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.