Fifth Straight Habs Loss Colours 2009-10 Chemistry Experiment A Bust
by Robert L on Dec 18, 2009 2:01 AM EST
30 comments
Many valiant heroes sometimes go down with a ship. On the 2009-10 Canadiens, there have been consistent and considerable efforts from many elements, but the sum is weaker than the whole of its parts. There have been great individual seasons and respectable showings so far. One only has to think of the resurgent Tomas Plekanec, the beaten to death but still kicking (until Jersey) Roman Hamrlik, the captivating Mike Cammalleri, the heroic, for a spell, Brian Gionta, and the often maligned and occasionally faultering backbone that is Carey Price. Give a good grade to Travis Moen for his gutsy play. A "nice to finally see ya" for Andrei Kostitsyn. A positive nod to overused warrior Glen Metropolit. Respect for the mostly consistent Jaroslav Spacek and the dependable Josh Gorges. Max Pacioretty is a kid that is coming around at 20, slowly but sure. When properly employed, Hal Gill's a good guy to have around. Sergei Kostitsyn has his moments, competes but fails to complete. Paul Mara has delivered what was expected of him in terms of toughness. For the rest.... On this Canadiens team, there are plenty of good intentions to go around, but it all comes back down to the weak sum of the parts. A crooked and twisted notion, is that these Habs strike no fear. They aren't difficult to play against, as was billed and hoped. They give it their all, but cannot win many individual battles. When they attempt aggressiveness, they spend the game parading to the penalty box. On the offensive, they buzz around like mosquitos without stingers, rarely drawing blood, nevermind fouls. They are in sum a team that can't win the puck, that can't maintain possession of it , and cannot back down opponents. In a word....screwed! A hockey player is alot like a child. They are gonna be what they are gonna be. When it comes to habits, traits and tendencies, it is easier to change players than it is to change a player. The most depressing note on that, is that such a cleaning of house was what got this team here in the first place. Wanting a passive player to be more aggressive's kinda like wanting a blonde to be a brunette. A shift ot two might offer a different colour, but the roots always grow back in. I don't want to see this team blown up for a second year running. We tried that already and it has been a giant step sideways. Scott Gomez, the first player added to the mix, has been everything cement is supposed to be. Cammalleri and Gionta have balls bigger than the pucks they fire, but will never be the difference makers in the trenches. Plekanec, surely the Habs most rounded player, is a containable asset when not surrounded by players with more killer instinct. Andrei K, playing his best hockey while the team is all achors, is the poster boy for several other enigmas on the team. Price, with the right kind of team in front of him, has all the attributes to win and win big. On this team, in this city, his best friend will be his psychologist. These Canadiens may work very hard, but they work badly because they haven't the required skills, the physical composition, or the mindset to sustain the type of effort required to win more games than they lose. That, and no discernable leadership, does not help. All the individual attributes of the players add up to one very ordinary team. One many fans couldn't get excited about from the get - go. The game of hockey will always be one of unstoppable forces versus immovable objects. It's down to speed versus size, and too much of one without enough of the other doesn't cut it. The top teams in the NHL are always prepared to suffer in order to win. Size, and perhaps the fear of further injuries, prevents these Canadiens from becoming a top team. The most depressing notion is that they cannot shed their shin, just as a blonde cannot ever truly become the brunette they wished they were. Remember that old "OFF" repellent commercial, where the dude sprays his arm with the chemical and inserts it into a plexiglass box and the insects lay off? What constructive evidence of the 2009-10 Habs testifies that they can draw blood? Remember Bob Gainey's playing card analogy of a few years back, something to do with a hand loaded with deuces and threes making it hard to bluff, or something along those lines? In a hockey reality of aces and kings....oh just nevermind. The mid season point is starring this club down with more dread than hope. A seven game road trip, on the lip of a five game losing streak, hangs like a death knell over this season. On the road against clubs this Canadiens edition could conceivably beat - Islanders, Thrashers, Hurricanes, Maple Leafs, Senators, Lightning and Panthers - the Habs must win at least 6 out of 7 or its all over folks. The Canadiens have a combined home and away record of 7-5 against these foes so far this season. I'd love to find a positive spin to offer on the next 14 days of this Canadiens' season, but I don't believe in miracles, voodoo, ghosts, kewpie dolls, spells, magical creams, Quebec virgins, luck, Zimmerman, the return of Markov, global warming, superstition, lotions, copper bracelets, pyramids, prayer, the power of positive thinking, faith healing or hypnotism. And I'm a fuckin' optimist! The 2009-10 Canadiens chemistry experiment has been a bust. Would you prefer that it is admitted now, or in three years time? It's meat, my friends. Time to stick a fork in its butt and turn it over. Robert L note: Sorry for not bothering to post a single pic or link with this post, but I felt this one needed to be delivered in plain old black and white.
