State of the Habs

[habs1952]

3 hours ago, East_Coast_Juggalo_13 said:

The Player develoment of this club needs to be revamped.  Period.

We have player development?

[Regis22]

11 minutes ago, habs1952 said:

We have player development?

You're obviously not following the Laval Rocket

[Habberwacky]

 

1 hour ago, Regis22 said:

You're obviously not following the Laval Rocket

Rychel, Baun and Valiev are here to save the day. if not more mediocrity is in store. perhaps we can flip them for Davidson.

[H_T_L]

Sabres upset the Bruins today. Tank on.

[Regis22]

6 hours ago, Habberwacky said:

 

Rychel, Baun and Valiev are here to save the day. if not more mediocrity is in store. perhaps we can flip them for Davidson.

Baun's a Leaf

Hopefully rychel and Valiev can develop into NHL players . The fact the Leafs were willing to let them go might give some indication of where  they stood on the Leafs depth chart . MB needs to clean house in Laval and get new coaches

[BigTed3]

29 minutes ago, Regis22 said:

Baun's a Leaf

Hopefully rychel and Valiev can develop into NHL players . The fact the Leafs were willing to let them go might give some indication of where  they stood on the Leafs depth chart . MB needs to clean house in Laval and get new coaches

Rychel also cleared waivers to go down to the AHL, so it also tells you there weren't any GM's interested in taking him on for free... as I said, I think he's got a higher ceiling than Valiev but the odds of him getting there are lower. I think it's worth giving him a look this year to see what he can do.

[Windoe]

I have no problem with them swapping some AHL'ers around, but the main thing we got back for renting out Plekanec was a late 2nd round pick...and a mole in the Leafs room

[Regis22]

There's that infamous "character ", I wonder how he measures " character "

http://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/nhl/hockey-inside-out/stu-cowan-canadiens-gm-marc-bergevin-looking-forward-to-year-7

We didn’t accomplish what we were set to be from training camp … there’s no doubt about that. But again, we have some young players coming through now. … We’re going young with speed and character, so we’re going to build around that.” 

[BigTed3]

Pacioretty after the game tonight says he never asked for a trade, which is what MB said as well. MP says he realizes he hasn't played well and that he's been part of the team's failures this year but adds that he can't carry the weight of the team on his shoulders alone. You get the feeling he would have been a lot better off not being the captain. Arpon Basu said he gets the feeling MP really wants to stay in Montreal and doesn't want to be traded, but if that's the case, we can't afford to give him big money. if you're keeping Max, at least one of Weber or Price has to go, both to get the money down and to bring back the 1C. I have nothing against Max, he's still a legit scorer in this league... but the Habs will have to make a hard decision. IF Max agrees to re-sign for something like 5-6 years at 7M a season, for example, do you say ok and then look at dealing Price, whose contract and Weber's may well be worse than Max's.

[Regis22]

Trade all 3 . This is going to take 3 or  4 years to fix this mess

[Graeme-1]

58 minutes ago, BigTed3 said:

Pacioretty after the game tonight says he never asked for a trade, which is what MB said as well. MP says he realizes he hasn't played well and that he's been part of the team's failures this year but adds that he can't carry the weight of the team on his shoulders alone. You get the feeling he would have been a lot better off not being the captain. Arpon Basu said he gets the feeling MP really wants to stay in Montreal and doesn't want to be traded, but if that's the case, we can't afford to give him big money. if you're keeping Max, at least one of Weber or Price has to go, both to get the money down and to bring back the 1C. I have nothing against Max, he's still a legit scorer in this league... but the Habs will have to make a hard decision. IF Max agrees to re-sign for something like 5-6 years at 7M a season, for example, do you say ok and then look at dealing Price, whose contract and Weber's may well be worse than Max's.

I'm honestly not sure Price is movable (without taking significant salary back) - the deal looked extremely risky even before last season and it's just looking worse.

We should be trading Weber - I suspect he still has pretty solid value and will likely decline quite a bit over the next few seasons.  Trade him somewhere that's weak at defense and could potentially contend the next few seasons - Toronto and, despite the record, Edmonton, were two teams that made some sense as trade partners.

[PuckPundit]

So, after the post-TDL press conference, does anyone else have lingering illusions that Bergevin has been shut down by Geoff Molson, as rumoured?

When Marc Bergevin said he has Molson's full support and he'll be at the draft in Dallas, if that wasn't trolling Hab fans to the core, I really don't know what it was! Ouch!

[jennifer_rocket]

6 hours ago, PuckPundit said:

So, after the post-TDL press conference, does anyone else have lingering illusions that Bergevin has been shut down by Geoff Molson, as rumoured?

