pirated and consumed at home more easily.

So pro sports are what every network is clamouring for, and not just the traditional offerings. College football and basketball are now essentially a pro sport, a product. NASCAR, curling, poker, whatever fills air time will be snatched up.

Bud Selig, maybe the most hapless bumbler who’s ever presided over a league, retired recently and analysts had to grudgingly admit that during his watch, he presided over labour peace, and watched revenues grow from X to a number orders of magnitude greater. The proverbial rising tide is raising all boats.

So when Gary Bettman uses hockey as his personal fiefdom to settle old scores, and hands monopolies to Sportsnet and TVA in spite of their demonstrable relative incompetence, to spite CBC/Ron MacLean, and to hold off Pierre Péladeau while the Florida Panthers sitch plays itself out, production values and viewers and fans be darned, let’s not give him a pass because he got a lot of money for Ed Snyder in return.

He would have got a lot of money out of anyone. You or I and a couple of lawyers and agents to act as advisors would have gotten a lot of money. A trained monkey on roller skates wearing a tuxedo, taking a break from typing out the complete works of Shakespeare, while huffing on a cigarette and flinging his excrement at Colin Campbell, would have gotten a lot of money out of any network(s).

Martin Brodeur retires, is compared to other greats Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek.

Kirk McLean was on TSN 1040 and had an interesting discussion with hosts Blake Price and Matt Sekeres on the giants of goaltending of the previous era, in the wake of Martin Brodeur’s retirement. They generally agreed that Marty was, within the bounds of that strict comparison, kind of the ‘automatic’ or system goalie, a superb player who gave his team a chance to win every time he was in the crease.

Patrick Roy was the most intimidating, the guy who would psych out the other team most often right off the bat, making them think they didn’t have a chance to win. Dominik Hasek was the goalie who, on the other hand, made you think you were close, the dam was about to burst, you came so close so many times, there were so many miraculous or flukey saves, that one or three was about to go in. And then as the third period went on you got frustrated and started pressing and lost heart.

A mistaken conceit held by Blake Price is that, again within the bounds of that strict comparison, Patrick Roy could get a demerit or two for being on “strong teams”, that since he was on Cup-winning teams, he was better served than Dominik Hasek with the Sabres. And a few people who didn’t go through those eighties years believe that, that Patrick Roy’s teams were stacked. They don’t understand how much Patrick meant in ’86 and ’93. Sure the Avalanche years approached sinecure level, but within reason, Patrick single-handedly took the Habs to those Cups.

I remember that overtime game against the Rangers in ’86, how giddy we all felt in the nightclub-turned-pub for the occasion, that Patrick wasn’t going to let one in, that the game was over, the Rangers knew it, we just had to wait and see how exactly the details would turn out. It was academic. The result itself wasn’t in doubt, just the stats, the copy the journos would have to write.

How Patrick stood up in the dressing room and told the team to go out and score against the Nordiques in the opening series in ’93, he’d take care of defending against them, that gets forgotten. Because he had Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg on his side later in his career, his importance and leadership when the chips were down and the series seemed lost against the Nordiques seems to be downplayed.

Being realistic, the Canadiens were a little bit of a dark horse those seasons, we got a couple breaks along the way, with the Oilers getting eliminated in '86 and the Penguins being knocked out for us in in ’93, among other powerhouses. The Canadiens weren’t bad teams, they just suffered a little bit in comparison to the dynasty Guy Lafleur-Big Three-Ken Dryden teams, the Islanders or Oiler dynasties, or the Pens with Mario and Mario Junior.

They were still very strong teams, as I was reminded watching an NHL Classic broadcast of the 1986 Stanley Cup Final Game 6 recently.  But Patrick, with his guarantees and heroics and his wink and his overtimes, he was the biggest reason by far that we won those Cups, more than say Marc-André Fleury or Chris Osgood ever were on their respective teams, or Claude Lemieux or Bobby Smith or Vincent Damphousse ever were.

