Post-Game Talk: Habs lose to Tampa in the first period

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

Flash news: Nobody really wants a rebuild. Nobody. Rebuilds suck. You know when it starts but you don't know if the rebuilding phase will need many resets. It may take 4 years or 15 years. You need great drafting skill and luck..quite a bit of it actually. You need lottery luck and good draft classes (some years are a lot weaker than others).

So no fan really asks for a rebuild. It's something that we end up having no choice to accept because the team , after years of terrible management, becomes filled with overrated and overpaid assets. You may ask us to accept it but don't ask us to like it.

Rebuilds are not fun. They are painful and full of setbacks.
Pain can be reduced when the team drafts a generational /franchise player but we haven't done that yet.

Maybe it's tougher for older fans like me though.

It's not just bad management. The catalyst to rebuilds is more often than not star players who age, retire or leave through FA, with the underlying bad management unable to renew their asset base through the draft or prospect acquisitions in the intervening years.

 

[ReimanSum1908]

Well Mesar is also "arguably" the best prospect in the world. Doesn't mean crap until they play in the show.

This position is legitimately nonsensical, as if there is no means by which we can judge prospects' performance and potential prior to their actually playing in the NHL.

Following this logic to its conclusion (exaggerated, of course, for rhetorical effect, but as you've stated it, this is a claim that you would have to accept), we would have to say that, prior to this season, Bedard was "arguably" the best prospect in the world "just like Mesar" because neither had played in the NHL.

This is folly.

 

[ReHabs]

Well Mesar is also "arguably" the best prospect in the world. Doesn't mean crap until they play in the show.

What?

 

[ChesterNimitz]

I f***** hated that period, that was really the worst time to be Habs fan. Having Rucinsky & Savage as 1st liners sucked so bad

Hardly. To us old -timers, nothing matches the incredible anger and humiliation we all experienced the dark night of April 5, 1970. It was the last game of the 1969/1970 season and the Canadiens were playing the Chicago Black Hawks in the Windy City. Montreal needed to beat or tie the Black Hawks, who with Hull, Mikita and Tony Esposito (a Montreal cast-off), were clearly the strongest team in the league, to make the play-offs. To you youngsters, 50 - 60 years ago was a time when the possibility of the Canadiens missing the playoffs was considered unthinkable, if not a disruption of the natural order of all things one considered certain, if not pre-ordained. There was no television back then and, of course no internet. Cell phones were something we all saw on Star Trek. We followed the Canadiens on the radio, listening to the mellifluous tones of Danny Gallivan describing the action on the ice. If you listen carefully you can still hear "a Cannonading Shot", the "Savardian Spin-O-Rama"; and "Caught up in his Paraphernalia." Montreal went into the third period of that fateful game down 5-2. In desperation, the Canadiens pulled their goalie with about 10 minutes to play and we had to endure Chicago scoring 5 empty net goals. With each goal, the smug Chicago fans sang, laughed and jeered louder. It was a tough night to endure. It was embarrassing. But revenge is, as they say, a meal best served cold. Just 12 months later, we Montreal fans had the pleasure and delight of watching the Canadiens crushing the hearts of those same smug Chicago fans by winning game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in the same building that was the scene of our team's greatest humiliation. And two months later, we drafted Guy Lafleur and launched the next dynastic period for the team. And in 1972/1973, the great Bobby Hull left Chicago for Winnipeg of the WHA.

The hockey gods had spoken.

It's the reason so many of us old-timers detest those singing, chanting, mocking fans who get emboldened once the team gets up by two goals. We all remember the night of April 5, 1970.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

I'm saying the biggest issue is Bobrov, not Lapointe. Lapointe does not seem like a guy that has the charisma and drive and forcefullness to change opinions.

Yes, that's interresting. Probably true the low or less influence Lapointe might have in decisions like that. My take is Gorton have the final word but hey that's just my take. Now we're speculating about the influence of individuals behind closed doors, unless someone have a scoop, what was said and who wanted who, etc. Thinking about that equals to someone when he starts talking to himself. I'm an hockey fan but I don't go that far.

 

[ChesterNimitz]

Guhle’s not a 29-year old NHL veteran - Matheson was making basic read & react mistakes forgivable for less experienced players

In that awful first period, none of our defencemen, young or experienced, played well.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

In that awful first period, none of our defencemen, young or experienced, played well.

That period vs TB, the complete team was dominated, from player A to Z. One poster wrote here it's like watching pee-wees vs real nhl team. The forecheck of TB was working way too well, Habs could just try to escape their own zone, panic time every time they touched the puck. It was worse at time in central zone.

So of course our young D 19 yrs old had problems, but that included Matheson as well. We can speculate: having Price, Weber and Chiarot in shape, Danault and Lehkonen, TB finish firsts period 2-0. At the end TB wins the game but not humiliate us.

edit add Toffoli and Perry.

 

[Harry Kakalovich]

I know right, it's so bizarre that someone would post their opinion on an internet forum.

Can't argue with you there Oz!!

 

[CHwest]

What?

Point being they are all prospects until they aren't. Until they actually play you never really know what you have.

 

[ReHabs]

Point being they are all prospects until they aren't. Until they actually play you never really know what you have.

Not all prospects are comparable. If you really have an all-or-nothing lens, then you must be vehemently anti tank and anti drafting. Is that the case?

 

[CHwest]

Not all prospects are comparable. If you really have an all-or-nothing lens, then you must be vehemently anti tank and anti drafting. Is that the case?

How is it all or nothing? No one is guaranteed to play in the league, sure some are more likely to make it but until they do they are a prospect. ?