First hockey trending topic on twitter

Well we finally have our first trending topic on twitter of the NHL season and it's....

#KyleWellwoodIsSoFat.

Seriously

Everyone is contributing gems (led by DownGoesBrown and Pension Plan Puppets) and it's a riot.


I contributed (from my twitter account _neverender) #KyleWellwoodisSOfat that he chased Ray Emery assuming he was carrying icing sugar

Oleeeeee

Okay so, looks like its Halak the starter time!


Except that would be dumb as hell. Seriously.
Halak has proved he can stop in two games as many pucks as Carey Price faces in one, against two teams with incompetent offense outside of one star per team, both in the cellar last year, and one of them certainly headed back there this season.
He also demonstrated he can pass to the other team during a powerplay from behind his own net.

Goaltenders certainly contribute to wins but wins do not make average goaltending performances stellar. This is important.

Jacques Martin twitter

It appears Jaques Martin has discovered twitter! And.. is typing in English!

Live Blog and Booze: Thrashers at Canadiens

For my first live blog I will also be testing out the Montreal Canadiens 2009-2010 Drinking Game.
Bare with me, this night could end badly.

Martin predicted this move and decided to start Halak, invalidating all my shots against Price in the game

If you want to play along, the drinking game is here: http://habinhiding.blogspot.com/2009/10/2009-2010-habs-drinking-game.html

Shout outs and liveblogging

Well, my hockey-watching friends are all pre-occupied tonight, which means I will be doing two things
1: First trial run of the Habs Drinking Game
2: First trial run at liveblogging a game.

This could be amazing, or a disaster - odds are it'll be hilarious either way.

I don't like doing blog shoutouts too often because I'm of the belief that most habs fans tend to already read the same blogs I do, but that's not always the case.

I found a blog about someone who began following the Canadiens recently after being a Sabres fan and fell in love with the team; I can relate somewhat as I have a very soft spot in my heart for Columbus and to a much lesser extent Phoenix. That said, he was disenfranchised with our sometimes goon-like behaviour in our first two games, and I found this to be a perspective I hadn't seen before. I also thought it was outright wrong at the time and commented as such, but I can see how someone used to the finesse history of the team and started watching us when we had almost no physical presence may not appreciate the turnaround. It's a perspective I'd legitimately never seen before, and think it deserves attention from all five of my readers.
http://hockeyindependent.com/blog/?p=3572
Its refreshing to see our fanbase make criticisms that have some legitimacy instead of "Gomez doesn't speak French" "Price cant make a glove save" and "Carbo should be fired". I still see that last one, incidentally.


The other post is off of LionsInWinter and I think is perfect in addressing the panic mode some people are in and the issues facing the habs today. I won't steal his thunder and he doesn't need justification for me linking him, so check it out
http://www.lionsinwinter.ca/2009/10/habs-rough-start-was-expected.html

Anyone else remember this?

It's been too long since I've used the Saku tag.





I was considering making an "Obscure moments in Habs History" regular feature but seeing as I steal from Down Goes Brown enough, nor am I familiar enough to know what counts as obscure, I think I'll just share memories here and there without pomp and circumstance.

I remember this bout distinctly, and being remarkably shocked about Saku (almost) fighting. I had forgotten his opponent but suddenly it becomes so much more relevant..

The 2009-2010 Habs Drinking Game!

The 2009-2010 Montreal Canadiens Drinking Game!

How you play is simple. Have a glass with a mixed drink or a beer ready [with spares on the way when you run out] as well as a shot glass with hard liquor for the "Take a shot" category"

Prior to the game you need to choose whether you're Optimistic or Pessimistic. This will matter later, in the "Take a Shot" section

Feel free to come up with your own! I'll add them if you comment.


Sip:

- Neutral zone turnover

- Commentators mention the size of Gionta, Cammelleri, Gomez or Gill, or the speed (or lack thereof) of those players.

- Bad pun involving Carey Price's last name

- Commentators make some form of sentiment towards Markov's absence

- Fans boo a player on the habs

- OLEEE! (with Montreal leading)

- Failed Montreal powerplay attempt

- Spacek shoots wide

- Laraque fight

- Bob Cole makes an obvious error

- Mispronounced names by commentators. Bonus sip if it's an obviously english-rooted name (or Gomez).