NHL releases mid-season rankings for the 2015 draft.

The NHL's Central Scouting Service has released its mid-season rankings for the 2015 draft.  Offhand, it's great to see more representation from the LHJMQ, after a fallow year in 2014.

We note that there is a defenceman named Jérémy Roy from the Sherbrooke Phénix at #23, and a 6'4" centre named Nicolas Roy from the Chicoutimi Saguenéens at #25.  The funny thing is, there are so many players in the LHJMQ with the last name Roy that I don’t even try to keep track.  There were another couple draftable prospects name Roy last year or two years ago, and I still can’t keep Patrick Roy’s kids names straight.  It’s worse than the Sutters-Suters.

I went to high school with a Konecny, I wonder if he’s any relation to Travis, a smallish forward from the Ottawa 67's ranked 26th. There can’t be that many with that last name in our neck of the woods, can there?

I also note there’s a Jake DeBrusk at #24, wonder if he’s Louie’s kid.  A quick spin on Wikipedia confirms that he is.

Guillaume Brisebois at 6’2″ 175 lbs, a little too on the nose, no? We’d know if Patrice had a son about to be drafted?

I doubt we’ll get a shot at Lawson Crouse, ranked at #4.

Not begrudging our great season, but I wish we could accumulate draft picks and take advantage of more of this talent this June.

Hockey in Québec ain't what it used to be.

RDS did a poll of Quebecers playing in the NHL, and came up with the best local product in the league, along with a ‘Équipe Québec’. Patrice Bergeron edges out Martin St-Louis for the title.

Don’t know what brought this on, although this was a popular exercise in the seventies, probably due to the political situation back then.

Anyway, this isn’t a very strong team at all. Alex Burrows, Alex Tanguay, Mike Ribeiro, Antoine Vermette. Jason Pominville on the first line. Marco Scandella on the blue line. I note Vincent Lecavalier didn’t receive one vote.

How far Québec hockey has fallen. Back in the seventies, you had Gilbert Perreault and his French Connection linemates, Guy Lafleur, Marcel Dionne, Pierre Larouche, all superstar scorers at forward. Two thirds of the Big Three with Serge Savard and Guy Lapointe on defence, with maybe Carol Vadnais on the blue line. Find a loophole to get Denis Potvin on there maybe? Rogatien Vachon and Bernard Parent in goal. Now that was a decent team.

Used to be les Québécois were battling for scoring titles, now we have a great two-way second-line centre as the best we can offer.

Canadiens recall Gabriel Dumont, give the Bulldog bulldog another kick at the can.

The Canadiens have recalled Gabriel Dumont from Hamilton, which is good news in this fan's view.  I’m partial to the kid, I have to admit. Last season, when there were more Hamilton games available to watch, I was impressed with how hard he worked, and how he backs down from no one, despite not being the biggest guy around. Talk to Don Cherry’s man-crush Mike Zigomanis about Gabriel Dumont, he probably still has lumps on his forehead from the last time they met.

Generally, about callups and Gabriel Dumont, we often fret that Sven Andrighetto or Christian Thomas are miscast as fourth-liners, they should play in the Top 6 where their offensive skills can shine, blah, blah, blah…

Well there’s no such worry about young Monsieur Dumont. He’s very defensively conscious, gritty, and tough as $3 steak. If we want someone on the Bottom 6, Gabriel can fill that role.

I hoped he'd get a callup this season, with the proviso that Marc Bergevin may be leery to bring him up if he plans to send him down again. Gabriel Dumont is no longer waiver-exempt, and there’s a chance another team might snag him when they try to send him back down to Hamilton.

And that may explain why the entry-level contract youngsters are getting the callups so far, or expendable Drayson Bowman. There’s no risk that another team will claim them on the way back down, or if they do in Drayson Bowman or Eric Tangradi’s case, no real harm is done.