Habs deal Cammalleri to Flames: Let the deconstruction begin.

How can you expect the most out of a franchise that fired an assistant coach and then the head coach, then had the owner come out and say he fired Martin because he wanted a spark. Then hiring an anglo, then apologizing for hiring an anglo.

This season has been a disgrace. The last month has been absurd.

Borque! I like him a lot, this could be a good thing for both guys.

Patrick Holand?

Why is this a surprise? This team is nowhere near making the playoffs, Cammy pissed off the team and we knew trades were coming. This isn’t the last one. Honestly, even without Cammy’s comments (which I admired, he spoke the truth), I figured he would be traded before next week.
The real question is, who’s next?

How about Diaz for a box of raisins and a warm bottle of gatorade?

Well maybe we’ll see less of Blunden from now on

The size fans are going to love this one.

ok, it is only wikipedia, but it says this:

He’s also fluent in French, as he is a Franco-Albertan

A loss, a shit trade and the Ducks commentators just reminded me that Saku Koivu has 18 points in his last 15 games, being +12.

@ArponBasu: "This is rich RT @NHLFlames: “I might be in trouble… I don’t speak French, even if I have the most French name on that team.” – \Bourque"

True dat.

Well with Gionta out we’ll get to see how having 4 big guys on the wings works out for us.

Didn’t realize Bourque was 30.

Well at least this opens cap space. For whatever good that will do.

If we’re looking at next year, figuring that Gomez is going to get the boot, here’s about were they’re at with signed players and RFA’s.

FORWARDS
Max Pacioretty ($1.625m) / Tomas Plekanec ($5.000m) / Brian Gionta ($5.000m)
Rene Bourque ($3.333m) / David Desharnais ($0.850m) / Erik Cole ($4.500m)
/ Lars Eller ($1.700m) / Louis Leblanc ($1.170m)
/ Andreas Engqvist ($0.900m) / Ryan White ($0.625m)
/ / Aaron Palushaj ($0.883m)

DEFENSEMEN
Andrei Markov ($5.750m) / P.K. Subban ($0.400m)
Josh Gorges ($3.900m) / Raphael Diaz ($0.900m)
Alexei Emelin ($2.000m) / Yannick Weber ($0.850m)
Tomas Kaberle ($4.250m)

GOALTENDERS
Carey Price ($5.750m) / Peter Budaj ($1.150m)

CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (follow @capgeek on Twitter)
(these totals are compiled without the bonus cushion)
SALARY CAP: $64,300,000; CAP PAYROLL: $50,537,499; BONUSES: $300,000
CAP SPACE (20-man roster): $13,762,501

Needing two left wings. At least going after a star isn’t inconcievable this summer.

I figured it out!

Gauthier identified the Habs’ problem as bad luck. He looked over his roster and saw that someone was wearing #13. He immediately realized that was the problem right there and deleted him from the roster forthwith.

He had to be quick so it could be done before Friday the 13th!

We all knew this was coming. We have been talking about this irrational move since Pearn got canned. I have to believe this is Molson meddling.

Once I saw the “we fired Martin to create a spark” press release, I knew that trouble was on the horizon. You DON’T fire a coach for short term wins. Stupid impetuous teams do things like that.

We all knew, we just didn’t want to admit it.

If we’re trying to construct a rational lineup with this setup now what do you guys think?

Pacioretty-Plekanec-Cole
Kostitsyn-Eller-Moen
Bourque-Desharnais-Leblanc?

No idea how to work Gomez in, maybe

Pacioretty-Gomez-Cole
Kostitsyn-Plekanec-Moen
Bourque-Eller-Desharnais

This season has gotten out of hand. Someone take the scissors from a running Gauthier before he hurts someone. This team does not need a complete blow-up…it was some bad luck combined with new blueliners that made this mess, and shedding one of our best wingers isn’t helping any.

Bourque became a headcase in Calgary, if he finds his game here, great. Other than that, all I’m seeing is one of our better players leaving for some cap space and a 2nd rounder. Trevor Timmins better be on line one…

Gauthier has shown his colours with this one. Instead of taking Cammy’s criticisms seriously, he dumped him to appease the media. How he stays employed is up to the Molsons….but this should be a huge wake-up call.

