eldag

Unfortunately ... it does not matter what he will actually be paid but rather the cap hit which is substantial.

Good post .... maybe my expectation of "awful" this season is my cry for help in hopes that common sense will prevail and Bergevin will be dismissed. The more sinister reality as you illustrate is that we could be in for years of enduring mediocrity. I worry that I am getting too old to ride this out ......

Agree Jeff ... I am convinced this team will be brutal but what is even more upsetting is the mess this GM has created will take a long time and mucho dollars of the Molson family money to correct. I am not distressed about Molson losing money because it is just dessert for his negligence towards the franchise. After a bad year and Weber's decline already in full swing how much hope will there be of moving his bloated contract? For sure we will get much diminished value for a big slow turning 33 defenceman making close to $8MM against the cap. What of Pacioretty? He will need to be extended at the end of this season and will want big bucks ... do we give it to him? How tradable will he be? What of Price? He will be 31 and his monster contract will just be kicking in .... NO team could win paying a goalie $10.4MM against the cap and HEY ... bonus for Molson ... if the players eventually go on strike again guess what ??????? Carey still gets paid!!!!!!!!! bahahahahaha ..... schrewd boy ..... you can't put one by our Bergevin! The assets that should have been moved THIS OFFSEASON will instead wither on the vine for yet another lost year and their trade value will degrade. The Price and Weber deals will be boat anchors for this team for the better part of the next decade. As a 50+ year fan of this team I am furious but so many of our fellow supporters seem to be deluded into thinking this team is still capable of competing. We made the playoffs last year because Weber and Byron and Lehkonen had career years scoring, we caught lightening in a bottle with Radulov, and the team caught a bounce when Therrien was mercifully replaced by Julien. Well Rads is gonzo and Weber and Byron and Lehkonen are unlikely to duplicate. People seem to forget Price had a major swoon for half the season and when the playoffs arrived ... we could not buy a goal against a pedestrian Rangers team. We acquired a forward who is a powerplay specialist who is a liability defensively with a penchant for being a headcase and gave up our franchise top prospect to get him. I think the carnage that arises as this season unfolds will be something to behold.

This is fantastic news!!!!! If we can sign Streit and Markov and Jagr and play them on one power play unit together we could call it our Canada Pension Play ... If we are going to stink big time at least we can have a few laughs along the way. Here's to a high draft lottery win .........

I think in one more season Weber may well be untradeable with his contract. I believe it is not so much the total dollars committed to two players as it is the fact that one of our pair is a goaltender who will be 31 years old when the extension kicks in to play. I love Carey Price for what he has meant to this franchise but I never dreamed that he would demand so much money or that the Habs would be stupid enough to pay it! The longer this regime remains in control the deeper the death spiral will get .....

Last season the Canadiens scored 223 goals placing them 15th in the league. They allowed 198 goals placing them 4th in the league. Where did our goals come from? Last season Projected this season Patches 35 35 Byron 22 15 Radulov 18 Drouin 22 Lehkonen 18 17 Galchenyuk 17 25 Weber 17 12 Danault 13 12 Shaw 12 15 Gallagher 10 18 Plekanec 10 12 Others 51 51 Totals 223 234 Some players will regress and others will rebound so I have given best guesses. Goals against will be interesting depending on Price's performance and health. Our forward group defensively has not changed much. Drouin is somewhat weak defensively but Radulov was not that much different. Will Galchenyuk be more responsible defensively? Worse case I expect our goals for totals to be about the same as last year but we don't have a great differential to play with and of course our defense is a concern. If we allow say another 15 goals more than last year and half our OT/SO wins go away and say two reg time wins, we are at 93 points and out of the playoffs. Tough to predict at this point ......

On the one hand it is easy tp get mad at the stupidity of this deal when you look on the same day at how the Oilers treated their #1 star ..... it's called a commitment to winning. On the other hand Bergevin has managed this team into non-contention for years to come as we have no prospects in the system and our Cap has been badly mis-allocated. So ... it's just more of the same ol' same ol' .......

Okay men .... now I'm going to need you to re-arrange these deck chairs! Ignore that approaching iceberg ..... let's get this done !!!!!!

HABS LINES HAB FAN " How many Hab fans does it take to change a lightbulb? Another HAB FAN " We don't ..... we just talk about how good the old one was!" Cha CHINNNGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!

Like something that just crawled out of the primordial ooze ..............

The Cap era has changed how teams are built and maintained. Winning becomes expensive to maintain and the great GM's are challenged to find a way to sustain. Chicago and Detroit and Pittsburgh and Los Angeles are good examples of maintaining after winning. What do all these teams have? Great General Managers .... something we have not had since Sammy left ..... but even he operated in the non-cap era with much less competition. This team is not capable of winning because we don't even have a competent GM nor an owner who is committed to winning. Look at what was done with Laval in hiring back SL to coach in spite of his pathetic record of development and won/loss experience. As long as Montreal fans are happy to support this losing regime with their money the Canadiens will continue to play politics of language ahead of winning as their basic philosophy. It is like the Harold Ballard era in Toronto where years went buy with no hope of even being respectable.

