2021-22 State of the Habs

[jennifer_rocket]

2 hours ago, Regis22 said:

why wait ? 

Let's be proactive 

He's not , never was and probably never will be a 70 , 80 100 pt player . Let's move him before he becomes old (er ) and slow(er) 

 

I agree here.

We need the new management team to be a little more cutthroat in some situations. And this be one of them. I do worry that Gallagher will continue to struggle as Montreal rebuilds/retools/rewhatevers. The longer we wait the greater the risk that he continues to decline.

I think I would be okay bringing him back next season, but... if the struggles continue, I think we need to look at moving him. I would trade him this off-season if a decent offer came in.

[habs1952]

2 hours ago, maas_art said:

 I think many were also worried about paying him for what he did in the past vs. what he was likely to do in the future.

For arguments sake, maybe he was underpaid for what he had done in the past. 

[jennifer_rocket]

3 minutes ago, habs1952 said:

For arguments sake, maybe he was underpaid for what he had done in the past. 

He definitely was. So... yeah... you want to pay him fair value for what you expect him to do going forward. It's possible, when we look back on this deal, it will have been determined Bergevin over-paid. I'm reminded of Gionta's drop-off in production after he came here. 

[seth505]

On 4/20/2022 at 9:55 AM, jennifer_rocket said:

What's everyone's opinion on what we should do with Gallagher moving forward? I believe he has a six-team no-trade list if we wanted to move him.

His production this year has been pretty bad for being the highest paid forward on the team? Is it an anomaly or a career decline?

Maybe this is overly critical but I don't think he provided much in the playoffs last year and this year he just seems to try plays that don't materialize into anything. He moves with the puck until it gets taken from him or just makes passes/shots that are low percentage garbage.  I'd try to move him for a decent return IMO.

[campabee82]

7 minutes ago, jennifer_rocket said:

He definitely was. So... yeah... you want to pay him fair value for what you expect him to do going forward. It's possible, when we look back on this deal, it will have been determined Bergevin over-paid. I'm reminded of Gionta's drop-off in production after he came here. 

The thing is, it was never expected that BG would have such a bad season and the losses of Danault, Kotkaniemi, Tatar and Weber were not even being contemplated at that point.

[jennifer_rocket]

2 minutes ago, campabee82 said:

The thing is, it was never expected that BG would have such a bad season and the losses of Danault, Kotkaniemi, Tatar and Weber were not even being contemplated at that point.

I think management under-valued the contributions of Danault and Tatar to his offensive success. He seems sort of... I don't know... stuck in mud out there. I don't notice him getting as many scoring chances. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Regis22]

1 hour ago, claremont said:

I would say there are other players (Hoffman, Armia, Byron, Petry, Savard), that should be moved far before Gally..............

I agree .

But the question was  What's everyone's opinion on what we should do with Gallagher moving forward? 

Petry and Savard  before you move them I think they  should have some capable NHL ready D men to replace them and not just go with " the prospects " who may or may turn into NHL'ers.

 

Or else were going to end up signing Mark Streit  again to fill the void 

 

 

 

[maas_art]

30 minutes ago, habs1952 said:

For arguments sake, maybe he was underpaid for what he had done in the past. 

No question. But thats not on the team to overpay for.  Its nice when a player plays on a team-friendly deal but you cant turn around and overpay after that or you'll soon run into cap issues.

 

16 minutes ago, seth505 said:

Maybe this is overly critical but I don't think he provided much in the playoffs last year and this year he just seems to try plays that don't materialize into anything. He moves with the puck until it gets taken from him or just makes passes/shots that are low percentage garbage.  I'd try to move him for a decent return IMO.

I dont disagree although he was playing a lot of the playoffs hurt by all accounts. I dont think he was healthy all year last year to be honest.    I think the problem is that you're not getting any sort of 'decent' return for him.  I dont see many teams having the cap to even consider him and those that do probably arent giving up an asset for him. Best you can probably hope for is a player on a similarly bad contract but shorter term. But again, he's not actively hurting the team - he's still better than most replacement forwards so while he's not great value i dont think its imperative to get him off the roster like Alzner etc. 