When Marc Bergevin said he has Molson's full support and he'll be at the draft in Dallas, if that wasn't trolling Hab fans to the core, I really don't know what it was! Ouch!

Yeah, it certainly sounds like we should get ready for year 7 of Marc's 5-year plan. Oh my. Sigh.

[BigTed3]

8 hours ago, Graeme-1 said:

I'm honestly not sure Price is movable (without taking significant salary back) - the deal looked extremely risky even before last season and it's just looking worse.

We should be trading Weber - I suspect he still has pretty solid value and will likely decline quite a bit over the next few seasons.  Trade him somewhere that's weak at defense and could potentially contend the next few seasons - Toronto and, despite the record, Edmonton, were two teams that made some sense as trade partners.

I think Price is still moveable. You can't always believe what reporters say, but when you hear multiple guys in the media repeat the same thing and when those guys are ex-players and ex-GM's and ex-coaches, you know there are similar-thinking people who are actual GM's and coaches out there too. Over the past few weeks and several times yesterday, I heard the media talking about Price. The rhetoric over and over was "he's having a down year like the rest of the Habs, but when he's on, he's the best goalie in the world." Everyone on the TSN panel had Price as their starter for the 2022 Olympic roster. Carbonneau said that if the Habs put price on the market, they would have a ton of interested GM's. I think it was Marty Biron who said the same thing on TSN.

Is his contract going to be a deterrent to some? Yes, absolutely. But I think Price is still highly -regarded as a top 3-5 goalie in the league despite this season. I think Bergevin doesn't want to trade him for the same reason other GM's will still want him, because they know he can steal games and they know he has been consistent over a long period of time. We're not talking about Rick Dipietro here. I also wonder if the success that guys like Luongo and Lundqvist and Rinne have had despite being older goalies would help us sell Price. Even guys like Craig Anderson and Ryan Miller have been able to sustain themselves as regulars despite their age. Hasek and Roy had success as older goalies too. So there's precedent for star goalies not dropping off the cliff. And if the salary cap goes up close to 90M over the next little while as is projected, then more goalies are going to start signing contracts in the same range as Carey's and Carey's salary as a percentage of cap hit is going to drop off.

Bottom line is that we're not going to get the same return in a trade that we might get if Price were making 6 x 6M. But I think we'll still find a partner. I think we can still get a decent return. It wouldn't surprise me if a team like Edmonton would pay up. Or Philadelphia. Or St. Louis or the Isles or Dallas or Buffalo or Calgary or Anaheim or Carolina. Or maybe Chicago if Crawford's health is a concern. Maybe we have to take a contract back, but some examples of things I might discuss...

 

- Price, Shaw, and Benn to Phi for Andrew MacDonald (as a contract dump; roster spot evens out with Benn), Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim, and Carter Hart

- Price to the NYI for Barzal

- Price to Edmonton for Draisailt and Talbot

- Price to Carolina for Darling, Necar, Bean, and Gauthier

 

Some GM's might give you a flat out no. But there are teams who have been searching for a starting goalie for years and who have failed with multiple tries to find one. So they may well be interested in getting more of a sure thing in goal in exchange for giving up talent at center or D.

 

[Noob616]

Thank goodness that Chiarelli offered Lucic a 7th year and the Habs missed out on him.

[maas_art]

14 hours ago, BigTed3 said:

Pacioretty after the game tonight says he never asked for a trade, which is what MB said as well. MP says he realizes he hasn't played well and that he's been part of the team's failures this year but adds that he can't carry the weight of the team on his shoulders alone. You get the feeling he would have been a lot better off not being the captain. Arpon Basu said he gets the feeling MP really wants to stay in Montreal and doesn't want to be traded, but if that's the case, we can't afford to give him big money. if you're keeping Max, at least one of Weber or Price has to go, both to get the money down and to bring back the 1C. I have nothing against Max, he's still a legit scorer in this league... but the Habs will have to make a hard decision. IF Max agrees to re-sign for something like 5-6 years at 7M a season, for example, do you say ok and then look at dealing Price, whose contract and Weber's may well be worse than Max's.

Yeah, pretty much agree on all.  I think Patches really loves montreal & wants to stay. I think if we can get the right deal, we move him, but like you, if the money & term works out, I dont mind resigning him. He should still have several good years left.  If we got Tavares as his centre this is a whole different scenario.  But then you'd have to move a guy like AG for a #1LD etc.     And I agree, one of Weber or Price (or both) would HAVE to be moved at that point.

14 hours ago, Regis22 said:

Trade all 3 . This is going to take 3 or  4 years to fix this mess

If done properly we could probably keep one.  Wouldnt be opposed to moving all if the return was right but if we had a good GM (A laugh, i know) we could probably get out from under this mess in 1- 2 years. 