As of now if I was the GM of this team I would hide out in the same place the owner is hiding and make sure only close friends and family could find me. One thing is guaranteed for this team with that ridiculous contract Bergevin gave Price .... this team will not win the Stanley Cup (or even seriously contend) for the duration of that contract. Not as long as it is on the team's books. The NHL has a salary cap. This year it is $75MM. We have 15% of our cap committed to goaltending if you include Price's extension which kicks in next year. Take a look at what we pay our forwards as a group against the cap. Near the bottom of the league. Take a look at what Pittsburgh pays their forwards vs their goaltending. That is what a Stanley Cup winner salary structure looks like. Same with Chicago. Our so called General Manager thinks you win with gritty players like Shaw from his Chicago days. No .. you win with guys named Toews, Kane, Hossa, Keith, Seabrook and Anisimov. Shaw was a role player ... a filler ... a role that can be played by any of a thousand guys. That's what Montreal now has as a roster ... one helluva good goalie and a bunch of guys named Joe that are a dime a dozen! Good luck to them but more importantly good luck to the fans of this team who should have deserved better but instead got drek. I will be very surprised if this team makes the playoffs this year and they will be VERY hard to watch on most nights. I also think that with Price's injury history ... it is very unlikely he will play out the length of this contract but rather more likely that he will begin to deteriorate from his peak within 3 to 4 years .... same as Lundquist. I don't know if he has a no-trade in his deal but with the Canadiens bidding against themselves and gifting the money they gave him, there is not another team in the league who could afford to pay that amount for a goalie no matter who he is. In short ... he's not going anywhere now thanks to Bergevin. Enjoy folks .....

I give up

Truthfully it is probably a little early to assess what has been done in free agency because Markov and Radulov have not yet settled. I believe we were doomed long before free agency started and thinking the current GM had the will or ability to pull off what needs to be done is simply self delusional. My argument since the season ended is that the time for the rebuild is now and the first step in that rebuild should have been to fire Bergevin. You have to go into any such long term project with commitment and a plan and you certainly don't want the architect of your last failure heading up such an initiative. That seems to make common sense. Instead, the owner went missing at last season's end and Bergevin has dealt away or lost our best prospect since Subban, a former 1st round pick and left defenseman in Beaulieu, and lost Emelin, another left defense, in the ED. We are left with ZERO Grade A NHL prospects and we are short at least one left defense unless Markov re-signs. We are told it will take at least $11MM to extend Price beyond next season. Without prospects to trade or work into the playing roster we are hooped, as they say. Oh ... and as the final salt in the wound, our new AHL affiliate has an old problem to deal with in that SL was re-upped to coach by Bergevin just to show us all who is really running this outfit. We need to do something impactful to start the rebuild and have an asset around which to build. To gain a major asset, you need to pay big time ... its not like acquiring 4th line plugs remember. People have been wanting to offer sheet Draisaitl ... that never works and is too costly both $wise and on picks we would forfeit .... The way to go is a trade with Edmonton. We offer Weber and Price for Draisaitl. I would also try to get a pick .. say a conditional 2nd rounder if Price extends with them which would become say a 4th round pick if he does not extend with them. They would then have a number 1 D to solidify their blue line corps and arguably the best Goalie on the planet. I believe this would make the Oilers a legit Cup contender immediately and ....... we would have our #1 Centre. I would immediately offer 8 x $12MM to Draisaitl to lock him up ..... that leaves about $14MM in cap space to re-sign Galchenyuk and Markov ..... will we be short on "D"? You betcha ... that is why it is called rebuilding but we would have some interesting and YOUNG offensive talent around which to build ie Galchenyuk, Drouin, Lehkonen, Draisaitl plus solid veterans like Gallagher/Shaw/Byron/Plekanec and a seasoned sniper in Patches. Starting D would be a work in process but might look like Petry/Alzner as the ones, Benn/Markov as the twos, and KHL Cast-off Guy/Juulsen/Davidson as the threes. Lindgren and Montoya would handle goal to start. In my humble opinion, I think we could ice an interesting and entertaining team as constituted above .....

so let me get this straight ..... if Markov gets his $6MM and Radulov gets his $6MM that's $16.6MM including Alzner and added to these ham and egger signings I believe we are flat up against the cap or slightly over. And that does not account for the $5MM raise that Price wants for next season nor allow for Galchenyuk's re-signing .......... I guess somebody is not going to get signed ............