 

12 minutes ago, jennifer_rocket said:

I think management under-valued the contributions of Danault and Tatar to his offensive success. He seems sort of... I don't know... stuck in mud out there. I don't notice him getting as many scoring chances. Maybe I'm wrong.

In fairness to Gallagher, he's had some crap assignments/linemates.  He's not the type of player that will make a line better.  He'll compliment his linemates but when you have him Dauphin or Perreault or even Poehling or Pitlick, you probably arent getting the best out of him.   I wouldnt be surprised at all next year if he bounces back.  I dont think he'll bounce back to the tune of $6.5m but if you can get $4.5-5m in production from him, i think thats probably the best we can hope for at this stage. 

[habs1952]

1 hour ago, maas_art said:

No question. But thats not on the team to overpay for.  Its nice when a player plays on a team-friendly deal but you cant turn around and overpay after that or you'll soon run into cap issues.

 

 

Can't blame the players because the owners dish out ridiculous salaries. Players just want to be paid equal to comparable players. Good GMs can work around cap issues.

[habs1952]

1 hour ago, Regis22 said:

I agree .

But the question was  What's everyone's opinion on what we should do with Gallagher moving forward? 

Petry and Savard  before you move them I think they  should have some capable NHL ready D men to replace them and not just go with " the prospects " who may or may turn into NHL'ers.

 

Or else were going to end up signing Mark Streit  again to fill the void 

 

 

 

Agree. If the young players excel in Laval start making deals to unload the veterans. 

[maas_art]

47 minutes ago, habs1952 said:

Can't blame the players because the owners dish out ridiculous salaries. Players just want to be paid equal to comparable players. Good GMs can work around cap issues.

Who is blaming the player? 

I fully expect every player to try to get as much as they can.   But an owner should be smart enough not to pay players for what they did in the past. 

[BigTed3]

Never liked the Gallagher extension. We got him at a discount for a long time and now we're just giving all that money back. As I've said, you want to lock guys up long-term for their playing years 22-30. If you have to pay a 25 year-old for 7-8 years and give up a couple of seasons into the early 30s in order to get them at a better discount for some of their prime years, then fine. But giving out a long-term deal to a guy who is 28+ is usually a mistake. There are few of those deals that work out.

[Regis22]

I m going to take a beating for this but  MSL as coach or not this team s*cks

OK the game means nothing but you're at home , in front of probably a sold out crowd, playing against another slug team that is 2 and 8 in their last ten and lost six in a row 

and this is what happens . Geez

 

[tony5775]

This team looks a lot like the Ducharme team. Pretty much what I expected after they traded Chariot and Kulak. Not sure why they recalled Clague. Would like to see Niku called up for the rest of the season. Clague was terrible in this game, at least Niku would give us a offensive presence on the PP. 

[BigTed3]

3 minutes ago, tony5775 said:

This team looks a lot like the Ducharme team. Pretty much what I expected after they traded Chariot and Kulak. Not sure why they recalled Clague. Would like to see Niku called up for the rest of the season. Clague was terrible in this game, at least Niku would give us a offensive presence on the PP. 

They've looked bad in general, but let's also point out the line-up has been a tale of two cities. The Suzuki line is still playing exceedingly well and were dominant tonight when on the ice. Edmundson-Petry has been pretty strong as well, and Harris was doing well when in the line-up. Poehling and Ylonen and RHP and Evans have also done well in limited action.

Conversely, Romanov-Savard has been a tire fire. Wideman has been bad since his partners started rotating all over the place. Hoffman-Dvorak-Gallagher has also been brutal. So yeah, in general they've been bad but I also don't feel like we're losing because of coaching right now, as we were under Ducharme.

[Regis22]

1 minute ago, BigTed3 said:

 So yeah, in general they've been bad but I also don't feel like we're losing because of coaching right now, as we were under Ducharme.

