Toggle sidebar

HF Habs: Montreal Canadiens Hockey Ops - Part 2

  • PLEASE check any bookmark on all devices. IF you see a link pointing to mandatory.com DELETE it Please use this URL https://forums.hfboards.com/
DAChampion

DAChampion

Registered User
May 28, 2011
30,184
21,627
ReHabs said:
Good thing is bottom6ers are swapped regularly. Bad thing is we have a bunch of old, crusty players in our bottom6 who can't be churned.

Pezzetta has to go, he's not an NHLer -- his biggest career impact was to score just enough to f*** up our draft pick in 2023. Belzile too. I would say RHP has to be improved-upon as well. That's two of six.
Click to expand...
Of those, I think Pezzetta works as a 13th forward. He's willing to play for 1 million a year or so, he works hard, and he fights.

The rest of the bottom six needs work, but it's not urgent. The urgency is developing the top six, maybe seeing how well Dach, Newhook, and Roy can play this year.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Schooner Guy, Habs Halifax and Miller Time
ReHabs

ReHabs

Registered User
Sponsor
Jan 18, 2022
7,816
12,054
DAChampion said:
Of those, I think Pezzetta works as a 13th forward. He's willing to play for 1 million a year or so, he works hard, and he fights.

The rest of the bottom six needs work, but it's not urgent. The urgency is developing the top six, maybe seeing how well Dach, Newhook, and Roy can play this year.
Click to expand...
I see it the other way. First, Pizza is a terrible fighter and didn't play the body enough. He's no more than a warm body, let's be honest. If we can upgrade, we should.

Second, if our bottom 9 got better and chipped in more, I feel like it would have a disproportionately good impact on our team's results. Dach's return is all well and good but if the bottom6 itself had some jam and/or hands it would tilt the ice for us.

Third, it's easier to make marginal upgrades to the bottom6 than it is to make changes to the top6 (as we know so well from the Bergevin era) -- fixing the bottom6 shouldn't get in the way of any other roster move. It simply wasn't a priority during the hard tank but if they want to compete better next year the easy fixes are found in the bottom6.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rapala and DAChampion
bcv

bcv

My french sucks.
Sep 18, 2010
4,711
2,854
  • Like
Reactions: MasterD

Miller Time

Registered User
Sep 16, 2004
23,915
16,639
DAChampion said:
Of those, I think Pezzetta works as a 13th forward. He's willing to play for 1 million a year or so, he works hard, and he fights.

The rest of the bottom six needs work, but it's not urgent. The urgency is developing the top six, maybe seeing how well Dach, Newhook, and Roy can play this year.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Tinkering with the depth has limited effect and is often overstated. Bargainbin made it a focal point of his roster management with predictably poor results.

While there's something to be said for getting the right fit/mix of players to compliment the style of play the coach wants to implement, players like Stenlund, Lomberg, Cousins, Lorentz etc. are neither hard to find nor better at hockey than the likes of Pezzetta, Evans, RHP, Ylonen...

Adoing 1 or 2 players that bring physicality to the bottom 6 would be welcome, but if we don't upgrade the secondary scoring in our top 9 (by addition or by Dach/Newhook/Roy making big strides), I doubt it moves the needle at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DAChampion
Sorinth

Sorinth

Registered User
Jan 18, 2013
11,408
6,017
Probably not the thread for this discussion but
ReHabs said:
I see it the other way. First, Pizza is a terrible fighter and didn't play the body enough. He's no more than a warm body, let's be honest. If we can upgrade, we should.
Click to expand...
He's 6th in the league in Hits per 60 minutes, 3rd if you exclude guys who played a single game, and 1st for guys who played 18 or more games. Like for sure we can upgrade on him as a 4th liner but claiming he didn't play the body enough is a very odd take.
ReHabs said:
Second, if our bottom 9 got better and chipped in more, I feel like it would have a disproportionately good impact on our team's results. Dach's return is all well and good but if the bottom6 itself had some jam and/or hands it would tilt the ice for us.

Third, it's easier to make marginal upgrades to the bottom6 than it is to make changes to the top6 (as we know so well from the Bergevin era) -- fixing the bottom6 shouldn't get in the way of any other roster move. It simply wasn't a priority during the hard tank but if they want to compete better next year the easy fixes are found in the bottom6.
Click to expand...
Habs fans in general overestimate the importance of the bottom-6. Can't even blame this one on Bergevin as it predates him by a long time. A good bottom-six can give you an edge against a similar level team, but it's not going to tilt the ice or have a disproportionately good impact.

