Are We Headed in the Right Direction?

[ReHabs]

That they are still developing?

If the critical young players don't show year-on-year growth, it's hard to rely on them developing and showing more next year.

If Slaf doesn't show more. If Suzuki doesn't show more. If Xhekaj doesn't show more. If Monty doesn't show more...

 

[Ozmodiar]

Yes, they are.

The Dach injury is a major setback tho. They now have to add a top 6 center along with finding the missing piece on the top line. They need redundancy there because a full recovery isn’t a sure thing.

They need a repeat of the 2022 draft - a top 5 pick plus reclamation project. Kent has some selling to do first.

The “step forward” plan should be out the window this season.

 

[Andy]

If the critical young players don't show year-on-year growth, it's hard to rely on them developing and showing more next year.

If Slaf doesn't show more. If Suzuki doesn't show more. If Xhekaj doesn't show more. If Monty doesn't show more...

Most of the youth have been D men who are notoriously slow at developing. Barron, Guhle, Harris, Xhekaj are only in their second nhl season which is still very green for D-men.

Other than Slaf, most of the quality forwards in the pool have just recently moved from juniors to the AHL. The others, like RHP, have never been expected to be game breakers.

It's still way too early. Hughes and Co have only been around for the last two drafts. Go see how many players from these last two drafts are playing in the nhl right now.

Beyond the last two drafts, it's a testament to how bad the forward drafting under MB was.

 

[Milhouse40]

The injuries are really killing the mood, don't they?

But in the end, this new management in 18 management managed to do whoe lot of terribly good things.

The reason the injuries is killing the mood is because Dach was a great move in the end.
The Jury is still out for sure, but Newhook has 3 goals in 3 games so far.
Monahan, when healthy is a useful player which we got a 1st round pick to take.
Matheson is a whole lot more useful than what we've traded for.
They managed to get rid of Hoffman and get something for him
They used every penny they got to get some assets
Prospect playing mostly do well.
And even if I don't like both of their 1st round pick, I see a whole lot of good things all around from Bogdan, Hutson, Engstrom to Beck and Davidson.

The real big problem of the Habs is the D-squad.

Our vets are played one step over their game
Our kids are played one step over their game
As a group they barely can help offensively, on 10 goals scored this year, they managed 4 assists.

Once this is fix, we should see all of our young forwards getting more points on the PP and at 5-on-5, building more confidence creating more offensive output.

 

[DAChampion]

What does it say about the young players who we're relying on if the team cannot muster more than a 28th or 27th finish in the league? I fear it'll show they haven't developed much at all. What's the point of retaining them or planning with them if they won't develop into reliable NHLers...

Of course goaltending matters and none of our roster goaltenders are worth a damn at this time.

It says that this team is a lottery team if it's missing its number one center and dman. In fairness that's a lot of teams in this league.

I don't know why the Habs have been an elite injury team for as long as I've been following the team, with a couple exceptions (2008 and 2013).

 

[Andy]

I don't know why the Habs have been an elite injury team for as long as I've been following the team, with a couple exceptions (2008 and 2013).

The only legit reason I can think of is that maybe the players are out and about in the Montreal night life and don't get proper rest? If that were truly the case, we would also see that happening with other big cities like Nashville, New York, and Toronto.

Also, when you consider some of the injuries, a lot of them are just flukes.

So, i guess, I don't know whats going on. If you believe in curses, it's just that. Otherwise, it's just bad luck. Some team has to be the worst in injuries, and it just happens to be the habs.

 

[BaseballCoach]

Absolutely not! Hughes strategy has been to trade away draft picks for young promising players a bit further in their development(Dach, Newhook). I would be fine with the strategy IF we were 3-4 years away from competing for the Cup.
As it stands now, we would be lucky to make the playoffs in 3-4 years.
2 years into the rebuild and we have ZERO game breaker. We need to draft them and develop them (unless it's Bedard/McDavid type of player) before we can compete and by that time, Suzuki, Caufield would be in their late 20's.
Which leaves us with a very short window if everything goes well.

The game changer is the $22-25 million dollars of cap space, more or less, that we will have wihin two years from now, to pay for upgrades to the talent we draft and develop.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

With the Dach (and Guhle?) injuries the Habs will get the top-5 picks that the tankophiles wanted.

I think there was a really good chance of us drafting around top five anyway. Now it’s ensured.

It absolutely sucks to have Dach go down. I was counting on him to weather a big part of the load and help Newhook and Slaf. I think he could’ve had a really good year.

