Halak's Agent is an Incompetent Idiot.

I am a Carey Price fan. I've come near the point of being a Carey Price apologist. Sometimes I'm justified - the game against Boston was his 50th win, and it took him 102 games to do so. The only player to do better was Martin Broduer who did it in 93. The other player to do it in 102 was Patrick Roy.  He's had bad moments but he's shown the flashes of brilliance early in his career that he easily has potential to be a star, and we can't abuse this too much. I'm not saying he's the next Roy, but if he's the next [upper mid-tier goaltender] instead are we that bad off? Also, more than Halak, Price has been proven to have a game-stealing ability.

That said, I'm also a Jaroslav Halak fan. He's a hard working player who people had low expectations of, yet has been undeniably strong when given the call in most cases (though in his losses he has been terrible enough to make us briefly forget some of Price's high-glove-side embarrassments). I believe given time he is certainly starter quality. I'd rather him over Cristobal Huet, Vesa Toskala, or Chris Osgood certainly, and I'm sure he offers a better value proposition than say, Evengi Nabokov who's had a strong team hide his actual skill set. He's yet to walk in and steal a game, but I'm sure that will come with time and chances, just look at Atlanta's Pavelec.

The thing to remember though, is these players are teammates. While they would likely have a rivalry for position in starts, the fact is their main goal should be getting wins for the team, as that's the point of being on a team and why they're hockey players and not tennis players. The team -always- comes first. This is the same reason it's frustrating to see players raising their game in a contract year. This is also why it's completely unacceptable for an agent of one player to try to incense the fanbase against the other.

If you're one of the people who missed Hockey Night in Canada last night, here's the story.

Retweeted constantly on the twitter tubes last night:
"Interesting stat of the night....Price is 10W, 32L in last 42 starts. Hmm."

Much more interesting is the fact that the statistic came from Halak's agent, Allan Walsh.

We can't just jump and say "OH THESE STATS ARE WRONG" because, well, they aren't. But throwing that out there seems somewhat malicious for someone who's apparently a professional. Isn't his task supposed to be communicating issues with management and using his actual negotiating ability to turn things in favour for his client, not simply incensing a vocal fanbase against his agent's competitor?

All Habs called him out on twitter with "Not exactly an objective source. That stat came from Halak's agent. Advocacy like that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. @walsha" to which re responded "Sorry you don't like the stat, if the stat was wrong, you may have a point..I was pointing out an interesting stat for fans." which just strikes me as an irritating smear campaign, especially considering despite Halak's strong home stats, has been abysmal on the road during his career. Walsh also stated to All Habs "It's no secret who my client is....and very relevant stat as it relates to my client."; Everyone has pointed out how terrible this is, and how this will divide the fanbase, pit players and fans against each other, and potentially harm both players. But here's something no one seems to be bringing up - HALAK IS INJURED. Is Walsh so ignorant of his own client's status that he's implying that a time where having him play would be a risk to his health is the appropriate time to try and cause controversy? I mean, it's evident he wanted more backlash against Price, but at least pick a logical time to be an unprofessional scumbag.

What's funny is after Hockey Night in Canada spent their Coast-to-Coast segment ostracizing Captain Ignoramus (especially Jeff Marek and former goaltender Kelly Hrudy), Walsh twitted* to Marek "It was a tongue in cheek comment not meant to be taken seriously, forgot it was Montreal and everyone loses a sense of humor." Ignoring the fact that the HNIC staff are not specifically invested in Montreal specifically, wouldn't his prior statements to All Habs blatantly contradict that? Hell, even my attempts at being funny are better than that. And instead of apologizing for a failure at humour as he claims, he instead attacks the entire fanbase of the team. Could this possibly reflect well on his client at this point? This is almost a brazen effort to cause chaos in an already rather.. vocal.. fanbase. What gives?

Jaro, there's no way in hell you read my blog, but I wish you well. Please, for all of us, find better representation. 




* while 'tweeted' is apparently the correct term, twitted seems much more fitting of Allan Walsh

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.