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who's losing credibility?
Robert,
If you end up being right, your outbursts of pessimism will make sense in a few weeks/months, and my credibility is shot.
However, the long list of positives about this team you began your post with makes more sense to me than the busty, meaty conclusions you draw, your climate change denial, or your disbelief that the return of the Hab’s best player will make a huge difference to the sum of the parts. He is one of the best catalysts in the league, after all.
That being said, you asked for more concrete reasons to believe. I offer three, in order of importance:
1) Andrei has arrived, and it looks to be more than a blip – this is almost as important as the return of Pleks, and bodes very well for the games and months ahead.
2) None of the loses on this streak have been blow outs, and many could have easily been victories (even though we have been playing poorly in those same games) – that is a very different beast from October’s five game slide.
3) Martin has his defensive system working now, however imperfectly. It can only continue to sink in and improve with time, as long as the injury monster settles the heck down. Most important about this, IMHO, is that with the fundamentals covered, Martin can focus his energies on turning the sub-par performance near-wins of the past two weeks into the 6 victories you are calling for leading into the New Year.
I bet we get at least 5 of em.
Merry Christmas :)
by patience is a virtue on Dec 18, 2009 7:54 AM EST reply actions
All the best to you as well my friend.
Really and truly, it’s more and more difficult to write about what I hope for over what I feel and see. In all this, quite honestly, my cred is the very least of concerns. That they come up short so often testifies to the work ethic of several guys and the shortcomings of the whole. I’ve seen enough of everyone involved to have extremely serious doubts. If I were to be proven wrong I’d be absolutely thrilled.
I dunno. Me, I don’t think there is a real roster problem, and I’ve been blaming the coach all year for the passive collapsing system, absent transition game, lack of puck possession, and other problems. But more importantly, everyone who has picked a scapegoat or bemoaned the “chemistry experiment” still has to admit — we’ve been watching a 45-million-or-less team try to deal with playing in a 56-million league, and it’s turning out to be difficult. Last game they didn’t do too badly, and that was with almost fifteen million on the shelf.
Before I call the 09-10 chemistry experiment a bust, I’d like to see it with something resembling all its ingredients.
Dealing with those missing elements is a constant in hockey. While Markov has been out, certain players have pulled up slack, heroically in some quarters, but without a dominant player who can carry the team, what we see is what we get I think.
Just imagine if Plekanec were to go down!
Have a fun and safe Christmas season amigo.
We can keep cleaving to the players’ spiel that injuries-are-not-an-excuse. Players have to say that, so they don’t get accused of looking for excuses to hide behind.
We’re not players, so we can dispense with the excuse of not finding excuses, and be realistic a bit. I don’t care if a team has a dominant player or not, if a GM puts a 45-million roster - or, lately, less- we would not expect that team to do too well. And a 45-million team would be designed to function that way. When a team spends most of the season with a 45 million salary cap by accident, while the rest of the league’s cap is 56 million, I don’t think how it can remotely be considered reasonable NOT to expect a big letdown.
The primary characteristic of a good team is health. To say that injuries to guys like Gionta, Markov, and last night Hamrlik is something that should be fought through so that it should have no ill effects is really rather silly when you think about it. You can hope for that in the short term, but eventually it will catch up to you.
If it didn’t, owners might start wondering why you’re using 10 million of their money on players that don’t make a difference!
I’ve never subscribed to the mindset that injuries aren’t a valid reason. They always are and always will be. It is understandable that players choose not to employ such as excuses.
Case in point: I’ve often maintained than the difference between the 2007-08 first place Habs and the 2008-09 eighth place team (11 point dif) was essentially injuries to many key players.
Now injuries notwithstanding, teams still need to find ways to win. Yes this edition comes close to winning games and gives an A for effort, but in whole, I don’t find the composition of this club to have what it takes to win during the tougher half of this schedule. Points are getting harder to come by and the Canadiens record is worse than it looks.
Misleading illusion number one is all those points added in OT and shootouts. The Canadiens have won but seven of 36 games in regulation, four of which were practically handed to them by dead legged Senators, Islanders, Bruins and Flyers squads having off nights. One impressive win in Washington came from the skin of it’s teeth.
This team doesn’t scare anyone but it’s own fans!
Oh god, please tell me you’re not going to join Gabe’s OT record obsession. Already the whole OT-is-pure-luck thing has trouble with the plain old smell test, but even if it turns out to be true, looking at it at the expense of all else isn’t conductive to getting a fair picture.
Case in point: the Habs are 8-3 in overtime. They’re also 1-6 in regulation one-goal game, which is also pretty much a factor of luck. The two mostly cancel out (9-9 actually). Before the game against the Wild they were .429 in one-goal game, .429 in two-goal games, and .429 in three-plus-goal games.