-Offensive zone faceoff win for either team.

- Former habs legend involved in puck-drop

- Gorges Laraque on the ice with five minutes left in the game with Montreal trailing by one. Sip for every separate shift he takes.


Two sips

- Carey Price beaten glove-side. Take a bonus sip if it's off of a complete failure of defensive coverage

- Ceremonial faceoff taken by someone on Montreal who's last name doesn't begin with a G and isn't Michael Cammalleri.

- Commentators mention the size of Ryan Obyrne

- Kovalev or Koivu mentioned

- OLEEE! (with Montreal trailing)

- Any fight not featuring Laraque

- A potential goal for either side is sent upstairs to be reviewed (This is added to any additional drinking the goal or non-goal induces, see below)


Pour and down a shot

- Montreal scores on the powerplay

-If you chose Optimism at the beginning of the game, an even strength or shorthanded Montreal goal. If pessimistic, any goal scored by the opponent. Apply the Carey Price gloveside two or three sips if necessary.

- Any predominantly third or fourth line player scores (Metropolit, Moen, D'ags, Chipchura, Moen,Laraque [see also 'chug beverage'], Paciorretti, Stewart, Latendresse, Lapierre)

- Hal Gill scores

- Montreal Loss


Chug your beverage
- Latendresse directly in front of the net

- Gorges Laraque getting a point

- Montreal Win

- Montreal Loss if you're not drinking a Molson beverage.

- A goal for either side is disallowed





BONUS DIVISIONAL RIVAL DRINKS
These are to be used when we face our divisional rivals
Leafs
Sip

- Komisarek penalty

- Commentators mention "1967", Grabovski or Komisarek's leaving the habs,

- You can read something on Ron Wilson's cheat sheet

- Orr or Rosehill fight

Two Sips

- Any mention of the Courtnall / Kordic trade

- Jim Hughston acts condescending towards a fight


Boston
Sip:

- Any time you wish you could see Komisarek get punched by Lucic one more time

Two Sips:

- Marc Savard chooses to shoot instead of pass

Ottawa:
Sip:

- Any Montreal fan reaction to Kovalev

Buffalo
- Sip for every Leafs jersey you see in the stands.

Kovalevelled

Well Kovalev had a good night setting up the gamewinner as well as adding a second goal last night. The Habs made defensive mistakes but not many. I think our biggest problem now is finish; we need to get pucks in the net - we've only scored more than twice in a game vs Toronto and that's nothing to brag about.

The first seven minutes of last night's game are the best I've seen the habs. Not best I've seen them since early last season, not best I've seen them since we won the conference, best I've seen them period (this of course, coming from someone who was in grade school during the Patrick Roy era, and was more interested in pogs than trying to find a channel carrying the Habs). It's unfortunate that this tempo and ability came off faster than a Jiri Tlusty outfit. While pundits claim "the effort wasn't there", I disagree. What wasn't there was aim, and clever shooting. If a point shot doesn't work the third time you try it, it's still not going to work the ninth time you try it.

Plekanec looked solid all game, and tragically missed a wraparound with an open net. I feel bad for him, but he works damn hard so I'm sure he's in for a good season.

Also I don't think anyone else noticed, but for a brief moment in the first period, Latendresse was.. IN FRONT OF THE NET! For the rest of the game we played Where's Waldo trying to figure out where he actually was on the ice, but for a brief moment he actually looked like he was doing what he was supposed to. In other strange news, Gorges Laraque put in a firm offensive effort, and I think he may actually get a goal or two this season, and thats not one of my half-assed attempts at humour.

We're up against the Atlanta Thrashers on Tuesday, and while my gut tells me that the Thrashers are supposed to be a terrible team, some strange source tells me they're actually second in their division and have only lost once. Lets hope we end our five game losing skid soon. Every team we've faced has had a fairly good goalie so maybe this could be some light at the end of the tunnel. And, at the very least, at least Boston is losing a fair bit, though at this point I'm not sure losing to Hamilton Phoenix is an embarrassment to any team these days.

In other hockey news, both Alexander Ovechkin and the Nashville Predators scored two goals last night, keeping them neck in neck for who will score more goals this season (Ovechkin currently has nine goals to the Predator's 10).

