Well....... maybe next year? Habs are pretty much done.
No kidding. They were lucky to even beat Ottawa. Had Ottawa started Anderson from the start, they probably would have won in 5 games. Ottawa also didn't get the bounces in their series. Hammond couldn't stop a beach ball, Subban nearly took Stone out of the playoffs by breaking his wrist, a lucky goal in ot against Anderson in game 3, and that disallowed goal in their final game due to a very quick whistle.
But i've been saying for months that the habs wouldn't have made the playoffs with an average goalie. Carey Price's brilliance saved their season & made Therrien look like a genius all season long. The team has struggled scoring goals all season long & nothing's changed in the playoffs. Same thing with their lousy powerplay.
Bergevin needed to address this prior to the trade deadline and did not. He picked up a decent offensive defenceman in Petry, but also picked up 3 third and fourth liners in Smith-Pelley, Mitchell & Flynn, who in turn replaced 3rd & 4th liners, including one of the league's top faceoff men in Manny Malhotra, who is a leader in a leaderless room and happens to be one of the most popular and respected players on the team.
So the habs had their hopes pinned on hoping that Lars Eller would wake up during the playoffs, and the 3rd and 4th liners would support their two top lines. They also hoped that the powerplay would also suddenly wake up, and that Carey Price would continue winning games all by himself. However, this isn't what happened. The top two lines have been rather invisible other than the Gallagher's continuous attempts to rattle the opposing goalie. But if you're on a top 2 line, you also need to score goals, which hasn't happened much. Galchenyuk hasn't done anything either and now looks like a total bust. Don't be too surprised if he's dealt during the offseason, possibly to Edmonton. The top scorers on the team have been the likes of Wiese, Flynn & a couple of defencemen not named Subban. So that pretty much explains it. On defence, Markov has been a no-show throughout the playoffs and i expected it. You can't expect a 37 year old defenceman to play big minutes during an entire season and then expect him to be fresh for the playoffs. He's not only exhausted, but he's showing his age.
Subban hasn't been bad....actually, he's probably the only player on that team that comes to play every night and gives it his all. But he's considered an offensive defenceman and being paid $9 million per. So if he's on one of the worst offensive teams in the entire league and the powerplay has reached catastrophic levels, let me ask you: WHAT DOES P.K. SUBBAN BRING TO THE TEAM?
A popular Mtl talk radio show host pointed out this morning that the habs don't have a captain, but four alternates: Subban, Pacioretty, Markov & Plekanek. He mentionned that two out of these four are notorious poor playoff performers. He mentionned that PK has given his all and that he was giving Pacioretty a pass because suffering a concussion is one of the most catastrophic injuries any athlete can suffer. Plus he suffered his last concussion just before the playoffs. I now what the host was referring to. Not only are Markov & Plekanek historically invisible during the playoffs, but what in the hell was the organization thinking when they named these two robots as alternate captains? These guys barely say a word, don't have much leadership qualities and don't want to be.
One final thing.....
Believe it or not, but the local soccer team has outscored the hockey team.
In their last 6 games, the habs have scored 7 goals while the Montreal Impact has scored 10 goals against world-class opponents. That says it all!