No now we’re losing because they s*ck

 

[electron58]

Montreal Canadiens send Rafaël Harvey-Pinard to the Laval Rocket.
He will likely be in the lineup in the Laval Rocket’s possible playoff clincher.

[claremont]

2 hours ago, electron58 said:

Montreal Canadiens send Rafaël Harvey-Pinard to the Laval Rocket.
He will likely be in the lineup in the Laval Rocket’s possible playoff clincher.

The Rocket have the opportunity to knock the Toronto Marlies out of the ahl playoffs - I hope they can do it as all you hear from the leaf indirect owners TSN and Sportsnet is how deep the Marlies are 

[BigTed3]

23 hours ago, Regis22 said:

No now we’re losing because they s*ck

 

Yes, right now they're losing because the roster is bad. We have one strong forward line. That 2nd line of Hoffman-Dvorak-Gallagher is a terrible line. None of those players drives the play, none of them is able to carry the puck up the ice well, none of them are particularly imposing, and they all play different styles of games. So that line has no identity, it's just a collection of struggling players. We do have some decent bottom 6 pieces in the bottom 6 but again, not enough to be game-changers and we've lost our secondary scoring with the trading of Toffoli and Lehkonen, the loss of Drouin to injury, and the demise and then loss of Armia. So a prior area of strength at wing has become depleted of late, and we have very poor organizational depth at center to begin with.

On D, we continue to have one top 3 D man in Petry, and he's struggled without any supporting cast this year. But he's played better under MSL. The problem is there's no one else there who is ready to be a force on D. Romanov has had his moments but he's young and still inconsistent. Savard has been awful. Edmundson is a supporting cast player. The rest are spare parts or in development. And in net, we've had no luck with injuries and then bad play from Montembeault for the most part. Many of the players on the team would probably be cut at the end of the year if we didn't have to hold onto their cap hits regardless.. Savard, Hoffman, Montembeault, Byron, Armia, Pezzetta, Perreault, Paquette, maybe even Gallagher. If there were no guaranteed contracts and this were like the NFL, I think all those guys would be finished here.

So yeah, it's clear this is going to take some time to fix. Another reason why if you end up trading Price in the off-season, next year should likely be a re-building year as well. Take your shot at getting another top 3-5 pick in a stud draft next season.

[ramcharger440]

5 minutes ago, BigTed3 said:

Yes, right now they're losing because the roster is bad. We have one strong forward line. That 2nd line of Hoffman-Dvorak-Gallagher is a terrible line. None of those players drives the play, none of them is able to carry the puck up the ice well, none of them are particularly imposing, and they all play different styles of games. So that line has no identity, it's just a collection of struggling players. We do have some decent bottom 6 pieces in the bottom 6 but again, not enough to be game-changers and we've lost our secondary scoring with the trading of Toffoli and Lehkonen, the loss of Drouin to injury, and the demise and then loss of Armia. So a prior area of strength at wing has become depleted of late, and we have very poor organizational depth at center to begin with.

On D, we continue to have one top 3 D man in Petry, and he's struggled without any supporting cast this year. But he's played better under MSL. The problem is there's no one else there who is ready to be a force on D. Romanov has had his moments but he's young and still inconsistent. Savard has been awful. Edmundson is a supporting cast player. The rest are spare parts or in development. And in net, we've had no luck with injuries and then bad play from Montembeault for the most part. Many of the players on the team would probably be cut at the end of the year if we didn't have to hold onto their cap hits regardless.. Savard, Hoffman, Montembeault, Byron, Armia, Pezzetta, Perreault, Paquette, maybe even Gallagher. If there were no guaranteed contracts and this were like the NFL, I think all those guys would be finished here.

So yeah, it's clear this is going to take some time to fix. Another reason why if you end up trading Price in the off-season, next year should likely be a re-building year as well. Take your shot at getting another top 3-5 pick in a stud draft next season.

