Game 34 Recap: Habs Drop 3rd Straight
by Kevin van Steendelaar on Dec 19, 2011 9:57 PM EST
in Habs Game Recaps
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I'll make tonight's game summary short and sweet, because that was a worthless game by the Montreal Canadiens.
While Carey Price did his best to give his team a chance to win, a series of bone-headed mistakes cost the team.
- Brutal coverage off a face-off, and Benoit Pouliot scores
- Turnover resulting from P.K. Subban trying to be cute and David Krejci scores
- A turnover buy Travis Moen at the blueline, after the Canadiens were running around in their own end, and Brad Marchand finishes it.
Game over, and as commenter "Punkster" said in the game thread, "and those were the ones that went in."
Scattered in there was Thomas Plekanec's 7th goal of the season and a late third period goal from Erik Cole.
The Canadiens pulled Carey Price with just over a minute to play, but for some reason Randy Cunneyworth opted to go with Raphael Diaz and Chris Campoli as his defensive pairings.
Face it folks, the Habs are on their way to a 20-year Stanley Cup drought, and even if the man who gave us their last Cup was behind the bench next season, he won't win it with this crew.
Bright spots? Lars Eller, Tomas Plekanec and Erik Cole were the only offensive forwards of note, and Tomas Kaberle was their best defenseman. Cunneyworth showcased the fourth line, who were on for the Peverley goal in the first period. Although the 4th line had a solid game, the amount of ice time given to them was beyond comprehension..Maybe it was a message from the coach that there will be no free rides, regardless of talent.
The penalty kill was sharp on a four-minute high sticking minor to Louis Leblanc.
The Habs laid out their share of hits, but Alexei Emelin should have dressed, and if not for injuries Andrei Kostitsyn shouldn't have.
That's it for me tonight. Oh, and the Habs are 0-2 under an anglophone coach this season (rolls eyes).
Winning views at Stanley Cup of Chowder
Advanced Stats: Shift Charts / Head to Head / Corsi & Fenwick
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Going by icetime, 45-15-52 is the third line.
71-81-46 is the fourth line. The fifth line, when Gomez and Gionta come back. Unless Gomez gets slotted behind Eller.
As for faceoffs:
Plekanec +8/-3
Desharnais 0/-5
Nokelainen 0/-5
Eller +2/-2
On the road, ten defensive faceoffs split between Desharnais and Nokelainen versus zero offensive.
Let me reiterate what this means. Desharnais has yet to take an ES faceoff in the offensive zone under Cunneyworth.
I really, really, really don’t get what Cunneyworth is trying to accomplish, but I’m pretty sure I don’t like it.
All I can say is wtf.
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by Andrew Berkshire on Dec 19, 2011 10:04 PM EST up reply actions
Maybe DD was Cunneyworth’s man in Hamilton, but anyone who watched the Habs closely this year wouldn’t have him pegged as a first choice Dzone faceoff man.
WTF indeed.
Could be because DD’s faceoff numbers have been so strong since November. Still weird.
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by Andrew Berkshire on Dec 19, 2011 10:27 PM EST up reply actions
Kostitsyn shouldn’t have dressed??
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by Andrew Berkshire on Dec 19, 2011 10:05 PM EST reply actions
If he’s gonna be playing 11:26, then there’s a case to be made.
Cunneyworth cut his bench halfway through the third. The fourth line did not get a shift after that. And by “fourth line”, I mean 71-81-46.
This sacking of JM is looking worse by the day. I’m really worried about what could happen if Gauthier panics again.
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by Andrew Berkshire on Dec 19, 2011 10:28 PM EST up reply actions
Got to relax a bit here. The guy hasn’t even had a full week as head coach. I think the inconsistencies we see are due to his adjustments to the system. You didn’t believe that he was a coach who values hard-nosed play? How long did he play the grinders again?
I think he is trying to instill in everyone that you have to get dirty to win. DD is a fighter who is good at faceoffs and he has to start getting tougher assignments. All the guys need to be more responsible for both sides of the ice if he can get them to understand that they will stop being pushed around the ice.
by Silvertip on Dec 20, 2011 4:34 AM EST via iPhone app up reply actions
Well, the fourth line did look good last night, as long as they were set up against the Bruins’s 4th.
DD is a fighter who is good at faceoffs, indeed. And we all tend to underestimate him and his ability to adapt and progress, that is true. By any metrics, you look at the kind of results he’s brought forward in the first three months of the season and he has gotten better.
But a defensive center he is not. What you want out of him is offense. Let Plekanec (who has been excellent at this for the last 2+ years) take care of high leverage defensive situations and get some of those on Eller’s shifts too. And let DD pile on the opposition with offensive zone faceoffs.
The point here is that you have to play to players’s actual strengths, not those you wish they had.
I think we all have to keep it cool, see and understand what Cunneyworth is trying to do. But he’s no miracle worker; this is a severly hampered team and, last night, the Bruins didn’t have to break much of a sweat to shrug us off.
It has to be kinda, sorta worriyng.
You didn’t believe that he was a coach who values hard-nosed play? How long did he play the grinders again?
If this sort of thing happens on a regular basis, the language issue is going to be moot. His team is below .500, reeling, and severely short-handed. This is not the time to be sacrificing potential points by passing cute messages that may or may not actually be valuable and throwing players in situation they’re clearly not suited for to try to teach them new things.