Bad Officiating: More than just a bad excuse

It was only appropriate to wait a few days for this post, some of the emotion of the 3-2 loss to Colorado has burned out and we're now more focused on facing Alexei Kovalev and the Senators. But it's important to address the biggest issue of discussion following Thursday's game

Complaining about officiating issues goes beyond trying to justify a loss
I feel I made this somewhat clear in my image following the game, showing how the officials failed to call Montreal for having seven players on the ice, but this needs reiterating.
Regardless of who wins or loses, bad officiating hurts the game. The events on ice should be focused on the players and their events, not the referees determined to make this event more of a dramafest based on their interactions with the game. If I wanted a soap opera I would have turned my TV on several hours earlier or gone on LiveJournal.

Be it last nigth's broken-stick agression, or a puck in the netting, the refs and linesmens should be expected to be both professional and competent. We should expect excellence from -everyone- on the ice, members of the Toronto Maple Leafs notwithstanding; but even they had perhaps one of the worst botched calls in history effecting them. While officiating will always be subjective, there should be at very least some form of reprimanding for officials following clearly mis-called games.

Maybe we should take a page out of pro football's book and implement a challenge system.

A picture tells a thousand words

I could write a long post about Martin's screwups last night (Laraque out on the ice with four minutes left needing a goal) and the bad officiating (allowing a goal while someone was checking players with a broken stick) but a picture really does say a thousand words that sums up both problems perfectly

(you'll need to click this for its full width and thus the full impact of the image)

A few random thoughts and the, er, Gainey Group?

Quick edit just after posting; it seems Shawn Belle will be debuting with the Habs this Thursday. Should be interesting.

It's been a long week and a half since I last wrote.
Montreal has gone 0-3 since then, and while it's still great to be ahead of Toronto in the division, I feel much dirtier having conceeded a point to them rather than having gained two at their expense. Having the same record as Boston is some solace, but there's still a long season ahead of us.

On that note, I think it's important we all remember that. As rough as we look now, we showed good drive against Calgary, and we showed we can create a strong offense against Edmonton rebounding after a disgusting embarassment that I can no longer remember due to the quantity of gin it made me reach for. We have seventy-seven games left. If we can get 89 points out of them we'll be on the cusp of the playoffs and that'll have already exceeded the expectations of some. Especially as we showed, while we're not brilliant, we can survive without Andrei Markov.

Laraque asked politely to have Number 27, as he's worn it everywhere he's played that didn't have a Russian star wearing it already. Does BGL really want to be that much more disliked by segments of the fanbase? Somehow I don't think it's occured to him that he's kind of slow, and not very good at hockey compared to last season's leading scorer and primary puck-dangler.

Speaking of ol' Alexei, Ottawa rolls into town this Thursday for our home opener. I wonder who will draw more boos - him or Laraque? (Spoiler: Laraque)



If you've found this blog you probably were linked to it directly by me or via a #habs post on twitter. This is a problem not for my hit counts as I don't care, but because it's really hard for Habs writers to be noticed. If you follow the Leafs blogging network they have what they call the "Barilkosphere" where notable bloggers are linked to each other via sidebar and everyone tends to follow each other's content. This already happens to a certain extent in the Habs world with Habs Inside/Out tending to link to interesting articles they stumble upon; though HI/O is sponsered by The Gazette and I doubt could spearhead any kind of formal initiative for Habs fans if only due to the fact that there may be a commercial liability issue. Eric Engels also gives great shout-outs to other bloggers from time to time. The point is, it would be great if an initiative to 'tighten' the Habs online writing community together started out. I'm not a particularly talented writer and have next to no readerbase so I don't really have a part in pushing myself to be listed, but I'd do anything I can to make something like this happen. If you're a contributor from one of the big Habs blogs out there [Eric Engels, Lions in Winter, Daily Hab-It, the aformentioned HabsInside/Out or any other Habs writer interested in this] just leave a comment and we can talk via email or anything towards a sort of 'network' for us. As my sidebar says, I'm a coder with a lot of time on my hands so I'd be more than willing to do the gruntwork to make something happen, just as long as we have people interested and behind it.