I’m trying to look at this from another angle to try to figure out what the organization is thinking. So let me suggest another way to view this trade:

Let’s assume this was a seller move. Gauthier told the media he thought he made his team better in the short term, but he had to tell them that. He can’t tell them “we’ve given up on the season” in January, not to this bunch. Let’s assume that he knew this would make him weaker in the short term. Let’s suppose that the goal wasn’t to get rid of Cammalleri for his comments, the goal was to get a draft pick and clear cap space. Cammy was the second highest-paid Hab, after all, and likely to have more trade value than Gomez, especially an injured Gomez.

It doesn’t make much sense to get older in the process, and it’s not necessarily a good return for the trade, so it doesn’t make the transaction a good one. But let’s see what looking at this from this perspective, what assuming that this was a seller move, tells us about the organization’s goals.

Both Feaster and Gauthier have said they’ve been percolating for a while, maybe as much as a month. It’s not an entirely unreasonable decision, even if the club was tantalizingly close; losing Gomez and Gionta was a major blow, and as we remembered, the club was 40% Fenwick since then and suffering on scoring chances. They were treading water, even inching up, but there’s a case to be made that it couldn’t last.

But see, even if the GMs are off and it was being discussed for three weeks — that would mean the Habs had decided to be sellers before they even fired Jacques Martin. It would’ve happened at about the same time actually. This raises some questions about Cunneyworth’s mandate, especially why the youngster Eller plays 20 minutes a night and the veteran Plekanec 16. It’s also interesting in that it points to the org not being about to try to “save the season”.

I dunno. What are the odds that Gauthier did this move as a seller/positioning/cap space move?

Cammalleri had taken more scoring chances than Max Pacioretty at ES and was taking them at a higher rate on the PP than Cole (but had less because of playing time).

It seems there is a fair chance we just traded this player (and a asset with some value in Ramo that could have been bundled with a Moen/Gill for some added return) for what looks like an over-the-hill Andrei Kostitsyn.

Oh joy.

Cammalleri ran his mouth off when he should have kept it shut. Not once this year did I see this guy go into a corner to dig for a puck, NOT ONCE! And he’s complaining about losing?

We won that trade.

Bourque for Ramo: We won that part.
2nd round pick for 5th round pick: We won that part.
Holland for Cammalleri: Right now it seems like Calgary wins that part but we need to give a few years to Holland.

Best case scenario, Holland becomes a very good player and we win that trade completely. Worst-case, we win 2 parts out of 3!

PG is a genius!

Kent Wilson speaketh: http://flamesnation.ca/2012/1/13/cammalleri-trade-implications

Ridding the Flames of Bourque is also a boon both on and off the ice. Bourque arrived in town as a third-line, PK player who couldn’t score much but could be counted on to take relatively difficult assignments and survive. And despite being one of the Flames strongest overall forwards for the period of about two seasons, he eventually devolved into a third-line, PP player who can score but couldn’t be trusted against any quality competition whatsoever.

Make no mistake, Bourque was a liability and his contract was an albatross as a result. His goal and point totals have been decent since he stepped into the elevator shaft, but he has put up some of the worst possession and scoring chance ratios on the team. Whatever points he was accruing, he was costing the team in spades otherwise. In addition, his unfortunate penchant for taking way more penalties than he draws never went away. This year, for instance, only Corey Sarich has a worse penalty differential than Rene on the Flames.

Ouch.

that Molson is directing this, except he’s asking PG (as he should) where his return on investment is. It was PG’s job to persuade Molson to be patient when the team had good fundamentals but was losing. I doubt very much Molson told PG to go out and trade for Kaberle, or to trade Cammalleri, He’s asking PG if the team will make the playoffs. Even Molson, as a good businessman, understands that panic moves rarely work?

If PG wasn’t able to influence Molson he should have resigned or been fired. PG either doesn’t know what he’s doing or, if I’m wrong, is neglecting his fiduciary role by passively carrying out the opwner’s wishes. I doubt the latter — so the former has to be what’s most likely. Either way, it isn’t a good reflection on PG and he should go.

Until this season I’d been generally impressed with the job Gauthier has done. Trading Halak turned out to be the right decision; Wisnewski deal was a steal I thought. Cole was a great signing. However, Gauthier has to go before the free agency market opens up … or the moment the Habs are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, not necessarily from the decisions made this season (there are issues to be made with some of those) but HOW they were executed: the firing of a coach(s) on game day, a player in the MIDDLE of a game. I feel he’s lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the other GM’s and players in the league and that will harm future deals & free agency signings in the off-season. What player would want to play in the nut house this season has made Mtl look like? I’m worried that Price & Subban will want out of the asylum after this season.