It’s only been two games, but it’s two games in which I have been thoroughly unimpressed with the personnel management — which, I note, was one of Martin’s major strengths.
I don’t see Cunneyworth making a statement as much of an issue if he can spark something. The team is coming out flat right now and there needs to be some changes. If that means having a couple of games where some guys get taken out of the comfort zone, and the bottom lines have more responsibility then I am ready to give him a chance to make a change.
Well then he better get back to coaching to win games in a hurry because if he fscks up too many more games, he won’t be coaching in the playoffs.
That depends on your definition of fsks up. It’s harder to get all your guys moving in the same direction than just moving. He can’t punish them in practice because of the road trip and he doesn’t have the time to get more than a few minor tweaks in. One thing I have noticed is more offensive involvement from the D and more of an effort to gain the zone. Does there need to be more? Sure, are the opportunities there? Not really. Give them time I would rather see them miss the playoffs battling than squeaking in on a point and being blown out.
by Silvertip on Dec 20, 2011 3:11 PM EST via iPhone app up reply actions
If they make the playoffs then they’ll be healthy (they can’t take much more of this injury situation, regardless of coach) and they would actually be dangerous.
Otherwise, I’m afraid he’s making a Carbonneau of himself. Not quite as epically, but I think the idea of holding up the fourth line as an example, if that is what he is doing, is asinine.
Doing it over a couple games is acceptable to pass a message. Doing it for a full season is asinine. The same as giving Gomez a top 6 role for a series of games to help him prove he can bounce back is acceptable doing it for a full season is asinine.
by Silvertip on Dec 20, 2011 8:48 PM EST via iPhone app up reply actions
I direct your attention to MA Godin’s article on Cunneyworth’s plans then:
Apparently, Cunneyworth likes to play four lines to give his top guys more energy. Yes, this is asinine.
As for Gomez, he’s a top-6 player, and he was last year. There are plenty of articles that go over this in the archives. There was one not too long ago showing how much the Habs miss him.
If Gauthier can use Pearn and Martin as scapegoats, then I choose AK46! LOL
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by Kevin van Steendelaar on Dec 19, 2011 10:30 PM EST up reply actions
I think you’re a little too down on the core of this team. They don’t need to do a lot to have as good a chance as any to win the cup.
Having Markov back and adding a good punching bag center to play with a guy like Moen and eat tough minutes and Dzone faceoffs would do wonders for this team.
Wrote it too fast
Just a FYI…as someone for whom writing matters, I realize this is a blog and not “serious” journalism, but besides rambling sentences, and spelling mistakes being a huge distraction, you cross the line when you start making rape “jokes”.
Friendly suggestion: you might want to tone down the rhetoric of offensive subject matter. For those of us who are sickened by rape metaphors, and for those of us who are deeply offended, you need to delete and rewrite, as well as apologize to those who have read this. Consider the topic of rape may be hitting a little TOO close to home for some of your readers. In light of the recent Hickey offensiveness, you guys should know better…
I realize you wanted to keep the summary short, but taking your time with a blog entry would help. Thinking it through would make it respectable.
Edited and fixed Lissa.
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by Andrew Berkshire on Dec 19, 2011 10:44 PM EST up reply actions
Ha.
At this point in time (I think) Martin’s the best available bilingual candidate. Wouldn’t that be a gong show…
You know this is the second time a scenario like this has occurred in Habland in recent years.
An increasingly successful team stocks up on forward talent to become the best they’ve been 5 on 5 in a while based on a 3 line scoring strategy that leverages strong offensive depth but injuries and a fizzling powerplay are major set backs and the coach gets fired.
2008-09 or 2011-12?
Writer for http://www.habseyesontheprize.com/
Good thought, except that the 2008-2009 club was terrible at evens and had a decent power play.
And I don’t think that one was derailed by injuries so much as personnel misuse. That scoring depth was basically not set to work in 08-09.
Terrible at evens but still better than what they had before. Its was a major up year for even strength scoring and I’m grading on a curve here. They also started the year pretty well there before it all fell apart in January. The decent powerplay was also pulled up in the late in the year by the binge they went on with Markov-Schneider on the points. It was anemic by contemporary Habs standards (i.e. about average) to start.
Off course the biggest issues were probably Carboneau’s incompetent bench-management and the total fall off of the two young goaltenders who both had brutal second halves. They had 6 real top six forwards that year (Tanguay, Kovalev, Koivu, Lang, Plekanec and Kostitsyn) while also having 3 who could fake it under the right circumstances (Higgins, Kostitsyn, Latendresse) and 2 rookies with scoring talent (Pacioretty, D’Agostini) and Kostopolous and Lapierre are still among the most used forwards at evens.
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by Stephan Cooper on Dec 21, 2011 6:05 PM EST up reply actions
Mismanagement was key, but also the fact that Lang was an extremely important part of the offense. He was the one eating up dzone faceoffs and tough matchups so a young Plekanec could be sheltered and Koivu could be let loose in offensive situations.
Replacing Lang, a key heavy lifter up front, with Schneider, a soft minutes power play specialist on the back end, was a mistake. Having Pleks and Lapierre eat Lang’s minute just never worked.
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