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Canadiens acquire defenseman Bryan Allen from the Anaheim Ducks in return for forward Rene Bourque


ColRouleBleu

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My first thought: how many defencemen can one team have? I know MB says you can never have too many, but you certainly can if it's prohibiting you from playing Beaulieu and Tinordi.

My second thought: it helps the salary cap situation to get rid of Bourque and pick up a contract that expires.

My third thought: like with the Gonchar trade, we're now stocking up on left-handed defencemen, just like we did last year... it just feels like we're putting ourselves back in the same position we were in last year when we had guys playing off-wing and we overplayed past-their-prime veterans over developing rookies.

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My first thought: how many defencemen can one team have? I know MB says you can never have too many, but you certainly can if it's prohibiting you from playing Beaulieu and Tinordi.

My second thought: it helps the salary cap situation to get rid of Bourque and pick up a contract that expires.

My third thought: like with the Gonchar trade, we're now stocking up on left-handed defencemen, just like we did last year... it just feels like we're putting ourselves back in the same position we were in last year when we had guys playing off-wing and we overplayed past-their-prime veterans over developing rookies.

I half expect the team will waive him and send him down if not picked up.

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Yup, seems like MB is intent on having him join the team.

Another interesting point that came up, as reported by La Presse, is that Rene Bourque requested a trade last year because he didn't like Michel Therrien. That's yet another player whose come out against the coach. Doesn't say much...



MB: a lot of the time, you make one move to help you make another move later... does this mean he's still looking at something bigger?

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I was hoping he would be waived and sent down. <_< I guess that could still happen, but... just not right now. I'm happy that we unloaded Rene's contract, as we will have some new contracts to dole out next season and need the flexibility. I'm not as miffed about Beaulieu and Tinordi. Neither seemed that ready to me. There's certainly an argument to be made for giving them ice time, but I don't have a major issue with them both being in Hamilton right now.

Although Lefevbre does seem like a terrible coach... so I guess I do have a problem with them being in Hamilton.

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Yup, seems like MB is intent on having him join the team.

Another interesting point that came up, as reported by La Presse, is that Rene Bourque requested a trade last year because he didn't like Michel Therrien. That's yet another player whose come out against the coach. Doesn't say much...

MB: a lot of the time, you make one move to help you make another move later... does this mean he's still looking at something bigger?

I still thing there will be a big package deal at some point, possible by mid January.

I was hoping he would be waived and sent down. <_< I guess that could still happen, but... just not right now. I'm happy that we unloaded Rene's contract, as we will have some new contracts to dole out next season and need the flexibility. I'm not as miffed about Beaulieu and Tinordi. Neither seemed that ready to me. There's certainly an argument to be made for giving them ice time, but I don't have a major issue with them both being in Hamilton right now.

Although Lefevbre does seem like a terrible coach... so I guess I do have a problem with them being in Hamilton.

Conundrum? :P

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I was hoping he would be waived and sent down. <_< I guess that could still happen, but... just not right now. I'm happy that we unloaded Rene's contract, as we will have some new contracts to dole out next season and need the flexibility. I'm not as miffed about Beaulieu and Tinordi. Neither seemed that ready to me. There's certainly an argument to be made for giving them ice time, but I don't have a major issue with them both being in Hamilton right now.

Although Lefevbre does seem like a terrible coach... so I guess I do have a problem with them being in Hamilton.

That's the problem with the Montreal philosophy. You can't hide an inexperienced defenceman in your line-up. It doesn't work like a forward that you put in offence-only situations or give a limited 4th line role to. Defencemen learn by playing and making mistakes as they go. It was that way for Markov, for Subban, and so on. I don't think Tinordi and Beaulieu have much to gain by spending another season in Hamilton. They need to be in the bigs, even if they're watching one game in two from the pressbox.

The Bruins played their young D guys like Hamilton and Krug last year and they're becoming great players now. Anaheim did the same. Chicago's pushing young guys in. So's Detroit. How many homegrown draft picks have we developed on D in the past ten years since Markov? Komisarek briefly. And Subban, who we also tried to hold back as much as possible. Gorges was an acquisition. So were Hamrlik, Spacek, Kaberle, Gilbert, Murray, Weaver, Bouillon, Gonchar, and so on. We gave up on Ryan O'Byrne pretty early. We gave up on Ron Hainsey. We gave up on Francois Beauchemin. We gave up on Stephane Robidas. We gave up on Matt Carle (albeit not the good one) and Brendan Nash. Now we're floundering with Beaulieu and Tinordi and Pateryn. These guys need to play. Otherwise we're just becoming a feeder system for the rest of the NHL. I get that we made a good salary-cap trade here, but to me that's over-shadowed by the fact that it allows Michel Therrien to ignore the young guys. We're going back to the age-old Habs adage of failing to develop our players and trying to patch holes with UFA's and trade dumps. That strategy doesn't work in the long run. If the trade was Bourque for Allen and Allen to the minors, it's a great deal. If it's Bourque for Allen and we deal away Weaver, it's a good deal. If it's Bourque for Allen and we demote Beaulieu, it's a horrible deal IMO.

