Wow! The Bitter Maple Laughs Fan Thread!

[Esco!]

The Leafs were playing their 3rd game in 4 nights and they ran out of gas at the middle of the 2nd period.

This is why I now hate hockey, they play way too many games, the season goes on till June (who wants to watch hockey in 20C weather??), trap teams have killed high scoring matches, every rinky dink village in the U.S. now has an NHL team, half the league makes the playoffs....etc...etc

Thank you Mr. Betmann for ruining hockey, you've accomplished the exact reverse of what you intended, the NHL is now much less popular in the U.S, you lost your lucrative TV deal with ESPN and the game has become a joke under you.

 

[Esco!]

As for your final statement that the league has become less popular in the States under Bettman, i tend to disagree. Hockey has never been popular in the States in the first place. It's always been a regional sport. Popular in some regions of the country, not in most of the others.

But it was Betmann who was supposed to change all that and make the NHL mainstream
across North america.
Not only did he fail at that but he's lost audiences in strongholds.
Me an ex-Toronto fan being one of them

 

[joelcairo]

Go Islanders go! (Unfortunately though, they're playing a real team, not TO or Mtl.)

 

[JustBob]

That was awesome. Devils tie it with 0.8 seconds left in the 3rd but Isles win in shootout.

Bye bye Leafs.

 

[Cosmo]

Well,justice have been served.Neither Montreal or the Laughs deserved beign in the playoffs.
The Islanders did everything to get by.They went and aquired Smyth who's a playoff guy,not to mention everybody thought they were dead meat when they lost Dipietro.

 

[joelcairo]

Well,justice have been served.Neither Montreal or the Laughs deserved beign in the playoffs.
The Islanders did everything to get by.They went and aquired Smyth who's a playoff guy,not to mention everybody thought they were dead meat when they lost Dipietro.

Exactly right Cosmo.

 

[gohabsgo]

It was Begin who knocked out Dipietro, and Begin whose bonehead penalty cost Montreal the playoffs

 

[Cosmo]

It was Begin who knocked out Dipietro, and Begin whose bonehead penalty cost Montreal the playoffs

You guys should quit blaming 3rd and 4th liners as well as golies(Huet did his best,Halak is a minor leager).
Blame the so-called leaders instead.Koivu had ups and downs all season,Kovalev more downs than ups Samsonov a total waste,Bonk way overrated,Souray lives for the PP.
The Habs wern't eleminated Saturday as far as I'm concerned,they were eliminated the day Carbo benched Rivet.

 

[Doggyluver]

see ya Leafs....LOL

 

[DavidWeb]

It was 30deg.C I had a beautiful girl lying on me with incredible curves and a dumb a* next to us was talking about playoffs drinking beer. LOL

Having her tongue in my mouth while my hand was on her ass was giving me a real hard on. Bettman ? Sundin, Carbonneau, etc... NOT !

Quick suggestions :
hfboards, hockeyforum, hockeydraft, etc...

 

[z/m(Ret)]

Well,justice have been served.Neither Montreal or the Laughs deserved beign in the playoffs.
The Islanders did everything to get by.They went and aquired Smyth who's a playoff guy,not to mention everybody thought they were dead meat when they lost Dipietro.

Totally agree. Came a point in the season when Habs needed only to play .500 to reach a playoff spot but lamentably failed to do so. It's dependency on goalies' performance caught up to the team sooner than expected: Huet's status of a reliable #1 goalie remains unproven as we saw before he got injured and Abby's barely a 3rd hand goalie. Halak responded well under the circumstances but overalll, Habs goalies were average at best this year.

Veterans were downright awful except, to a certain extent, Koivu, who had a good season. Samsonov and Kovalev were a fiasco and Souray's high-scoring performance shows a -28 differential (the team's worst - I would keep markov over Souray if I'd have to choose).

Gainey, wow! Ribeiro for Niinimaa Rivet for Gorges says it all!

The only thing going for the Habs are the youngsters: Higgins, Latendresse, Plekanec, Ryder (if he would only learn to pass the puck once in a while) and Mark Streit.

Offseason tasklist: buy Samsonov's contract back (@ 2/3 the residual value); trade Kovalev (how?); sign Markov, let Souray and all the other unrestricted FA's go, sign Higgins, get Daniel Brière.

Oh yeah, this is the Laughs thread... How ironical: all this hype over the final showdown -vs- Montreal only to be eliminated the next day by the deserving Isles in SO.

This team is not meant to win anything.

 

[z/m(Ret)]

1. Hindsight is always 20/20 and yes habs were dreadful on the road of late but they should have played Halak vs toronto.

Agreed. I believe I wrote somewhere on the Habs thread that the chances of beating TO are better with Halak in nets. The result doesn't prove me right or wrong in any way but Halak would have been my choice for the reasons you explained.

Rivet is a free agent this season. Would he come back to montreal after the way he was treated?

I think it didn't take Rivet long to take a liking to winning, which is what the Sharks are doing, so my guest is he wouldn't come back.