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).

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.

Repeat after me; it's only the pre-season

We've seen all three faces of the Canadiens now.
Their first game was defensively minded, offensively talented, and netted us a win, with Carey Price doing his job.

The second featured our defense not focusing enough but our talent preserving a win.

The third was reminiscent of the last two years when occasionally we just forget to skate defensively.


I guess the priority here is to stay calm. Even at our worst there was silver lining, Spacek got a goal, and there is certainly some talent buried there.

I'll be in the corner my gin. Lots of gin.

But as I drink, at least i know that only half of our team was on the ice, and Martin still has a chance to beat some life into the team if this happens again.