SUCK IT!

Hey, Carcillo!

So it’s gonna be one of those series, right…?

Sigh.

A lot of Habs fans this morning

Well I think it’s a little early to lose faith. Of course it didn’t look good. Of course it won’t be easy to even this series. But can’t you see what’s happening? The habs are trying a new strategy in this series:

They are getting all the saves and the shutouts out of Leighton’s system at once. This is briliant. After those two games, there’s no way Leighton will stop another puck in this series. Ahahahaha, this is genius! And to think I was wondering why Martin kept on giving Bergeron 18 minutes of ice time every night! Silly me…

Kudos for your innovating coaching methods, Jacques Martin!

Brilliant coaching (and big ears)

Wow, I feel like a genius. Like I predicted, Montreal finally reacted and played a very good game against Philly. The habs seem to be at their best when they play good teams this season. D’Agostini continues to impress. The kid is speedy, he can score, and he makes very few mistakes. Kovalev had another goal, which let habs fans everywhere hope that he is finally getting back on track. Halak seemed a bit shaky, but did the job. Komisarek came back,  played a good game and even got an assist. And most importantly, Montreal showed a lot of hunger. They were battling for the puck in all areas of the rink, and their speed was back.

So yesterday, it was party time for habs fans around the world.

Kovalev scored, tra la la!

Flyers suck, Oh I believe I can fly!

This D’Agostini kid makes me feel WILD!

Olé olé olé olé

~~~

Now tonight, back to business. The sabres are coming to town. They are pretty inconsistent these days, but they just blanked the kings, so I suppose they’re hot.

Koivu and A. Kostitsyn won’t play tonight. Price is near to returning, but the habs won’t rush him, so Halak will be in the nets. Maxwell, who was almost returned to Hamilton this week, will get another chance, because of these injuries. He doesn’t seem quite ready to make the jump to the nhl, but it’s a good thing for him to at least get a taste of what it’s like.

I just hope Montreal will play as hard as they did against the flyers. If they do, there is no reason to believe they can’t get two points out of this. I’m not expecting a low score thing tonight. For some reason, when Buffalo and Montreal play each other, it’s often exciting. Generally, those games are pretty fast paced and fun to watch.

Buffalo, boring? I don’t think so.

Carey would have stopped it.

~~~

Tonight: back to Montreal, for a game versus the Flyers.

Flyers are hot (7-1-2), Habs are cold (5-4-1). The series is split between the two teams so far.

Biron has a tendency to look unbeatable when he plays Montreal, let’s hope this trend doesn’t continue for too long. Simon Gagne is a beast this season. Philadelphia special teams are definitely special: their PP is the second best in the league, whith a 27% efficiency (compare that to the wonderful 12,9% of the habs PP, 28th in the league. Ugh) Their PK is not bad either: 6th in the league (Montreal is 15th). Le Tricolore would be wise not to take 11 penalties in a row tonight.

On the habs side, the best line of 2007-08 is reunited: Pleks will center Kovy and Andrei Kost. Koivu and Price are still out. Komisarek could return tonight, which would be great news. Apparently, he can’t wait to be back on the ice, as showed his feistiness during practice yesterday, when he was involved in a little stick swinging incident with Sergei Kost (nothing to worry about though, as they were laughing about it afterwards). Carbo had a long on-ice discussion with the team as well.

It’s not gonna be an easy game, obviously, but Montreal has to react, and they’ve played pretty well against big teams so far, so I’m kind of expecting a good game tonight. And this is a good thing, because I’d hate to see the flyers beat the habs two times in a row at the Bell…

Okay, well, it seems like I was completely off with my prediction… What a shitty game! I just watched the 2 first periods, but that was enough to know they wouldn’t get a W last night. Just like last year in the playoffs, Biron arrived in Montreal with bad numbers, but looked like Luongo against the canadiens.

The habs seemed to have plenty of chances in the first period, including several power plays, but were never really dangerous. By the way, it now sure seems like Streit played indeed an important part in last year’s great PP numbers. This year, habs PP ranks 20th in the nhl. Hum, that sucks.

Laraqu’em sock’em did destroy a flyer early in the first, probably to answer his critics, and try to wake up his teammates, but that was really not enough. As the game went on, you could just feel the flyers would calmly score one or two goals, and control the game. Which they did. As I said, I haven’t seen the third period, but nothing changed.

Now, Montreal doesn’t look too good. After a good start of the season, they are really struggling now. But then of course, it could totally be part of a grand strategy. They are maybe just trying to suck enough so that when they will inevitably all be voted into the all star game, the rest of the league will be left in a state of shock, wondering if Tanguay is really better than Ovechkin, Malkin and Crosby. This is probably just a Machiavellian plan to demoralize all the stars of the 29 other teams at once. I can already see Gainey and Carbo devising this in the secret cave underneath the bell center, and laughing hysterically… Now that’s brilliant, Bob!

The Bobcave underneath the Bell center

So tonight, they’re playing in Saint Louis. The blues seemed pretty good early in october, but they’re struggling too now. I think they may be having the same plan than Bob. They just forgot to tell their fans to stuff the ballot vote. What a mistake.

Prediction: 3-1 habs.

~~~

In other news, Melrose was canned. Yes, we all know that. But it’s sad his original approach to coaching did not get rewarded. He apparently tried to sing all his instructions to his players this year.

Barrynatra