5 hours ago, BigTed3 said:

I think Price is still moveable. - Price, Shaw, and Benn to Phi for Andrew MacDonald (as a contract dump; roster spot evens out with Benn), Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim, and Carter Hart

- Price to the NYI for Barzal

- Price to Edmonton for Draisailt and Talbot

- Price to Carolina for Darling, Necar, Bean, and Gauthier

 

Some GM's might give you a flat out no. But there are teams who have been searching for a starting goalie for years and who have failed with multiple tries to find one. So they may well be interested in getting more of a sure thing in goal in exchange for giving up talent at center or D.

 

I agree.  The list of GMs willing to make the appropriate move would be small but there's a deal out there, im certain.   Unfortunately im also certain MB wont make that deal.  Maybe a new guy would but what are the odds MB is replaced? 

[jeff33]

So no one wanted our captain, or at least no one was willing to cough up anything good. 

Consider this.

WE want to trade him,because he is not worth the big bucks to resign him. So MAYBE every other team can see the exact same thing.

Disturbing thoughts for your Tuesday consideration.

[maas_art]

24 minutes ago, jeff33 said:

So no one wanted our captain, or at least no one was willing to cough up anything good. 

Consider this.

WE want to trade him,because he is not worth the big bucks to resign him. So MAYBE every other team can see the exact same thing.

Disturbing thoughts for your Tuesday consideration.

its all conjecture though, unless we know what someone was actually offering.  

 

Ultimately "worth" is just  what someone will pay but I have a hard time believing we couldnt have gotten at least as much as nash if not more.   

[habs1952]

1 hour ago, jeff33 said:

So no one wanted our captain, or at least no one was willing to cough up anything good. 

Consider this.

WE want to trade him,because he is not worth the big bucks to resign him. So MAYBE every other team can see the exact same thing.

Disturbing thoughts for your Tuesday consideration.

You read my mind.

[CANADIENS27]

No scoring by the team who have now lost eight of the last nine.  

 

 

[Ravadak]

There is no way this team should consider keeping Price, Weber or Patches for any reason, you can add Petry to this list also. Not that I don't like any of them. But,  this core has failed miserably, we could not even get out of round one last season against another team who was smart enough to blow it up. This season we have one of the worst records  in the league. All 4  would be 30 or older. We have a young goalie ready to make a step forward, we have some really good young wingers. We need to add to that youth with puck moving deeman  and two top end centerman. The 4 players above would all warrant at least a first round pick and a prospect or multiple pieces. Who cares if we have to take back salary. And I don't care if its picks or potential prospects. As long as the picks/propects are either deeman or centerman. 

[jeff33]

53 minutes ago, Ravadak said:

There is no way this team should consider keeping Price, Weber or Patches for any reason, you can add Petry to this list also. Not that I don't like any of them. But,  this core has failed miserably, we could not even get out of round one last season against another team who was smart enough to blow it up. This season we have one of the worst records  in the league. All 4  would be 30 or older. We have a young goalie ready to make a step forward, we have some really good young wingers. We need to add to that youth with puck moving deeman  and two top end centerman. The 4 players above would all warrant at least a first round pick and a prospect or multiple pieces. Who cares if we have to take back salary. And I don't care if its picks or potential prospects. As long as the picks/propects are either deeman or centerman. 

100% accurate assessment.  The fact that anything other than this is being considered is evidence that the entire management staff needs to go asap

[Noob616]

Yup. Rangers are in a very similar situation to the Habs where their aging core wasn't good enough and their only hope to compete was signing Tavares. And they arguably had an even better shot at signing him since he likes NY and would be moving to a team with McDonagh and Lundqvist instead of Leddy and...whatever the Islanders have in goal.

But instead of kicking the can down the road and hoping on a Tavares pipe dream they decided to sell and commit to turning over their aging core. Their Paul Byron (Grabner) brings in a 2nd and a solid B prospect. Their Joe Morrow (Holden) brought back a 3rd and a depth guy. There aren't exact analogies for the other trades but I think Pacioretty, Petry, and Galchenyuk are probably equal in aggregate to McDonagh, Nash, and Miller. I'd be pretty happy if those three got moved with Namestnikov, Hajek, Howden, Spooner, Lindgren, two 1sts, and a 2nd that could become a 1st in return. 

