Goaltender of the Future

With Slovakia's tight win based on Jaroslav Halak's tight goaltending versus Russia, the goaltending debate for the Habs is picking up so much steam its beginning to scald. The problem is most armchair observers seem to be using logic reminiscent of a certain San Jose Sharks pro scout.

The Montreal Canadiens are currently in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, one point ahead of Tampa Bay (who have two games in hand) and two ahead of the New York Rangers who hold one game in hand. We may just make the playoffs this year, and if we do, we'd likely want the strong goalie we had for much of the season to try and keep us in against Washington, New Jersey, or whoever we get seeded against.
Reality however, states we'll likely make a first round exit unless we perform a miraculous upset. Our team has been too up and down to really be consistent - our longest winning streak all season is only three games. In that case we need to be focused as much on the future of the franchise, and which goaltender we hold on to. No matter what Pierre Gauthier thinks, both of our goalies are RFA at the end of the season and we really can't afford to have them both alongside a resigned Thomas Plekanec.

And this is why we need to resign Carey Price and trade Jaroslav Halak.
I'm sure right now there's coffee hitting your monitor not unlike a Jason Blake wrist shot to the chest of a goaltender on those words, but hear me out. Price has had certain flashes of brilliance this year, and is statistically better in save% than Olympian Marc-Andre Fleury, Ottawa savior Brian Elliot, LA starter Jonathan Quick, and most other hyped up underachievers (I'm looking at you, both Philedelphia goaltenders, all three goaltenders to suit up for the Maple Leafs this season, Nicklas Backstrom, and both Nashville goalies). Admitted Halak's .923 is nicer than Price's .911 but it's not like Price is making a huge gap of less saves - especially as he's generally been put in following a Halak loss, suggesting the team wasn't bringing much effort anyway (further proven by Price's GAA being higher than goaltenders with worse save percentages, though still a reasonable though not outstanding 2.81).
So Price can compete, he just isn't playing as well as Halak right now. But here's where the future comes in.

Halak is a positionally sound goalie, will be 25 at the end of the season, has calm emotions and fast reflexes. His weaknesses are controlling the puck, and his size ( 5'11 is short for a goaltender). While reflexes don't degrade quickly, it's unlikely they will ever improve noticeably, and as he's already positionally sound there's not a whole lot of upward motion. Halak can practice with the puck but he's never going to get four inches taller.

Price, 22, is excellent with the puck (can you name four goaltenders better than him with the puck?), 6'3, and has just as sharp reflexes. His biggest issues are a weak glove hand (that is nonetheless greatly overplayed), some positional awareness issues, and having some difficulty dealing with the emotional stress of working in the Montreal environment. In short he's immature. Funny thing is, in the league, there aren't a whole lot of mature 22 year old goaltenders - let alone 22 year old goaltenders to begin with. He calms down and works on his positioning, and he's got a clear advantage on Jaroslav, who has effectively reached his ceiling. Is it really a gamble to say that Price will be a different player at 24 than he is at 22?

Can we risk giving up that potential to try to hold on to our eighth place seed this season?
Can we risk not getting any return for our current hot goaltender?

Little brother returns, The golden boy is shipped out of town

Montreal Canadiens call up RW S. Kostitsyn, trade RW G. Latendresse for Centre B. Pouliot.

I assume I'm not the only one who didn't see this coming, despite the fact that I've been dead to the world for the past week. Poulot was selected fourth overall in the 2005 NHL entry draft, which makes me wonder if he'll poke some fun at the fifth overall pick from the same round. Though you could just look at this as Montreal trading up 41 spots four years after the fact, while laughing about how people said "Montreal is dumb taking a goalie, Theodore and Huet will always be rock solid for them"

Latender was really getting lashings for underperforming, though his real issue was trying to be a finesse player when every aspect of his build and skillset says "Crash the net you're a power forward". That said, best of luck to him in Minnesota. Good to see members of the Habs playing with a guy named Koivu.

Speaking of which, we really need to get on signing Plekanec. I don't know what the cap implications of this deal were, but we aquired an underperforming centre for an underperforming winger and somehow I doubt this was meant as just a screw you to Kyle Chipchura.

Maybe the real thing here is either our maligned winger (who has 13 points in 16 games in the AHL) is either going to move up to the NHL on a more regular basis or is going to move out of town in the very immediate future. I'm not sure which I prefer so much as I hope we just get solid play. I;d like to see both Kostitsyn's succeed, but I want what's best for the team first. I'm not worried about this callup, I'm just curious about it's implications.

In other news Greg Stewart is finally back in the AHL. Finally.

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).

Goalies, second line centres, and trade bait.

To the chargin of much of the fanbase, we've signed Thomas Plekanec for 2.75 million dollars. out of around 240 players in that price range, he puts up better numbers than about 200 of them. Not too shabby. Now if only he were Finnish, and wore number eleven.

In the past few days we've picked up Curtis Sanford. He's already gotten in touch with Rick Dipietro and Pascal Leclaire on cool things to do in the Eastern Conference while injured.

With a new backup goalie (and somehow, also with Plekanec's one year deal) rumours are flying everywhere that Gainey is getting ready to trade for Lecavalier, Marleau a big centre, because we totally have that kind of money, what with a whole three million in cap space and Gregory Steward and Matt D'ags to resign. I think we've come to grips with the fact we don't need any more centres, as we only have one year to finally start using Chipchura anyway (who, go figure, is a big centre). But even then, who would want Halak right now anyway? Biron certainly has more experience and exposure and could only get less than two million backing up a backup (though with Rick Dipietro's glasslike status he could still see a lot of exposure), and Andrew Raycroft has already found work so it's not like people are desperate to avoid calls from his agent. If anything, Halak may be moved some time in the mid-season, around the deadline, if it begins to look like the big three are floundering, and we're being run over by Buffalo a listless team out of playoff contention.