But our D is still really green. We were just as bad defensively last year as we were offensively. I figured we’d be a bottom third team anyway. From that perspective it’s fine as it’s another high pick at the draft table. Hopefully we get one of Cellebrini or Eiserman.

 

[BergevinBurner]

I'm no longer sure, the injuries at this point paint a bleak future.

Caufield just missed half a season due to injury, Dach is going to have 104 games missed between last season and this season, Guhle's track record of injuries keeps on growing, our 1st overall pick missed half of his rookie season with an injury and Reinbacher suffered a knee injury weeks before the draft and now only 3 games into the season he's out with another knee injury.

I wouldn't mind if these were projected depth players, but these are supposed to be "core players" and they're dropping like flies.

 

[Habbietat]

end of the day its gonna come down to getting 2 more players better than Suzuki and Caufield, are we headed there? I have no idea but Im not confident in any of the prospects we have now to get there

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Nothing against Reinbacher who will probably be a least a good top 4 but not taking Michkov when we clearly need offensive game breaker still hurt. Also i wanted Nemec over Slaf or Wright can't really judge the pick yet but Nemec was great in the ahl last year.

If we get say… Eiserman this year then the RB pick looks a lot better.

This is a work in progress. We’re going to be bad for a while.

 

[DAChampion]

The game changer is the $22-25 million dollars of cap space, more or less, that we will have wihin two years from now, to pay for upgrades to the talent we draft and develop.

Did you include increases in the cap?

Great players so rarely make it to UFA, my impression is that the majority of prize UFA acquisitions are failure. The solution, much as people don't like it, is probably to pay 12x5 for an RFA and give up four first round picks in the 20-32 range.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

I'm no longer sure, the injuries at this point paint a bleak future.

Caufield just missed half a season due to injury, Dach is going to have 104 games missed between last season and this season, Guhle's track record of injuries keeps on growing, our 1st overall pick missed half of his rookie season with an injury and Reinbacher suffered a knee injury weeks before the draft and now only 3 games into the season he's out with another knee injury.

I wouldn't mind if these were projected depth players, but these are supposed to be "core players" and they're dropping like flies.

The Dach injury is a kick in the teeth for sure.

 

[DAChampion]

How good are Italian Cerebelum and Not-Yzerman?

Any chance they're on the level of Patrick Hughes?

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Did you include increases in the cap?

Great players so rarely make it to UFA, my impression is that the majority of prize UFA acquisitions are failure. The solution, much as people don't like it, is probably to pay 12x5 for an RFA and give up four first round picks in the 20-32 range.

What is more likely is that we leverage cap space to take on short term bad deals in exchange for picks/prospects. Think Monaghan type deals.

 

[DAChampion]

What is more likely is that we leverage cap space to take on short term bad deals in exchange for picks/prospects. Think Monaghan type deals.

If Hughes is still doing that in two years that means the team is still rebuilding.

And notice there's no Monahan this year.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

If Hughes is still doing that in two years that means the team is still rebuilding.

And notice there's no Monahan this year.

Dach’s injury changes things. We just extended the rebuild. Who knows what happens with him after this injury?

 

[Milhouse40]

Here's some interesting numbers

Habs have allowed 12 goals in 3 games this season, only one of them is at 5-on-5
Oh yeah, they are at this point the team that allowed the least goals at 5-on-5

Habs have scored 12 goals so far this season too, 8 of them were at 5-on-5
That put tied in 3rd place in the NHL.

By every metric available, the Habs is the most penalized team by far.
24 minors, 1st in the NHL
28,20 PIM per game, 3 more than anybody else
-8 in the penalty drawn and taken, the closest team is at -4
9.41 penalty taken per 60 min, 1st in the the NHL

 

[BaseballCoach]

The injuries are really killing the mood, don't they?

But in the end, this new management in 18 management managed to do whoe lot of terribly good things.

The reason the injuries is killing the mood is because Dach was a great move in the end.
The Jury is still out for sure, but Newhook has 3 goals in 3 games so far.
Monahan, when healthy is a useful player which we got a 1st round pick to take.
Matheson is a whole lot more useful than what we've traded for.
They managed to get rid of Hoffman and get something for him
They used every penny they got to get some assets
Prospect playing mostly do well.
And even if I don't like both of their 1st round pick, I see a whole lot of good things all around from Bogdan, Hutson, Engstrom to Beck and Davidson.

The real big problem of the Habs is the D-squad.

Our vets are played one step over their game
Our kids are played one step over their game
As a group they barely can help offensively, on 10 goals scored this year, they managed 4 assists.

