habs_93

Straight up? Not with his history of concussions.

If the coaching staff spends any effort or time time concentrating on how to get the first line centre to check more, we're so profoundly up a creek it's hard to put it in words.

I don't think for a second that most fans are overrating Pacioretty, Gallagher, or Petry. Gallagher continues to be pigeonholed as merely a "hard working pest", as opposed to the elite shot event generator he is. To echo comments above, every single team in the league wants a guy like Pacioretty. He's the definition of a star forward. Petry is also way better than he gets credit for. His individualized impact on shot events puts him in very good company, even if his primary point production isn't staggering. The issue remains the supporting players, deployment, and tactics.

That's just incorrect, though. Bergeron was far superior in possession during Seguin's run in Boston, and his 5-on-5 primary point rates were statistically indistinguishable from Seguin. Bergeron is the better offensive player, and he's better defensively because of it. The probability of an opponent scoring is significantly reduced when they're controlling only 38.42% of the unblocked shot events on ice, as opponents playing 5-on-5 time against Bergeron got in the 2012-13 shortened season. I certainly hope someone important in the organization is telling him not to waste his career trying to play hockey twenty years ago, but with the way things are going I'm not too optimistic.

With regards to Galchenyuk's 5-on-5 shooting percentage, it's certainly been inflated. I'd be a lot happier if he was producing 1.6 P160 with a 7.5% 5-on-5 shooting percentage. I think we'll see it become more reasonable under a full season of Julien. Ditto his defensive numbers; I'd love to give it a deeper dive with regards to team/opponent influence and so on, but Corsica is down and my database is broken. Galchenyuk's defence does need to get better, and I'm hoping a Julien camp will do that, not least by exorcising whatever remains of the Therrien garbage he's been labouring under. But the people with an outdated view of the game are never going to be happy with anything except the meaningless and deleterious "200 foot hockey" act out of him which would, of course, maul his offensive production, and give that crowd another excuse to complain that he's not Johnathan Toews and demand he be traded for Mark Borowiecki or some other plug out of 1995 central casting.

Are you sure about that?

It's fine to not like a player, but this is grass is greener on the other side of the fence silliness. You can argue that Drouin has more potential, but doing so requires acknowledging reality: Drouin is the inferior player now, and has been so during his entire run in the NHL so far. And that includes last season. Galchenyuk's career 5-on-5 primary points per 60 rate is 1.55, Drouin's is 1.22. Galchenyuk is the better player. But let's talk about last season, where Galchenyuk's play "didn't translate" and Drouin "responded". Last season, Galchenyuk produced 1.29 primary 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes of ice time. Drouin produced 1.08. It's been demonstrated repeatedly that point production scales roughly linearly with ice time. So consider that Drouin was given 1.26 times as much 5-on-5 ice time as Galchenyuk and still produced significantly fewer primary points. Maybe the sample size gives you pause; that's reasonable. But that's not a reason to assume that Drouin will turn into a legitimate powerhouse with zero evidence, it's a reason to assume he might be a solid second/third line player over an 82-game season with room to grow in the next 2-3. Galchenyuk is already a top 6 player by any rational assessment. Was Galchenyuk's 5-on-5 primary point production last season below his career rate? Yep. But he had 15% less 5-on-5 ice time than his mean 5-on-5 ice time in 82-game seasons. And Galchenyuk's 2016-17 5-on-5 primary point rate was... 17% below his career rate. Almost identical. That "Galchenyuk didn't earn his chances while Drouin forced the team's hand" narrative just isn't working out like it's supposed to, is it?

I really don't see Bergevin letting go of the grit stuff.

Fun fact about St. Cloud State, their hockey logo is basically just the CH:

Claude Julien Head Coach Kirk Muller Associate Coach Dan Lacroix Assistant Coach Jean-Jacques Daigneault Assistant Coach Stephane Waite Goaltending Coach Mario Leblanc Video Coach Pierre Allard Strength and Conditioning coach

Marc Bergevin Executive Vice President and General Manager Larry Carrière Assistant General Manager Scott Mellanby Assistant General Manager Rick Dudley Senior vice president, hockey operations Trevor Timmins Vice President of player personnel and Director of Amateur Scouting Martin Lapointe Director of player development Rob Ramage Player development coach Eric Crawford Director of Pro Scouting Shane Churla Director of Amateur Scouting Dr. David S. Mulder Chief Surgeon

#54 Charles Hudon @kidhud_10 Position: Left Wing Shoots: Left Birthplace: Alma, QC, CAN Birth date: 23 June 1994 Age: 23 Height: 5' 10" Weight: 195 lbs Drafted by: Montréal Draft Year: 2012 Round 5 (122nd Overall) Archive 2016-17 Stats | NHL.com | Contract Info

#43 Daniel Carr @DanCarr9 Position: Left Wing Shoots: Left Birthplace: Sherwood Park, AB, CAN Birth date: 1 November 1991 Age: 25 Height: 6' 0" Weight: 188 lbs Drafted by: Undrafted Archive 2016-17 Stats | NHL.com | Contract Info OwnThePuck HERO Chart (http://ownthepuck.blogspot.com/):

#25 Jacob de la Rose @JacobdelaRose Position: Left Wing Shoots: Left Birthplace: Arvika, SWE Birth date: 20 May 1995 Age: 22 Height: 6' 3" Weight: 214 lbs Drafted by: Montréal Draft Year: 2013 Round 2 (34th Overall) Archive 2016-17 Stats | NHL.com | Contract Info OwnThePuck HERO Chart (http://ownthepuck.blogspot.com):

#38 Nikita Scherbak (Никита Щербак) @nikscherbak Position: Right Wing Shoots: Left Birthplace: Moscow, RUS Birth date: 30 December 1995 Age: 21 Height: 6' 2" Weight: 190 lbs Drafted by: Montréal Draft Year: 2014 Round 1 (26th Overall) Archive 2016-17 Stats | NHL.com | Contract Info