And at the end of the day a good top-6 makes your bottom-6 look better automatically so you probably shouldn't even judge the quality of bottom-6 before you get a good top-6.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Schooner Guy, HabzSauce, Miller Time and 1 other person
ReHabs

ReHabs

Registered User
Sponsor
Jan 18, 2022
7,816
12,054
Sorinth said:
Probably not the thread for this discussion but

He's 6th in the league in Hits per 60 minutes, 3rd if you exclude guys who played a single game, and 1st for guys who played 18 or more games. Like for sure we can upgrade on him as a 4th liner but claiming he didn't play the body enough is a very odd take.
Click to expand...
I don't like his hitting, he seems ineffective. But I wasn't aware of his numbers, thanks for sharing. It changes my perception a bit.
Sorinth said:
Habs fans in general overestimate the importance of the bottom-6. Can't even blame this one on Bergevin as it predates him by a long time. A good bottom-six can give you an edge against a similar level team, but it's not going to tilt the ice or have a disproportionately good impact.

And at the end of the day a good top-6 makes your bottom-6 look better automatically so you probably shouldn't even judge the quality of bottom-6 before you get a good top-6.
Click to expand...
I explicitly said upgrading the talent positions and upgrading the bottom6 can be done in parallel because I largely agree with you. But it's much harder to upgrade the top6, so if we want to improve the team overall, some swapping and jostling the bottom6 is to be expected. Don't forget that Bergevin never really managed to upgrade the top6... that was his problem.
 
Sorinth

Sorinth

Registered User
Jan 18, 2013
11,408
6,017
ReHabs said:
I explicitly said upgrading the talent positions and upgrading the bottom6 can be done in parallel because I largely agree with you. But it's much harder to upgrade the top6, so if we want to improve the team overall, some swapping and jostling the bottom6 is to be expected. Don't forget that Bergevin never really managed to upgrade the top6... that was his problem.
Click to expand...
But you keep saying things like if we want to improve the team overall we also need to improve the bottom-6 and not just the top-6. And that's not really true, nothing we do to the bottom-6 matters until the top-6 becomes good, and since the bottom-6 changes for all teams every year as is the nature of depth players there's really no point in upgrading it now unless we think the top-6 is also getting fixed. If we upgrade the bottom-6 today but it takes another 2 years to fix the top-6 those bottom-6 upgrades will have already run their course and will be getting swapped out.

And if you agree that we can't accurately judge the bottom-6 without a good top-6, then there's no real point in "upgrading" guys since you might be "upgrading" a guy who would actually be a good bottom-6 player for us when the top-6 is fixed.

So sure upgrade the bottom-6 to your hearts content on the Armchair GM tool on capfriendly while it's still there, but don't expect it to actually matter in terms of how many we win and don't be surprised if a guy you move out goes on to have a strong impact when put in the right situation with a different team.

I'd also point out our biggest problems in the bottom-6 is the big contracts to Anderson, Gallagher, Dvorak, Armia. So sure getting rid of bad contracts is a good thing to pursue, but for that reason it's actually going to be difficult to upgrade the bottom-6 this offseason.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Schooner Guy, HabzSauce and ReHabs
Treb

Treb

Global Flanderator
May 31, 2011
29,434
30,181
Montreal
ReHabs said:
Good thing is bottom6ers are swapped regularly. Bad thing is we have a bunch of old, crusty players in our bottom6 who can't be churned.

Pezzetta has to go, he's not an NHLer -- his biggest career impact was to score just enough to f*** up our draft pick in 2023. Belzile too. I would say RHP has to be improved-upon as well. That's two of six.
Click to expand...

Again, my point doesn't change.

We don’t need more bottom 6 players, we need upgrades on what we currently have.

Therefore, if you're trading Harris for a bottom 6 guy, he needs to be a clear upgrade on what we already have.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Andrei79, salbutera, Habs Halifax and 1 other person
Sorinth

Sorinth

Registered User
Jan 18, 2013
11,408
6,017
Beer and Chips said:
Does Douglas take the blame for Anderson?
Click to expand...
Probably not, with Anderson it's more mental then fitness related. It could be a case of philosophical differences with the rest of player development like Nicholas, Ramage, Bouillon, Lapointe, etc... since I assume they all need to work together to push in the same direction.
 
Le Barron de HF

Le Barron de HF

Justin make me proud
Mar 12, 2008
16,559
4,563
Shawinigan
Sorinth said:
Probably not, with Anderson it's more mental then fitness related. It could be a case of philosophical differences with the rest of player development like Nicholas, Ramage, Bouillon, Lapointe, etc... since I assume they all need to work together to push in the same direction.
Click to expand...
Plus he's been around for a while. Anderson 2 years ago was still around Douglas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Ad

Latest posts

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

Top Bottom
X