Once this is fix, we should see all of our young forwards getting more points on the PP and at 5-on-5, building more confidence creating more offensive output.

Pearson looks like a middle six player with sandpaper and a Cup pedigree. He should get interest at the TDL if he continues to produce at a decent level while also killing penalties.

 

[ReHabs]

end of the day its gonna come down to getting 2 more players better than Suzuki and Caufield, are we headed there? I have no idea but Im not confident in any of the prospects we have now to get there

This is it. Two drafts and two off-seasons and the geniuses we’ve hired have not drafted a prospect who tracks better than Suzuki/Caufield or acquired a player better than Suzuki/Caufield. Cap space wasn’t an issue either.

Can’t rebuild without if you can’t build.

 

[Jaynki]

We are headed in the right direction but the Dach injuries is a major stepback.

He filled one of the most important role.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

How good are Italian Cerebelum and Not-Yzerman?

Any chance they're on the level of Patrick Hughes?

I’ll let others discuss as I don’t watch the minors. I did see about 15 mins of the last game where they went head to head. It was a blowout and Eiserman looked great with a hat trick.Eiserman is a pretty awesome goal scorer and expected to break Caufield’s scoring record. He’s a winger… would’ve been (and still might be) great to put CC with Dach and Eiserman with Suzuki. Cellebrini is a Center and has been projected to go number one.

Or we go with the Center and one of Suzuki or Dach moves to the wing.

2024 NHL Draft Prospect Roundup: Top prospects Macklin Celebrini, Cole Eiserman are unstoppable

The top two prospects are shining through, but they’re not alone early in the season.

www.dailyfaceoff.com

I think we might wind up with a good shot at one of these two.

 

[morhilane]

The habs were not lucky like other teams that had proper rebuild by getting obvious elite talent at the top (although, I am mad at not getting Michkov) like Toronto did with Matthews, Colorado with MacKinnon and Edmonton with McDavid. That would speed up a rebuild!

Toronto sucked multiple season in a row and go Rielly, Nylander, Marner and Matthews out of it. That's 4 top 10 picks in the span of 5 years.

Colorado got MacKinnon after 3 seasons in the basement (got Landeskog a bit before too) and they missed the playoffs 3 out of 4 seasons after getting Mac where they drafted Rantanen and Makar in the top 10.

As for Edmonton, they sucked for a decade until they managed to win McDavid and still missed the playoffs a few years after getting him anyway.

It doesn't look like getting elite talent speed up the rebuild to me.

 

[Takeru]

I'm no longer sure, the injuries at this point paint a bleak future.

Caufield just missed half a season due to injury, Dach is going to have 104 games missed between last season and this season, Guhle's track record of injuries keeps on growing, our 1st overall pick missed half of his rookie season with an injury and Reinbacher suffered a knee injury weeks before the draft and now only 3 games into the season he's out with another knee injury.

I wouldn't mind if these were projected depth players, but these are supposed to be "core players" and they're dropping like flies.

That's a multi-factor problem.

On one hand, you could argue we're developing at a slower rate due to all those missed games during key periods of development.

It then tempers the optimism on projected future lineups and reminds us we're far from done accumulating assets since we need those players to not only reach their projected ceilings but also avoid major injuries on the way there.

We'll see as the season progress, I'm not in the bleak future camp yet but expectations have gone down a notch.

 

[abo9]

The only legit reason I can think of is that maybe the players are out and about in the Montreal night life and don't get proper rest? If that were truly the case, we would also see that happening with other big cities like Nashville, New York, and Toronto.

Also, when you consider some of the injuries, a lot of them are just flukes.

So, i guess, I don't know whats going on. If you believe in curses, it's just that. Otherwise, it's just bad luck. Some team has to be the worst in injuries, and it just happens to be the habs.

Im thinking it has to do with conditioning/team mentality. Some teams just have it really bad, its hard to think its just "luck". Flyers have had major injury issues as of late too, as well as anaheim iirc.

Of course, fluke injuries are fluke. And Dach already sustained bad injuries befire - maybe his body is just genetically more fragile than others at that level.

But then before Hughes, we were the "biceo club"; was there too much emphasis put on training off ice and too little to resting? Lots of players including Price played through injuries and it seems to have either aggravated or make them more fragile.

A guy like Monahan did that too in Calgary, and is injury prone.

Now it seems like they want to give guys the proper rest? We'll see if it helps. We also have Caufield who had an injury last year - can he stay healthy now?