Les Caps ont McIlrath et Wilson, Mtl vont leur opposer Caufield et Hutson! On est en voiture!!!
Go Habs Go!
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Passionate hockey players rarely become coaches or stay in the coaching profession very long because as i mentioned previously they don’t take criticism well & absolutely despise losing & can’t tolerate players whom they feel don’t always put in a 100% effort. It just eats them up & drives them nuts!
Indeed he’s likely doing well financially if he invested wisely but the kind of money he makes as an NHL coach doesn’t come around every day & must be hard to look away from. Isn’t his wife financially well off also?
The problem with his coaching & i have no doubt he’s quite aware of & likely really bugs him is that the team hasn’t really improved much since he’s been there & observers have been surprised that his coaching skills & coaching instincts haven’t improved that much over the past three years. One big reason for this which a former NHL coach & a couple of experts pointed out is that he seems unable to admit his mistakes & improve on them. Another mentioned that he seems unwilling to seek help or other opinions & seems to believe he’s the only one who knows what works & what doesn’t. He’s not as open-minded as some would hope he was. I think even Kent Hughes mentioned in a recent interview that one thing he wished was that his coach delegated more to his assistants. Coaching in a huge hockey market when you’re constantly under a microscope must be extremely difficult & there aren’t that many coaches who are able to enjoy this & handle it with ease. Hughes & Gorton didn’t make things easy by appointing a person who had never been an NHL coach before & his only coaching experience was coaching his youngest son’s peewee hockey team. It could work in some non-hockey markets but in a huge hockey-mad market like Montreal? Near impossible to me!
C’est la rumeur. Peut-etre qu’il est devenu une distraction que l’organisation n’aime pas et qu’on prefererait l’echanger si son retour serait raisonable. J’ai aussi appris qu’il y a possibilite qu’on echangerait Joshua Roy pour obtenir quelque chose de valeur ou d’interesser une autre equipe a prendre un mauvais contrat non-productif dans l’echange.
Washington joue du excellent hockey et savent qu’ils doivent jouer physique pour vaincre le CH. Caulfield compte des buts mais sa ligne en donne autant car la paresse regne et le back-checking non existant. Pour tous les buts que Caulfield marque son +/- est presque toujours neutre ou dans les moins. C’est pas necessairement bon ca!
Ouin....on le savait que ce ne serait pas une soirée facile.....on a tenu de peine et de misère pendant 2 périodes....et tout s'est écroulé en 3ème avec une défensive terrible.....autre dégelée.....oui COLE en effet ne lâche pas...BRAVO...MAIS c'est bien peu dans le grand tout.... lol......au moins OVI nous aura donné un bon spectacle....relol.
Une volée pour Wilson à la fin ça s’prend bien! Le gros Anderson n’a pas hésité une seconde pour venger Guhle!
Sure the habs lost again. It was expected. To be honest i actually expected it to be worse. There are so many problems with this team other than its inability to score goals & keep the puck out of the net. Right now they’re allowing so many goals per game that if the trend continues they may contend for the most goals allowed by a team in a season. The entire defensive system is a joke. They should be playing a zone type of defense instead of a man to man type of system which St-Louis stubbornly insists they use. Problem is this team isn’t talented enough to play such a system. They look lost out there way too often. People close to some of the players are saying that team morale is already low this early into the season. They were supposed to contend or be ‘in the mix’ this season according to the coach. Now it looks like the only thing they’ll be ‘in the mix’ for is the basement. Again. Last night a former scout was said that he’d be shocked if Xehaj would still be in Mtl two years from now. He even advised not to buy one of his jerseys if he were a fan. He’s seen as a 7th or 8th defenceman on a terrible defence. There are teams out there who’d be happy to have him & he realizes this. The kid wants to play. It wouldn’t surprise me if he demands a trade pretty soon if he hasn’t already.
I’ll tell you what the biggest problem is & some of you have probably noticed this already: the most qualified & experienced coach of the entire organization isn’t part of the habs coaching staff. He’s in Laval. He’s former Blue Jackets coach Pascal Vincent who also excelled coaching in junior hockey for many years. Right now he has the Rocket playing great hockey & i don’t think they’ve even lost a game yet. This guy will soon be back coaching elsewhere in the NHL if the habs don’t bring him up. With Patrick Roy struggling badly on Long Island & Lou Lamoriello known for being impulsive at times if the Isles don’t turn this thing around don’t be surprised if old Lou doesn’t give Pascal Vincent a call!
I’ll tell you what the biggest problem is & some of you have probably noticed this already: the most qualified & experienced coach of the entire organization isn’t part of the habs coaching staff. He’s in Laval. He’s former Blue Jackets coach Pascal Vincent who also excelled coaching in junior hockey for many years. Right now he has the Rocket playing great hockey & i don’t think they’ve even lost a game yet. This guy will soon be back coaching elsewhere in the NHL if the habs don’t bring him up. With Patrick Roy struggling badly on Long Island & Lou Lamoriello known for being impulsive at times if the Isles don’t turn this thing around don’t be surprised if old Lou doesn’t give Pascal Vincent a call!
He can't keep that pace, only a few demi-gods can. But he's on for one hell of a season, for sure.
He’ll likely end up scoring between 30-40 goals as the season goes along. Anyways what good is he when he causes as many goals as he scores? He’s one of the league’s smallest players, he’s an average skater, he doesn’t backckeck, he doesn’t hit, he doesn’t block shots, makes bad decisions, he’s not a playmaker…but does have a wicked shot.
