Recrutes: Hockey scouting from a professional perspective from Grant McCagg and Habs coverage from a 33 year veteran covering the NHL from Brian Wilde.
January 17, 2018
By Brian Wilde
The Montreal Canadiens tried something new in Boston on Wednesday night with Jonathan Drouin on the wing for the first time this season. Was he free to create without the defensive responsibilities? To the Wilde Horses…..
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Drouin looks like a confused deer in the headlights with a semi barrelling down on him.poor guys so confused and bewilldered now. Confidence is zero.again its 1 guys fault.the whole D core is playing a line or 2 too high up cuz of bergys F up of the markov resigning. The center position is worse,what centers ? Joke signings of alzner,benn,price. We are a laughing stock of the league.
Enough is enough,this is all because of 1 man. The man who fd up this team.a team can only be the sum of its parts. Our sum adds up to 28 th place right now. Epic ,gigantic failure. FIRE BERGEVIN NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anything less than a 100% effort level and the Habs don’t have much of a chance. Haven’t been getting bailouts from Price, Dmen talent too thin, stud players underachieving, etc. The mix of this season’s roster simply hasn’t consistently functioned as a cohesive team.
I’m nearing the point where the anticipation of a potential trade for the sake of directional clarity is greater than the anticipation of gameday.
Petry must be wiped from all this top pairing heavy minutes of play. Benn and Alzner are also being thrust into a role that is tough on them, as you point out. All these guys are not used to the extra minutes and responsibilities. You can only do that for a few games when lucky. Brian, are you tracking the number of man-games lost to injury and how this team is trending over the past few years? I know it is not an excuse for poor play (of course, finding short-term replacements is another job of the GM and getting Niemi was astute. But a real D who can log real minutes should’be been a priority as soon as they shut Weber down.
I feel like the leaf fan a couple years back…can’t even be bothered to tune in…what an awful line up, and boring to the 10th degree.
Hi,
Well, Rene Rancourt is finally retiring. I think he has been “fist pumping ” for about as long as The Canadiens have been looking for a no. 1 centre. I have been trying to follow The Canadiens’ strategic moves and after witnessing last game and Drouin’s move back to wing I can only say that we should not be surprised to find “Youppi” playing in the number 1centre ice position for the next game. And now ,to try and predict the future , I’ll just borrow a sentiment from Hamlet & say ” Alas poor Marc ! I knew him.”
Thanks,
Daniel
Well, the habs do need a top flight D man and a centre. At least with this draft they may be able to get one of them.
One can say all they want that Sergachev would not have those points in Montreal or he might not play as well, but then by the same measure, Drouin’s points were inflated and his play over-hyped playing for the same team that Sergachev plays for now. Perhaps what we’re seeing is the real Drouin and maybe his ceiling is just a 50-55 pt guy, so you traded away your best prospect by a mile for a winger and for cheap PR!! When moves are made for reasons other than hockey, you end up where the habs are!
Ok so imagine bergevin if he ran a real world corporation the way hes running this team.itd go bankrupt. Hiring the wrong people constantly to fill the job. Shuffling avg workers around to do super highly skilled jobs.itll never function properly.eventually the head office will say,sir your department is constantly failling so youre gone. Thing is here.sales are fantastic,always sells out no matter the quality of the product so keep the inept guy running it,whocares. This is being run as a $$$$ buissness,yes money wise the canadiens are top of the heap. Hockey wise its deplorable and horrific. Thats why we need a president who cares about HOCKEY.not a buissness $$$ guy like geoff molson running things.
Of course Drouin and Chucky looked bad, they had JDLR as their center. Given a top center, I think that line with chance to develop chemistry would be amazing. As it is, that is not the case now and won’t be for a while so Drouin needs to stay at center for any hope of scoring from that line.
Gimme Zadina or Tkachuk all day long.