Moore's Dividends Have Had Their Say In Habs Winning Streak
by Robert L on Mar 15, 2010 11:29 AM EDT
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Alphabetically in Canadiens history, Dominic Moore's surname sits between greats Dickie Moore and Howie Morenz, and that would be where any comparision would slam into a wall. No one is about to confuse the Habs latest acquisition with legends of Canadiens' lore. In time he may have much less in common with alphabetical buddies such as Pete Morin or Dave Morrisette, unless time proves he was simply passing through the Canadiens organization.
Count me in as one who hopes to see more Moore next season, as I find him to be the perfect addition for this team down the middle.
For the time being though, the pre-trade deadline pickup of Moore looks to have been one very asute move by new Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier, who sought to improve the Habs depth wise rather than with a top end acquisition. Moore, a centerman with a savvy knack on faceoffs, has solidified the team's third line, which gains in confidence with each passing game.
In nine games thus far with Montreal, Moore has potted a pair of goals to go along with seven assists, two coming in Saturday's crucial game against the Bruins. Typical of the player, none of his goals or assists have been of the highlight reel variety, most being the workmanlike efforts of an on the ball and persistent pest.
Moore is the kind of relentless pursuant opponants feel breathing down their necks. Anaheim's Ryan Getlaf could attest to this. Late in the March 7 contest against the Ducks, Getlaf slipped up on a loose puck in the Duck's corner, and before he knew it, Moore had swept in, with one motion feeding the abandonned disc to Brian Gionta, who made no mistake in beating Jonas Hiller. Moore's heads up play keyed the Canadiens comeback.
With out that sort of alertness by Moore, late in a game seemingly lost, the Canadiens are not riding a five game winning streak presently.
Moore's presence on the ice has best been felt by linemates Travis Moen and Sergei Kostitsyn, who is playing his best hockey of the season with three goals in his last two games. Moen ended a 33 game drought against Edmonton, alongside Moore, bringing his season total to 8 goals. Curiously, in many of the plays in which his linemates shine, Moore is out of sight, having done the invisable work away from the plays that often leads to goals at opposite sides and ends.
With speed and tenacity, Moore's best assets, he enables transition from within his own end, often by slowing up opposing centers on the turnaround. If we are seeing Kostitsyn flying up high, it is because Moore is handling the work down low.
Another benefit of the addition of Moore had been the assigning of proper minutes to the remainder of his third and fourth line compatriots. Against Boston on Saturday, Moore played 13:13, Kostitsyn 11:38 and Moen 13:30. The fourth line of Glen Metropolit, Maxim Lapierre and Mathieu Darche all fell into the 11 minute range.
As the playoffs near, the minute distribution becomes a key factor in how coaches can successfully manage their bench. With solidified and defined third and fourth line roles, Habs coach Jacques Martin has more interesting options at hand, while less cold bodies translates into a warmer team on the whole.
It is something everyone concerned can get used to.
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Hockey is a game about finding the right balance. All year we’ve been short key players… the brass figured the team needed another top 6 forward right off the bat. They made the Latendresse for Pouliot deal and that has helped solve that issue. We were short our top d-man: pretty much impossible to figure out, but they did get Bergeron to help keep the PP dangerous in Markov’s absence. The team sputters along for most of the first 4 months of the year… even Markov’s return doesn’t produce a remarkable turnaround because the team is short on healthy wingers in January.
Now the team is still short Cammalleri, but with a healthy Gionta and Pouliot back it’s just one piece missing, really, and an obstacle the team can overcome. When Moore first came, the team was short both Cammalleri and Pouliot, as well as Markov again. Moore, in combination with those 3 players returning, gives us our best lineup to date. Cammalleri will be a great addition to solidify a pretty rock solid foundation. He won’t eat severely into the minutes of any of those guys you mention, except for the 4th line guys (especially Darche’s sudden PP time). And this 3rd line will make the top two lines fresher in general… too much had been asked of Plekanec, Gomez and Gionta at many times this year (tough 5 on 5 minutes, big minutes on both special teams units). Moen-Moore-Sergei is a prototypical 3rd line: good forechecking ability, responsible defensively, and all 3 are good PKers. Finally, Sergei can offer the kind of natural scoring ability to take advantage of the mistakes that the unit forces other teams into.
Moore wasn’t on my list of 3rd line centres, but I knew we needed a new one, and I’m glad he was found.
Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.
“the brass figured the team needed another top 6 forward right off the bat. They made the Latendresse for Pouliot deal and that has helped solve that issue.”
An interesting point of view, given that Lats was, and still is, a more productive forward than Pouliot. Latendresse was traded due to the coach’s complete inability to get him to produce and his insistence on trying to make him worse by forcing him into a less-effective style. There’s no reason to believe he could not have been a top-6 forward for Montreal, he’s not producing all that much more for Minnesota than he did for Montreal last year (the difference being high shooting luck and additional ice time), and quite frankly the Habs are incredibly lucky Pouliot turned into a NHL player when his planed touched down.
On the team in general, Moore has been a great addition and has addressed an area of need as the third-line center, but he didn’t exactly fix the main problem. I still think this team could be very good if it had a coach capable of instilling a reasonably decent 5-on-5 game. This remains an area of major weakness for the Habs, who continue to compensate for poor puck possession with goaltending and some amount of shooting skill/luck. Given that it was the #1 thing Martin needed to address, I continue to be sorely disappointed by his tenure.