More injuries, but we beat Buffalo

I could not be more upset with Obyrne being injured. Not because Markov's gone, but because he was playing passionately, he was playing competently, and he was making a case to be truly important to the team... a far cry from the Ryan Obyrne of last season. He won't be on the plane to Calgary which means we'll need to borrow someone from the AHL - I'm assuming Yannick Weber, who I think will shine in the absence of Markov, but still isn't an outright replacement.

Glen Metropolit, possibly our best forward on Thursday against Toronto, is out with hurt ribs. I don't expect him to be gone for too long but this might be a chance for Kyle Chipchura to prove he's worth a damn - assuming he's actually recovered from his own upper body injury.

There's not much I can do to make this post funny, so here's a link to my favourite joke.

Last night's game proved we can win without Markov, and that's an important start. Our biggest key now is holding on to the puck more, which we can't use Markov's absence to justify our incompetence on. From that we need to take more shots, as one shot in the third might actually lead us to a loss once we face a team with actual playoff aspirations.

As bad as we played in the first and third, we're still showing we can battle, and more importantly that we don't give up. Moen's goal was great (look at the replay from angles other than above the net, he was blatantly pushed) and that kind of aggression is what our team needs.. More shocking was Gorges Laraque being involved in the play and keeping up; Big Gorges seeming relevant is an important thing to look out for.

Ten reasons to stay optimistic

Andrei Markov looks to be out somewhere between two and four months with a tendon problem having introduced his leg to Carey Price's skate.

This is, naturally, one of the worst things that can happen to us, but it's important to stay optimistic so here's ten reasons to stay optimistic following last night's game and Markov's injury:


10: Basically impossible for Markov to hurt himself in our next match against the Leafs on Oct 31.

9: Markov will be able to gain stellar insight hanging out with Rick Dipietro, Pascal Leclaire, Tim Connolly and Marian Gaborik. He may also play mentor to Mike Van Ryn.

8: Yannick Weber is actually pretty okay at moving the puck around

7: So offensively deep our fourth line centre can get a powerplay goal

6: We aren't the Atlanta Thrashers

5: Our winger demanding a trade is not actually playing for us anyway

4: Huge advantage over last season, not getting tired out having to stand for so many Centennial celebrations

3: Those new guys are actually pretty good

2: That Price guy seems pretty good

1: At least we can beat the Leafs

Thoughts and observations while I give the habs some money via drinking Molson Ex

this is a somewhat euphoric post so hindsight may hurt it later, but just some initial impressions before looking too in-depth at what actually went down tonight, things I noticed, supplemented by statistics

-Cammelleri and Gionta were perhaps the two most ever-present players on the ice, and I'm glad to see that. Camm just needs a goal now.
-Hal Gill fucked up and cost us a goal, but he wised up afterwards and put in a good solid effort
-While the shot totals were ugly, our first and third periods were great. Our second... not so much.
-Carey Price was brilliant. We needed that more than anything
-I did not expect to see Moen and Metropolit so involved in the game's score.
-Hey Komisarek, you had a great bench to sit on watching us score twice right? (Note: When reached for comment, Komisarek's response was "I love you, you love me.." and trailed off into song)
-I'd take any of our new defensive acquisitions over Beauchamin right now.
- ... we can't phone in the second like that. We were outshot rediculously, and thats how come Carey had to put together 43 saves just to get us an OT win.
-It speaks volumes of our new team that we didn't fall asleep at the switch when down 3-2 near the end of the game; even when we won the conference two years ago we'd still sometimes pass out with a momentum-killing late-game goal.
- and most importantly, our "tiny team" outhit Toronto 47-22....

...Truculence.

Tonight, tonight

So, Stubbs, of habsinsideandout (perhaps the best Habs resource out there), has stolen my nickname of the "Big Three"; that dick ! http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Gainey+blow+Habs+real+good/2053144/story.html
But seriously I'm honoured. Just remember I did it first.



Tonight the regular season starts. I've got a few beers ready to enjoy the game with and a few more if we lose... and a few dozen if Komisarek scores or injures someone.

I considered liveblogging the game but I felt I'd sacrifice journalistic integrity to take in my first full game since game 3 against Boston last season.