The Leafs desperately need a right side defender and were out on McDonagh, what would the Habs have got for Petry? What does Pacioretty and Petry get you from Tampa? Petry's not McDonagh but Miller isn't Pacioretty, and they need help on their right side more than the left anyway. Vegas was in on Karlsson and presumably trying to go all-in, and they ended up paying a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for Tomas Tatar. I can't believe you couldn't have got more out of them for Pacioretty. An expiring Stastny returned a 1st and a high end prospect (Foley). Brassard got a 1st, a B prospect, a 3rd, and a depth prospect. Nashville gave up a 1st and a decent prospect for Ryan Hartman. 

I dunno, it's not like any seller in particular got anything truly insane but it's hard to see what Nash, McDonagh + Miller, Hartman, Tatar, Grabner, Brassard, and Stastny got and be happy with the Habs' deadline. I'm not so concerned about the Pacioretty thing because I think they'll still get a good return in the summer, but this feels like a big missed opportunity to sell on Byron, Benn, Shaw, Schlemko, and possibly even Petry and Galchenyuk. 

[maas_art]

2 hours ago, Ravadak said:

There is no way this team should consider keeping Price, Weber or Patches for any reason, you can add Petry to this list also. Not that I don't like any of them. But,  this core has failed miserably, we could not even get out of round one last season against another team who was smart enough to blow it up. This season we have one of the worst records  in the league. All 4  would be 30 or older. We have a young goalie ready to make a step forward, we have some really good young wingers. We need to add to that youth with puck moving deeman  and two top end centerman. The 4 players above would all warrant at least a first round pick and a prospect or multiple pieces. Who cares if we have to take back salary. And I don't care if its picks or potential prospects. As long as the picks/propects are either deeman or centerman. 

The problem is that I think Marc Bergevin still believes there's a magic solution "just around the corner."
 

We've hypothesized that if you were miraculously able to sign John Tavares AND get #1 overall pick in draft (eitehr extremely unlikely, but to do both would be like winning the jackpot) then we'd suddenly be a very competitive team without changing a thing.  But while most of us can look at this scenario and say "never going to happen" I honestly, genuinely believe that Marc Bergevin is banking on it to happen this summer.   

[BigTed3]

Supposedly, the Habs and Panthers had discussions about Pacioretty, but the rumor is that the Habs wanted a roster player or their best center prospect (Borgstrom) and apparently the Panthers still believe they can make the playoffs and were only interested in trading picks and/or B level prospects. So by all accounts, the discussions never got that far, and when Bergevin found out he couldn't get a Robert Thomas or a Borgstrom right then and there, he decided he would wait until the draft to make a hockey trade with Pacioretty... if that's the case, then it makes sense. My gut feeling is that MB is going to end up making a trade for a center already in the NHL, like an RNH or Eriksson-Ek rather than get us a top-tier center prospect, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a deal like Pacioretty for RNH + Nurse + a 2nd, or something to that effect. We'd be better served getting a Vilardi or Thomas or Steel or Borgstrom, but I guess that depends on whether anyone's willing to sell. Barring that, I wonder if we see MB trade Pacioretty for a mid-1st round pick and try to go after a center with a second choice in the 1st round. There aren't really any centers worthy of a top 5-8 pick, so unless our choice falls down the pecking order, it doesn't make sense to reach there and it doesn't make sense to trade down and pass up a top-tier D man or winger just for positional need. So I think if you end up picking 4th or 5th for example, you take the Tkachuk or Boqvist or Bouchard or whoever and work from there. But maybe Pacman for the 12th overall or 14th overall pick as one of the pieces in a trade nets you a future center (for example, Pacioretty to the Isles for Beauvillier and the 14th overall pick, which you use on a center...).

As for the others, I guess the saving grace is that Plekanec, Morrow, and Jerabek were going to be free agents, whereas Benn, Schlemko, Alzner, Byron, and Shaw can be dealt in the summer. I think Benn, Byron, and Shaw have value on the trade market, so again, in those cases, you can justify holding on and trying to make a better hockey deal later on. We know Winnipeg was in on Shaw, we know Chicago would consider repatriating him, and maybe next year is a better time for them. So maybe there are deals to be won later on for those three, and barring that, you can still argue they're of value here, so long as they're in the right roles and depending on the direction the team takes... but as for Schlemko, there is zero reason why we should have refused any offer sent to us. He is of no value, and he is still signed for another couple of years, so he's someone you want to get off the books. I guess we'll see where the Habs end up picking in the draft and what deals they're able to swing before July 1st. If we can get good trade value for the likes of Pacioretty, Weber, Price, Gallagher, Shaw, Byron, or Benn, etc. and if we end up with a top 3-5 pick or if JT announces he's leaving New York and considers the Habs one of his top 2-3 choices, that's a very different scenario than if we go into July 1st with the same roster we have now and are sitting on the 10th overall pick. I just wish MB was more proactive instead of letting things sit in a game of chance.