Yes, it’s flukey to be 8-3 in overtime and 1-6 in close regulation game, but what it’s not is ‘lucky’ or ‘misleading’. The Habs’ record is right where it should be. There’s nothing misleading about it. I could easily turn it around and say they were unlucky not to be able to turn some of those close regulation losses into overtime losses.
One would think a .429 team would be disheartening enough without having to pile on excuses to think things are worse than they really are.
Actually come to think of it, the way the standings are set up it’s better to be 1-6 in overtime and 8-3 in regulation one-goal game than the reverse. The Habs have been unlucky. (That makes at least as much sense as the other argument.)
I’m kinda tempted to agree with Desjardin’s basic premise. But the thing is, as you so keenly oberved, all those OT wins came at a time we were outshooting and outchancing the opposition. We were unlucky then.
Whe got lucky since the beginning of November tough; that we managed to rack up points despite being so badly outshot (the outshooting being mostly a result of the almost complete obliteration of our ability to, y’know, shoot) tells me lady luck (and Carey Price) swung our way.
Don’t get me wrong, his basic premise is right — I don’t think overtime is quite a 50-50 coin toss, but it does give the weaker team a very good chance to win a game that it wouldn’t have over the course of a regulation. And certainly an 8-0 post-regulation record can’t be achieved without a goodly amount of luck during that portion of the game.
I just don’t think you can go from there to tossing away everything that happens in OT as irrelevant or the product of pure luck, or call a team’s season ‘lucky’ on the sole basis of their OT record. I think OT icetime is still valid hockey icetime and the data from that icetime is relevant, and I think that if you evaluate a team’s season you need to evaluate it in its entirety, not merely on one factor. That’s all.
Not surprised at all!
Just think, we will more than likely end up less than 75 points in the regular season and end up in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, if not deeper while Toronto will probably be 10 point s ahead of us, in my opinion.
I made this prediction in the beginning of the season about where we would end up and how I was fearful of Toronto as the season progresses. Everybody laughed and heckled me but whose going to have the last laugh?
Be very scared Habs fans, we are heading into many dark and misery seasons.
I can handle the truth, but can the rest of you?
Bob Gainey and others in the organization must go!
We will win the Cup only with a mature Carey Price in the nets
75 points or less would put us in a lottery pick scenario…. we won’t be anywhere close to 10th in the East.
Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.
Right now 8th in the East is shaping up to require 82 points. That’s eighty-two, not ninety-two like we usually see. The bottom teams in the East are really, really inept this year.
If any one of those teams can get on a roll they can run away with the 8th spot, and that’s what I think will happen.
The east stinks this year, lucky for us.
Now, Markov is back. I’m not planning the parade, but I certainly look forward to having him (and hopefully Hamrlik) in the lineup. I’ll wait a bit more before I pronounce the season torpedoed.
The difference between a first pairing of Hamrlik-Spacek and a second pairing of Hamrlik-Spacek could be profound… or at least, we all hope so. ;)
Never say never.
So you and others believe that we make it by the skin of our teeth for an 8th place finish? Then what? Another first round exit?
What have we accomplished in 5 years under Bob Gainey?
Uh-uh, I don’t buy it.
We are not the team that we want them to be, the young guns who excelled several years ago are nothing more than your average players who would be nothing more than 4th liners on other teams.
Glad to see Markov back, but he alone cannot turn this team around.
This team is not consistent and will not make the playoffs, and if you and others believe they will, they will be nothing more than a beat up, physical exhausted team heading into the playoffs.
We will win the Cup only with a mature Carey Price in the nets
dude, reading you is a bummer.
either your expectations are way too high, or you’re a closet leafs fan planted here to ruin my day. either way, my advice is be patient. enjoy our much improved team, that has struggled to get it together without their General this fall, win more than they lose on this holiday road trip.
if they win a lot more than they lose, maybe you, and all the other temperamental boo birds in the beautiful island city will change your tunes and jump on the bob gainey bandwagon…
Markov is back. Gionta will be soon. and we have the proceeds of a Halak trade to look forward too. oh, and have you all noticed? – the brothers K are in the house. this is about to get fun my friends!
Merry Christmas.
by patience is a virtue on Dec 19, 2009 9:59 PM EST up reply actions
La foi, ou est-elle?
Faith my friends, faith is needed… And good old-fashioned prayer every night before going to bed!!!
On a sad note and I do think it will come back to haunt us, is when we let go of Lang. He was good and he is sure firing on all cylinders in Phoenix… arghhh. A big center and Markov back would be so so so so so so so so nice!
Lang was great for the Habs, but he’s 40 and was on a great shooting run with the Habs. It would be nice to have a big center, but he’s on pace for 40 points.
Oops
Actually he’s thirty-nine this month. And he’s definitely better than nothing!
