The Only Thing in the Mix Are the Line Combos Habs Lose to Capitals

  • We sincerely apologize for the extended downtime. Our hosting provider, XenForo Cloud, encountered a major issue with their backup system, which unfortunately resulted in the loss of some critical data from the past year.

    What This Means for You:

    • If you created an account after March 2024, it no longer exists. You will need to sign up again to access the forum.
    • If you registered before March 2024 but changed your email, username, or password in the past year, those changes were lost. You’ll need to update your account details manually once you're logged in.
    • Threads and posts created within the last year have been restored.
    • Our 2025 light and dark themes were lost, so we are rebuilding them. Light theme is currently available, but work in progress

    Our team is working with Xenforo Cloud to recover data using backups, sitemaps, and other available resources. We know this is frustrating, and we deeply regret the impact on our community. We are taking steps with Xenforo Cloud to ensure this never happens again. This is work in progress. Thank you for your patience and support as we work through this.

    In the meantime, feel free to join our Discord Server
We could sell Matheson but once again we'd have to have that solid top pair RD coming back.
Yeah if you trade Matheson you don't trade him for picks or prospects you trade him for a roster player (top 4 defensive RHD) to make room for Guhle and Hutson on the left and to not put too much pressure on Reinbacher. But that's not selling it's just adressing an issue with the roster.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Runner77
Dvorak, Anderson, Gally, Savard, Armia.
24M$ in cap space on veterans, not one of which is playing better than mediocre bottom 6 /bottom pair.

Laine, the top 6 veteran addition added, is out.

Matheson, for all his warts, remains an upgrade over what Petry is at this point in his career.

It's not so much "failed" as it is the reality of being handcuffed by the brutal contracts and long term roster situation Bargainbin left behind.

Almost 1/2 of that gets cleared this summer. If Matheson & Laine are any indication, we can comfortably bet that we'll see an vet upgrade over Savard/Dvorak/Armia by next fall.

Patience is hard, but it's not like the mess we had to dig out of wasn't clear from the start.
Many of us said that it would take 5 years for the new GM to undo the mess that MB made and it was right. I don't want to see the young guys ruined because the current situation isn't ideal for their development.
 
The Bag Skate is a positive thing for me, MSL seems to be a bit too passive in the media to me obviously i dont know what he says behind closed doors but this isnt a daycare its the NHL, Play with effort limit the Mindless play in the Defensive zone or you shouldn't be playing at all.
 
Many of us said that it would take 5 years for the new GM to undo the mess that MB made and it was right. I don't want to see the young guys ruined because the current situation isn't ideal for their development.

That's the thing, all this talk about "ruining" our prospects because the team is experiencing hardship with the youngest roster in the league (2nd to Buffalo on opening night) is quite exaggerated... Much like the "ruining Slaf's development" talk last year.

The team is letting the kids play and supporting them as they take their lumps. That's a good development experience, not a bad one... It's not supposed to be easy, no matter how impatient the fan & media base gets

If we expected it to take 5 years, it's a bit perplexing that despite largely positive progression of our U25 group, so many fans are letting inconsistent team play get them so anxious...
 
  • Like
Reactions: HabsCode
I still think Slaf is hurting.

As for the on-ice product, what do you see? Compete, team cohesion, good individual decision-making....you know, the foundations of being a team that can hang in most games without having to rely on individual moments of brilliance just to stay close all the time?

Well I don't.
Late response but I see terrible team play. Multiple times a game I see great individual efforts that end up nowhere because teammates are either mispositioned to receive any possible puck movement, usually in the defensive zone, or are changing in the offensive zone. Leaving the zone to cheat defensively or, most importantly, offensively is also an issue doubly compounded when there is no coherent system in place. Sometime I can't even count, because I run out of fingers and toes, how many times a forward wins a puck puck battle but all four of his teammates are already outside the zone to 'defend'. Still get blasted 8-2 or 6-3 somehow.

So properly onto the three things you mentioned, I see compete from a decent amount of players, almost all young. DVO and a few other vets can be fired from a canon though. (Small note: Caufield barely competes but is turning into our version of Ovi so he makes up for it+ elsewhere. Dach.....) Individual decision-making is sorta addressed as best it can be in the first paragraph without going into each individual. Team cohesion would naturally be a consequence of good individual decision-making if a proper system were in place that the players could reference during their sometimes literal split-second decision making.

TL;DR The coach sucks. :sarcasm:
 
That's the thing, all this talk about "ruining" our prospects because the team is experiencing hardship with the youngest roster in the league (2nd to Buffalo on opening night) is quite exaggerated... Much like the "ruining Slaf's development" talk last year.

The team is letting the kids play and supporting them as they take their lumps. That's a good development experience, not a bad one... It's not supposed to be easy, no matter how impatient the fan & media base gets

If we expected it to take 5 years, it's a bit perplexing that despite largely positive progression of our U25 group, so many fans are letting inconsistent team play get them so anxious...
Absolutely agree.