As far as Latendresse for Pouliot, its a little too soon to judge that one. However, I think its fair to say we’ve made worse trades. Lats wasn’t going to pan out here by the time he left, and Pouliot seems to have found a niche. The way I look at it thus far, its two players who didn’t mesh with their original teams’ style of play.
I’m not sure the 5-on-5 is all Martin. In one preseason preview I saw, the writers doubted our forewards’ ability to hold up over the season in this regard (I wish, I wish, I wish I had a link! Sorry!). Anyways, the problem cited was that the lack of size could lead us to chasing the puck too much, and when we have gotten into trouble, that’s often been the case. My feelings of Martin are mixed, and he does have an infuriating habit of pulling back, rather than going for the kill, but he has seemed to brought a little stability to the locker room at least. I don’t see him as a coach getting it done long-term, however.
Moore’s certainly done his bit though, and the team’s starting to show signs of occasional confidence (heavens!). If they can keep building on that, the shot counter should continue to go down, and the boys should be in the playoffs.
by westcoasthabs on Mar 15, 2010 8:44 PM EDT up reply actions
Latendresse HAD panned out — last year. Martin crashed and burned him, but he was hardly the only young player to struggle under the new coach and that’s a coach issue, not a player issue. He’s not doing much for Minnesota he couldn’t do for the Habs, except they give him better icetime over there. Had Martin handled Latendresse with a modicum of sense instead of trying to force him into a style that would have made him into a worse player, say a Tomas Holmstrom, he might have had 25 goals for the Habs now.
I’m not sure if the Habs knew that Pouliot had a chance to break out when they traded a useful NHLer with upside for a guy who had, to this point, been an AHLer/draft bust. But honestly, I’m inclined to peg Pouliot’s breakout mostly on luck from the standpoint of the Habs. By all rights, it should have been a terrible trade, but the Habs lucked out.
The 5-on-5 is absolutely on Martin and his ineffectual, supposedly-defensive “system”. While I understand that the roster isn’t perfect, it is nonetheless loaded with players who have been strong even-strength performers previously, and even if the size issue should prove to be a problem (hard to see in Martin’s passive system) I feel it’s grossly overblown. Honestly, I feel half the analysts who point to the size as a major factor for the Habs do so out of laziness, because blaming Montreal’s lack of size is an easy, plausible-sounding answer that doesn’t require any research. Just like they pointed to it during the Flyers series even when the most cursory inspection would have shown the notion to be a myth and the problem to be elsewhere entirely.
I would have expected the Habs to be, at worst, “vaguely below average” 5-on-5, with hopes for more… but what we got was “bottom 5 in NHL”. If not outright “worst 5-on-5 team in hockey” for long stretches. The first would, combined with the excellence of special teams and goaltending, have put the Habs firmly in a playoff spot. But what we got is… frankly, I feel Carbonneau did better with worse players in that area and he was hardly a strong coach.
I’m not trying to attack Latendresse. I felt he was a great player all along. However, sometimes, for a variety of reasons, players simply don’t play to their potential. It could be coaching. It could be attitude. It could simply be the type of linemates he’s given. I agree with what you have to say about the lack of icetime. If you look at the post I made on Matt D’Agostini, I raised the question about whether or not we are doing a disservice to our younger offensive players by giving them limited defensive roles.
The fact is, after parts of three seasons here, Latendresse was probably happier than anyone to be out of here. He was misused, by both Carbonneau and Martin. In earlier seasons, everyone was harping on his lack of defensive responsibility. He responded by playing in a more defensive role, and then everyone complained about his lack of offensive output. Pick one. The coaches failed in defining a role for him, and he got frustrated.
As for 5 on 5, I think the issue is overblown. The team IS small up front- that’s a fact, not a ‘lazy excuse’. However, it doesn’t help that Martin seems to play extremely conservatively at times. It hurts the team’s best asset, which is speed. However, he also plays a system which demands players adhere to their defensive assignments, which allows for lots of long shots from the outside, but few from the slot. Again, if you don’t like his system, that’s fine, but we knew what we were getting in Martin, so its a moot point.
Finally, our roster isn’t that great, even when everyone’s healthy. Its okay. We got two decent top-two lines, two good checking lines, and an average defense corps. Our goalies our our greatest strength, along with speed up front. So our team plays conservatively, and tries to score off the rush. We’ve had a ton of injuries, which always screws a team up, particularly one which had a wholesale change of personnel in the offseason. Martin’s done fine in my books. He gave the team a simple system to play, which caters to our team’s strengths. My only quibble is that he still is too conservative, but that’s something to look at in the offseason.
by westcoasthabs on Mar 16, 2010 11:34 PM EDT up reply actions
he’s not producing all that much more for Minnesota than he did for Montreal last year
What Matt is saying, is that Gui is producing at the same goals per icetime ratio as he was last season, something I have noted here in the past as well.
En autre mots, too bad would couldn’t have traded D’Agostini for Pouliot.
Moore in NY
Just finished watching the Habs beat NYR on Versus. Moore was very good. The whole team played a great disciplined game. A suprising stat, since the Olympic resumption of play, the Habs were a +9 in 5 on 5 play, the highest in the league for that span. I credit much of that with the insertion of Moore into the lineup. The 3rd and 4th lines were our big minus collectors, now they are plussing up and chipping in offensively. The Moore addition has created the right third line, a great skater to go along with a playmaker and a grinder. Sign him up for next year if possible!
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