Disastrous Weekend Paints A Gloomy Playoff Picture For Habs

Because he needed to get younger, especially at forward, and needed more NHL talent on defense.

A lot of noise has been made of the high turnover and how Gainey “ripped the team apart”, but most of the players that got cycled out were bottom-pairing D-men and bottom-6 forwards. The number of truly important players that got replaced is much shorter, and included players who were really one-year rentals (though I don’t think Tanguay was originally meant to be one). In terms of “winning more games” I think the plan was to get better 5-on-5 forwards to improve the team’s subpar 5-on-5 game, keep on trucking with superior special teams, and replicate the 07-08 formula of being a decent-good 5-on-5 team and using the PP to get over the top. Good plan, IMHO, even if the execution failed badly — the Habs are a very poor 5-on-5 team, but I don’t think they should be given their roster.

The top forwards who were replaced were old (Kovalev, Lang), prematurely aged (Koivu), or deemed to be a bad fit for nebulous reasons (Tanguay). The forward unit was rebuilt around Kostitsyn and Plekanec, who were the engine of the 07-08 season and the reason the Habs were a decent-to-good 5-on-5 team that year. The idea was to get younger guys who could grow with the young vets and the up-and-coming kids, such as Sergei Kostitsyn, Latendresse (now Pouliot) and Pacioretty (whose readiness was probably over-evaluated). Even if Koivu, Kovalev, and say Lang had been retained, we’d have had to go through this process in a couple of years, so it made sense to get started now so the new core would have a few years to mesh.

On D, there are several prospects who are still a year or two away, so the signings (Gill, Mara) were mostly stopgap designed to increase the unit’s ability level (outside of Komisarek, the replaced players were the likes of Bouillon, Dandenault, Brisebois, etc.) Spacek was brought in as a top-4 D-man to replace Komisarek, and to bring in much-needed transition passing skill, which might be useful if Martin was able/willing to implement that crisp transition game he’s famous for. In 2-3 years, this unit will presumably be headlined by Markov and Subban, Hamrlik is likely to be gone, and Spacek might well be patrolling the second pairing with Carle or Weber.

I’ve always felt the “ripping the team apart” bit was misconstrued as “trying to buy a team through free agency” and was really a long-term approach intrinsically built around the team’s youth. This isn’t a case of trading youth for old hands here. Gainey willingly gave up one young vet who was no longer in the plans (Higgins) and one prospect (McDonagh) for his makeover. The only other young guy he lost was Komisarek — and he tried to retain Komisarek but Komi decided he’d rather leave, perhaps not such a bad thing in retrospect. All in all, the team actually got younger. It seems worse than it is because Spacek is taking the much younger Komisarek’s minutes, but Bouillon, Breezer, and Dandy were all over 30.

Cap flexibility is very precious to pundits and bloggers, but I think it’s clear that NHL GMs do not value it nearly as highly. Cap flexibility (lots of very short-term contract) is ultimately what led to all this turnaround last off-season, after all.

The makeover was going to have to happen sooner or later due to the age of the players involved, and sooner was always going to be better so the team had more time to mesh together. What made it particularly striking was that so many players were replaced in one year — if the moves had been staggered over three years the effect would have been similar but wouldn’t have struck our imaginations so much.

As far as natural scorers go, Cammalleri isn’t very big but he certainly delivers. But that’s beside the point, I know.

I think in hindsight I wonder if Bob wasn’t over-optimistic when it comes to the bottom of the lineup. Kids like D’Agostini, SKost and Pacioretty will, at some point in time, be valuable NHLers, but they are not right now. Not only that, but they need to be surrounded by quality player, otherwise they simply bleed chances, territorial advantage, whatever else is needed to win a hockey game. They already can contribute from time to time but between them and a fringe NHLer (Lapierre), two solid vet (Métro and Moen) and an over the hill brawler (guess who?) and a converted D-Man (Bergie), this is a terrible bottom-6 and we just don’t have enough torque in the top-6 to compensate. In an ideal world, we’d have 2 of these guys replaced by Moen/Métro type, veterans who are no great shakes but understand their role and can be relied on to never stray from the game plan, no matter what.

And then, there is the “system”. But I beleive whatever said system is about, having a few less kids running around the ice would help it look better. Methinks Darche being recalled instead of one of the youngsters is a telling sign.