We have no choice anyway. We can't let all the kid in the AHL until 2026-2027. For one there will be too many of them in the AHL and some wont play. For two they will all be rookie at the same time in 2026-27 and we don't want that.

We want to bring them in gradually. There wil be growing pain but what we are looking for is elite players not late bloomers who will follow the train for 2-3 years (Kovacevic). Those guy we can add them later. You can't ruin a Crosby, Malkin, Ovy, Kopitar, MacKinnon, Rantanen, ...

The guys who got what it takes, who got the character, they'll eventually succeed no matter what. The players you risk losing are guys like Magiapane or Backlund or Hagelin but we don't really care about those we can add them later on via trades or the UFA market.
 
  • Like
Reactions: HabsCode
Late response but I see terrible team play. Multiple times a game I see great individual efforts that end up nowhere because teammates are either mispositioned to receive any possible puck movement, usually in the defensive zone, or are changing in the offensive zone. Leaving the zone to cheat defensively or, most importantly, offensively is also an issue doubly compounded when there is no coherent system in place. Sometime I can't even count, because I run out of fingers and toes, how many times a forward wins a puck puck battle but all four of his teammates are already outside the zone to 'defend'. Still get blasted 8-2 or 6-3 somehow.

So properly onto the three things you mentioned, I see compete from a decent amount of players, almost all young. DVO and a few other vets can be fired from a canon though. (Small note: Caufield barely competes but is turning into our version of Ovi so he makes up for it+ elsewhere. Dach.....) Individual decision-making is sorta addressed as best it can be in the first paragraph without going into each individual. Team cohesion would naturally be a consequence of good individual decision-making if a proper system were in place that the players could reference during their sometimes literal split-second decision making.

TL;DR The coach sucks. :sarcasm:
Preach
 
Yup, scoring chances being 11-2 for the Caps after 2.......clearly in a good spot, after 2 it was a disaster in progress
Yeah MSL is FOS if he really thinks the Habs played well in the 1st 2 periods.

I handed out Halloween candy.
🤣

Marty is turning a corner in his own development. Sometimes it is much better to be respected than liked.
I Wasn't aware that you hired coaches so they could learn on the job. The messyou
 
  • Like
Reactions: OldCraig71
Ok so MSL skated them a bit. If this doesn’t work, what else does he got?



Mindset and Habits

Sorta like culture. The thing you have been preaching for 2 yrs and havent bought in. Thats a you issue Marty

Also when you single out certain players, and cater to others constantly, that goes against the philosophy of changing mindet

So what mindset from Dvorak are you changing?

You rewarded him when playing shitty. Same with Armia. Same all last yr with Donkey
 
  • Like
Reactions: SwiftyHab
The Habs Ds aren't supposed to be chasing players around the dzone. They are supposed to play zone defense below the circles, while the forwards play man-to-man above the circles and apply pressure at the point and the puck carrier. That's why it's called hybrid.

You can see it with Laval, they can execute it. It was even there in the pre-season games.
Correct, yet they let they play too high, (sometimes too low) get caught puck watching and let the opponents get seperation. Terrible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: morhilane
That's the thing, all this talk about "ruining" our prospects because the team is experiencing hardship with the youngest roster in the league (2nd to Buffalo on opening night) is quite exaggerated... Much like the "ruining Slaf's development" talk last year.

The team is letting the kids play and supporting them as they take their lumps. That's a good development experience, not a bad one... It's not supposed to be easy, no matter how impatient the fan & media base gets

If we expected it to take 5 years, it's a bit perplexing that despite largely positive progression of our U25 group, so many fans are letting inconsistent team play get them so anxious...
It's not about the losses for me but rather the way they are doing it. Last season we had 27 one goal losses and we always felt like the team was "in" games till the final buzzer. It was promising to see such a competitive spirit coming from such a young group.

This season isn't like that, we are getting blown out, aren't ready to start games, heck, we weren't ready to start the season. I expected more this year, 80-85 points and progression from the roster. MSL is showing frustration as well and we are hearing it. I don't care about the playoffs but I do care about the players taking the next step.
 
It's not about the losses for me but rather the way they are doing it. Last season we had 27 one goal losses and we always felt like the team was "in" games till the final buzzer. It was promising to see such a competitive spirit coming from such a young group.

This season isn't like that, we are getting blown out, aren't ready to start games, heck, we weren't ready to start the season. I expected more this year, 80-85 points and progression from the roster. MSL is showing frustration as well and we are hearing it. I don't care about the playoffs but I do care about the players taking the next step.

Ironically, I think the team is doing more good this year than last, its just that what they're doing worse is much worse. The special teams is clearly improved and they're getting more chances offensively. But they have been beyond putrid in their own zone, are incredibly sloppy with the puck management and are worse at forechecking.

They were more responsible with the puck last year, which helped their goalies keep them in games, even though they weren't really "in" the games.
 
  • Like
Reactions: OldCraig71

Ad

Ad