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I love the trade, I don't mind him playing a few games but I don't want to take too many game away from the young D. At the same time you gotta see what you got, if he ends up playing AMAZING... well let the D play!

I don't know about MT but I hope MB is GM of this team for a LONG time. Even when I don't like a move, its never THAT bad and I love most of them. This trade solidified it for me; I am on the MB bandwagon

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Ted, I don't disagree that the young guys have to play. However, I guess it's possible Bergevin saw this as being the better of two bad situations. send away Bourque's contract at the expense of playing time for the younger guys in the short-term. I'm hoping they will still get a chance, with Allen hopefully getting waived (although that seems unlikely at the moment). Being conservative, I guess we might as well just expect the worst-case scenario (i.e. Beaulieu being sent down) and consider it a bad deal.



The Dogs sent a D-man down to the ECHL today, therefore freeing up a spot.

Well, there you have it. Someone's going down.

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My first thought: how many defencemen can one team have? I know MB says you can never have too many, but you certainly can if it's prohibiting you from playing Beaulieu and Tinordi.

My second thought: it helps the salary cap situation to get rid of Bourque and pick up a contract that expires.

My third thought: like with the Gonchar trade, we're now stocking up on left-handed defencemen, just like we did last year... it just feels like we're putting ourselves back in the same position we were in last year when we had guys playing off-wing and we overplayed past-their-prime veterans over developing rookies.

Agreed. My "4th" thought is that I really really wanted us to sign Allen 3 years ago - he's always been an extremely underrated defensive defenseman... Im just not sure how I feel about him now as I havent seen a lot of him in the last couple of years.

MB: a lot of the time, you make one move to help you make another move later... does this mean he's still looking at something bigger?

You have to wonder if MB is planning on sending a defenseman or 2 back in a deal - we're sure stocked on the backend but without a ton of help up front in the event of injuries....

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Love the fact that we officially have Bourque off the books for next year. Dont love the fact the we now have both Tinordi and Beaulieu in HAM. However, they are 22 and 21 respectively. Lots of god d-men dont make the NHL full time until 23-25. Not a big deal to have a 21/22 y/o defencman in the AHL.. Not the end of the world.

Also, these guys (Allen, Gonchar) could be worth something at the deadline if we wanted to call one of them back up. There are always teams looking for a PP quarterback and depth.

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If Allen can still play for the Ducks he will do fine with us. The competition is definitely tougher in the west as well so he should be an upgrade. I think thiss gives Therrien some flexibility to manage the game better depending on the score and will significantly strengthen the back end. Out of the three new acquisitions Gilbert still scares me the most. As for the youngsters we have an awful lot of free agents on the backend.

As for Bourque I believe he said something similar when traded from Calgary and whether he liked therrien or not the fans did not appear to have much tolerance for his play during the regular season. Hopefully he can help out the Ducks.

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Goodbye RB -_- . Had hoped you could still make a comeback but they dealt you away. Anyway, all the best for your new career. Anaheim are a powerhouse team and they WILL make the play-offs. Opportunity for you to rebuild your credentials on the big stage come May.

What makes me mad is the discarded journeyman D-man the team got in exchange :mad: !!! Is he going to be another Murray? Why MB likes picking up other teams' discarded D-men? But then, I said the same thing about Gonchar and so far the old man has surprised me (but for how long?). Hopefully, a lemon on paper can turn out into a gem on ice :rolleyes: .

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The idea that Allen was "good enough for the Ducks" isn't entirely true. He was a healthy scratch several times last year and while he was injured to start this season, the Ducks didn't rush to get him back in the line-up either. He's only played a total of 6 games for them so far. I'd say he was more like a #6-7 guy over there, and he was used in a similar fashion to the way we used Douglas Murray last year. His Corsi numbers are pretty awful and he's an older player. The bottom line is that while we'll wait to see him play, I don't have high expectations that he'll be an overly useful player and I certainly don't see him being any better than Beaulieu or Tinordi, which is the biggest problem with this trade. Again, I'll reiterate that if the Habs had sent Allen directly to Hamilton, it's a great trade. But it's a bad trade if you give MT the option of playing a journeyman veteran over a promising rookie. Beaulieu has nothing left to learn in Hamilton and despite making the occasional mistake, his possession numbers are some of the best on the team. The Habs' demoting him and waiting until next year to bring him up will only mean he'll have to shake off the rookie mistakes next season yet again.

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