You didn't mention that he is a pure goal scorer who needs to be fed, meaning he needs Suzuki to stay healthy and keep feeding him.
Small players like him usually run out of gas halfway into a season & often end up getting injured. They are boys playing among big men. Considering all he pretty much does is stand on the left side of the net waiting to be fed of course Suzuki needs to stay healthy & keep feeding him. But i believe his biggest ‘feeder’ will end up Lane Hutson, who may actually be the most skilled player on that team. Anyways this team is still a disaster & not progressing as it should. There is no depth on that team & that’s on the GM. But coaching is a major problem. The only reason Sr-Louis may end up keeping his job until the end of the season is because he’s a french-speaking Quebecer. That’s why most of the fans & the french media still support him. If he’d be an anglophone things would likely be different. Even if he’d be a french-speaking francophone from outside Quebec things would likely be different. People say calm down, they’re still rebuilding. But losing every night & getting scored on by 5 or 6 goals every game isn’t good! If 10 years from now the team still sucks & misses the playoffs will fans still accept failure & tell the detractors to relax? Buffalo hasn’t done anything in 15 years since they started rebuilding & the fans are fed up!
By the way the biggest pure goal scorer in the world is Auston Matthews & he doesn’t wait to be fed. He creates many of his own chances & has also become one of the top defensive players in the game. He now plays on the #1 penalty killing unit, blocks shots, wins faceoffs, plays both sides of the ice & is always a massive scoring threat whenever he has the puck in the offensive zone. Cole Caufield plays on one of the worse teams in hockey & may not even have a spot on Team USA in the upcoming 4 Nations tournament.
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This should not matter but sadly, coaches who speak French are given a pass when things go bad on them. St. Louis lives in Connecticut just like I do, but I don't think I would get the same pass he does.
Yes & no. Habs fans & french sports media have also been tough on some french-speaking coaches in the past. Mario Tremblay, Jacques Martin, Claude Julien & even Michel Therrien didn’t have it easy. Pat Burns was well-liked. Guy Carbonneau & Jacques Lemaire had their moments. Martin St-Louis seems to be getting a pass because he literally came out of nowhere, he speaks extremely well & the fact they were expected to lose for a few years surely helped. The gact he was a french-speaking NHL superstar from Quebec of course is a huge reason why the other guys i mentioned didn’t get the same red carpet treatmemt. But now people are starting to wonder if the organization isn’t taking advantage of their patience. Fans are finally realizing that a rebuild doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be a contending team in a few years. As i mentioned the Sabres are a dozen years into their rebuild & are still a bad team. The Sens look promising but past results haven’t turned out as successful as fans expected. Maybe this is finally the year they’ll return to the playoffs but if they do it will likely be in the final playoffs spot ajead of either the Islanders or the Bruins, who have equally been surprisingly awful. Will Pittsburgh make the playoffs with its aging lineup of past superstars? Goaltending seems to be a big problem there. The Oilers finally made a good playoffs run last season after a dozen or more years of sucking but lucky for them the likely best hockey player to ever play hockey was on their team. And his linemate Leon Draisaitl is a likely top 5 player in the league.
Indeed rebuilds can work. Chicago & Pittsburgh have shown you can win a Cup by rebuilding. Toronto & the Rangers have shown you can contend for a Cup for a few years after rebuilding. But often there are no guarantees. A team must draft properly & a lot of luck is also needed such as being able to draft high (top 3) and draft a generational player (Mario Lemieux,, Sidney Crosby, Connor Mcdavid, Alex Ovechkin, Auston Matthews, etc). Adding franchise players like Patrick Kane, Evgeni Malkin, Leon Draisatl, Steven Stamkos & Nikita Kucherov also is a key to success. Finding a great franchise goaltender is often a key: M-A Fleury, Vasilevski, Shesterkin, Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy, etc.
Anyways i’m off to watch my favorite AHL team (Laval Rocket) who are facing Providence (Bruins AHL team) tonight at the beautiful Place Bell which is in my opinion the top arena in the AHL. The Rocket is playing great under a real NHL-calibre coach like Pascal Vincent, the top coach in the entire Habs organization. The Rocket is an extremely well-coached team & have a strong goaltending tandem. Go Rocket!
Well, that’s not very accurate, do you really believe Ruel, Tremblay, Lemaire, Therrien, Julien and Ducharme got a special treatment? When their time came to an end, were all getting crucified by the medias during their last year.
Therrien and Julien were both hired and fired twice by Montreal. What other teams do this? If their crucifixions were so bad, why did they come back for more? No other professional sports team I can think of hires back coaches who were unceremoniously fired. The Yankees did with Billy Martin, but he was fired the first time for personally insulting the owner, and not losing. I believe Therrien and Julien were hired back because they were French guys who were viewed as being able to handle the things that need to be handled- French media, fans etc. That they were losers who were unceremoniously fired in their prior stints was a lesser concern. When it turned out that they couldn't overachieve with the teams they were handed, they were shown the door, again. Julien replaced Therrien not once but twice, only to follow Therrien out the door. each time, repeating the disgrace of his prior tenure as Therrien had. Again, what North American professional team has done this even once let alone twice in the last 20 years. Answer; nobody.
Maybe they should try hiring a talented Anglophone young coach. It might help. You don't need to speak French to know how to coach hockey or lead young men.
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It's done my buddy and I got tickets to see Rangers - Habs November 30 in Madison Square Garden!!!! Tickets were $378.88 (USD) each. Looking forward to seeing this game!!!!!
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