Yep that is it in a nutshell. We got rid of a couple of good players to build for the future many of this seasons signings are just bad! others don't have the right guys playing with them and Gally fell of a cliff like many thought he would! The D is tough right now but should rebound in a year or two into a modern unit with some talent. Up front we need work! if we get first overall we may solve one of the issues with Wright, he and Zuke would be a good 1-2 punch for centers and if one of the lads we have settles in as a solid #3 we will be ok up the middle for me the issue we have most is guys like Byron Hoffman Gally  Armia Drouin what do you do with them? Gally is worn out with a big contract Drouin is made of glass Armia is a slug! Hoffman never should have been here at all and as much as I like Paul he is done moves will have to be made and youth or talent has to come in.

[Graeme-1]

I suspect the contract situation won't look so bad a couple years from now. A few of the contracts will be up and I'd be willing to bet that Price, Gallagher, and possibly Savard all end those contracts on LTIR.  The big problem is going to be that cap space doesn't score you goals, we need to use the space that starts freeing up wisely.

The next couple of years are almost certainly going to be pretty ugly though, and management may be perfectly happy with it that way (get a high first-round pick, sell off veterans at trade deadline for picks & prospects, see what we have in our youngsters in Montreal, etc).

 

[BigTed3]

8 hours ago, Graeme-1 said:

I suspect the contract situation won't look so bad a couple years from now. A few of the contracts will be up and I'd be willing to bet that Price, Gallagher, and possibly Savard all end those contracts on LTIR.  The big problem is going to be that cap space doesn't score you goals, we need to use the space that starts freeing up wisely.

The next couple of years are almost certainly going to be pretty ugly though, and management may be perfectly happy with it that way (get a high first-round pick, sell off veterans at trade deadline for picks & prospects, see what we have in our youngsters in Montreal, etc).

 

Ideally if you're the Habs you accept one more re-building year but you want to be competitive in 2023-24. Drouin and Byron will be off the books then, but we'll still be stuck with Price (10.5M), Gallagher (6.5M), Hoffman (4.5M), Armia (3.4M), Petry (6.25M), Savard (3.5M), Edmundson (3.5M), Dvorak (4.45M), and Weber's 7.86M on the books. That's a lot of potential dead weight still. Sure, some of those guys might be traded, but in that case, we might be forced to eat salary back or give up picks/prospects, which is not ideal either. And remember that even if guys end up on LTIR like Weber, those contracts still count against you in the off-season and you can't go more than 10% above the salary cap even if you plan on shelving guys on LTIR once the season starts. So basically if the cap is 80M-ish, then Weber's contract alone is your overage for the off-season. Even if you plan on putting Price or Gallagher or so on on LTIR, it doesn't help you add anyone in the off-season. Then to boot, we also know Caufield and Romanov will be due raises by 2023, and that probably eats up all of the money you've save on Drouin and Byron. Even if we bridge those two players, I suspect Caufield will earn 5.5-6.5M on his next deal and Romanov 4-5M. This will take some wiggling from HuGo if they want to get back to being competitive within 2 years. Otherwise the salary limitations are going to slow down the ability to re-build faster.

[CaptWelly]

As much as with MSL the team has looked "better?" . We're what 0-8 ? So I'm surely hoping we don't have 2-3 more years of this. Rebuilding is never a guarantee , how long has Buffalo or Arizona been bad with high draft choices? I'm hoping something happens to make us at least competitive sooner.

 

[H_T_L]

19 minutes ago, CaptWelly said:

As much as with MSL the team has looked "better?" . We're what 0-8 ? So I'm surely hoping we don't have 2-3 more years of this. Rebuilding is never a guarantee , how long has Buffalo or Arizona been bad with high draft choices? I'm hoping something happens to make us at least competitive sooner.

 

Agreed.

If it meant a guarantee of getting Beddard, then i'd be willing to suffer through one more year, but we all know there are NO guarantees like that,,, so if there's a chance to retool now, and be competitive, then i'm on board. I think it's more then doable with a couple key additions and subtractions. 

[habsisme]

I want one more year of rebuild. No serious free-agent signings, letting the kids play, trading older guys, just one more year of that, especially next year which is going to be a top-heavy AND deep draft