Okay
To RetroMikey—who’s experiencing schadenfreude over the habs woes this season, and/or are isw some form of masochist.
What do we do? Who takes over? Please explain to me what moves you will make to improve our team?
Yes hockey is a results oriented business. But (as many an economist has pointed out) while we’re busy making our plans and hatching plots to beat the competition we often overlook the fact that so is everybody else (classic line switching at a grocery store example). Gainey’s first five year plan resulted in a first place finish in the conference and then a disappointing playoffs in the penultimate year. The following year injuries hurt the team, but I think we can all agree that the team as of last year was not going to win the cup ( think, for a minute— most would agree that the only way we’d even have a sniff at it would have been for Price or Halak to provide the performance of a lifetime). But before we lambaste Bob, ask yourself how many other G.M.s managed to successfully secure the cup who didn’t have superstar/elite players during that span? Or am I to understand that Koivu and Kovalev were handicapped by Bob on their way to hoisting the cup over the Niedermeyers, Prongers, Datsuks, Zetterbergs, Crosbys and Malkins in the league? I’ve never understood the argument from Habs fans who glory in the tradition of the team and its 100 years but who then seem to think that failure to win a cup over a 5 year term should result in firing/expulsion/lynching.
Recognizing that Gainey set himself the 5 year horizon in his planning I will admit that the five years are over and we’re starting again from the bottom and working our way up.
So I guess the question is: If you are a sane and reasonable person who recognizes that the Stanley Cup is not the sole property of the Montreal Canadiens, that in fact winning it requires levels of planning and committment in the board room and on the ice, are we better at this point of our next five year plan than we were at the beginning of the first.
I would argue that a more experienced Price/Halak in nets, a steadily improving Plekanec (he’s having a great season and now needs the chance to prove himself in the playoffs) the acquisition of Cammaleri (huge!) Gionta’s passion and leadership, and yes even Gomez have us in a much better position going forward.
Or I suppose we can just pretend that we’re not competing against other interests in the league, pretend that every role of the dice should go our way and ignore the sobering fact that the majority of the league’s world beating talent plays on other teams.
If you’ve got the answers and are ready to send somebody to the unemployment line, wave your magic wand and make it all better. I’ll be in the corner watching the game and getting to know the new guys and watching them develop. To me that’s what being a fan is. Not gloating over preseason predictions of doom and gloom and screaming for the head of a general manager who I feel has really helped turn this team around.
Just thinking out loud here...
I just knew the inclusion of Gomez was going to be the least palatable part of my cranky yet weirdly optimistic rant. I do apologize for the crank, not only because I fear being labelled as such, but also because the team’s performance has been less than inspiring.
Regarding Gomez, I know that a lot of people consider him the latest and perhaps most stunning example of Gainey’s mistakes. However, I consider him at this point a push.
For those who would use the gambling metaphor above to further criticize Gainey, I proffer this: Gomez is a loss leader.
We’re losing money on Gomez with his front-page flyer paycheque, but this season we can afford it. Markov’s coming back tonight, and while much has been made of how his absence can improve the team, nowhere have I seen mention that perhaps Gomez should be included in the “Who or What on the Canadiens misses Markov the Most” sweepstakes.
I don’t think anyone would argue that Gomez has at least been able to attack and enter the Off. zone consistently. I like to try and imagine what it would look like if Gomez didn’t have to start his attack from his own blue line. It’s far for a little man to travel without opponents picking him up and it’s that much extra space that he feels the need to be responsible in. This season, I’ve see one selfish penalty on Gomez’ part and it occurred this week. For a guy who’s spent his season so far with 90% of his focus on not being scored on, his 14 penalties in minutes is a respectable number and one I think that further highlights his conscientious play.
Sure we’re losing value on Gomez’ contract, but perhaps a little patience to see if we’re rewarded in other areas is in order.
If Gomez becomes a noose around the neck of the team, I’ll be right behind the folks with torches and pitchforks, but I’m not confident in passing judgement at this point.
I see one thing only when watching him…. a player with fear.
I get and understand every argument you are making for him, but I’ve seen his type fade before. An example wears 19 in Ottawa.
A top line center needs savvy, guts, a bag of trick, creativity, balls, a mean streak at times, some defiance and attitude.
Gomez, in almost every occasion of confrontation, choose the pass path of least resistance. He’s easily predictable.
That’s said, he is indeed very good at some things, but he’s absolutely the opposite of the player needed in that slot and at that salary.
Fair Enough
Robert: I can see your point of view on 91. If and when we manage to land a better player than Gomez at this position I’ll be ecstatic too. Until then, I’ll make lemonade.
Cheers, and Happy Holidays.
Adam
by subdoxastic on Dec 19, 2009 10:11 PM EST up reply actions
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