Aftermath:
It might be time to reassess the efficacy of the Boone Reverse Jinx: I predicted a 3-2 Florida win
3P 00:23:
Wow. Markov with a seeing-eye.
3-2
3P 4:00:
Defensive Hockey 101: A Canadien gets the puck and a white jersey is on him in a nanosecond. Makes for fast, usually bad decisions.
3P 5:30:
Another 30-plus shot night for the visiting team.
3P Break:
Here's a scoop: Our team needs a finisher. 19 shots, and none have made VVokoun sweat.
3P 6:00:
Florida will shut this sucker down now.
3P 9:24:
Firt wave is Pleks and the K brothers. Then Koivu line. Lots of perimeter passing but no chances
3P 9:24:
Here's the game: Canadiens PP. Another goal makes it at least respectable.
3P Break:
Are we about to see the comeback of the year? That would require a total collapse of the Florida system. But you never know.
Yes you do.
You know.
3P 11:35:
The ignominy of a shutout at home is avoided.
Andrei Markov from an impossible angle.
3-1
3P 12:99:
HU-ET!
Stephen Weiss, with four red jerseys in warm pursuit, smokes one from 40 feet.
3-0
Pathetic
3P 14:00:
I don't think there's been a second shot on Vokoun all night. 15 shots ... all easy saves.
3P 15:00:
Woo-hoo; two icings against Florida.
3P 16:00:
Down 2-0 at home, four minutes, one shot.
And yes, Kovalev is on the top line. Which means the K brothers play with Pleks.
3P 18:00:
Grasping at straws, I know, but Josh Gorges has been pretty good.
3P 20:00:
All they want for Christmas is an early goal.
Between periods:
Giveaways by Florida: 6. By Canadiens: 16 (three apiece by Hamrlik and O'Byrne). Hits are 29-21. I wonder about the Canadiens pro scouting and preparation. Didn't they know Florida would come in here and play an aggressive forechecking game, complemented by tight play in the neutral zone and a forest of bodies and sticks protecting Tomas Vokoun? There has to be a way to counteract this, bbut precisely how is a mystery to me ... and maybe to the Canadiens.
2P 00:00:
Booed off the ice.
2P 2:46:
Canadiens get scrambly and Hamrlik goes to sit.
2P Break:
Canadiens can't get anny sustained pressure. Florida plays tight, disciplined hockey at both ends.
2P 6:09:
Florida has that forecheck going, and Canadiens can't get out of their end.
2P 8:00:
Tough crowd. More booing of icing.
2P 8:47:
RDS graphic: Tomas Vokoun has four points this season – as as Sergei Samsonov.
2P Break:
The 40 minute giveaway stats could be embarrassing ... again.
2P 9:00:
Booing Richard Zednik?
2P Break:
Signs of life from the top line. But Vokoun looks tough to beat.
2P 13:30:
Price is giving up fat rebounds.
2P 14:19:
Cheesy call on Sergei. His first NHL penalty.
2P 15:00:
Canadiens are up to 9 shots. Some good chances on the PP ... including a juicy rebound that Streit couldn't cash.
2P 17:31:
A PP. First period seemed like they had too many men for 20 minutes
2P 19:15:
Yay, a shot. Hamrlik, from 40 feet.
2P 20:00:
Hits were 17-11. Two of Canadiens' thre shots by D-men.
2P 20:00:
I presume Carey Price learned some new French words during Guy Carbonneau's between-periods address to the troops.
Between periods:
The worst part of the Price gaffe was it came right after a terrific shift by the Lapierre line. The Canadiens showed signs of finally waking up and then bang! 2-0. A killer.
How do you get 3 shots on goal in your own building against a team that's five points below you in the standings. It's not like these are the Detroit Red Panthers ... although they look that way through 20 minutes.
00:40:
Olli Jokinen had Price beat and hit the post. Shots are 8-3. A butt-kicking.
1P 1:48:
Yikes!
Price comes dashing out and plays the puck right to Brett McLean.
2-0
Ugly.
1P 4:00:
Lapierre line generates the 2nd and 3rd shots.
1P Break:
The crowd is turning. Shots are 7-1 (the 1 was in the game's first minute) and they're booing Canadiens icing.
1P 5:47:
A few boos, after Olli Jokinen chips it past Komisarek and feeds Josef Styumpel for a goal your grandmother could have scored, if she played on Jokinen's line.
1-0
Preceded by a horrible O'Byrne shift.
1P 7:30:
Shots are 6-1. Vokoun should have brought his iPod.
9:00:
Max Lapierre may have just played the best PK shift of the season.
1P 10:00:
Price loses his stick, ends up playing with a forward's and Hamrlik hhas to take a penalty under pressure.
1P 12:00:
Still a lot of empty red seats. People stuck in traffic or they said "Florida? Screw it!"
1P 13:00:
The neutral zone is more clogged than the Decarie expressway
1P 15:00:
Shots are 1-1, but it's been an interesting tactical game. The Florida forecheck is relentless
17:00:
O'Byrne went for a skate, with the puck,, in front of Price. Coulda been ugly.
1P 18:00:
Florida hits and plays good positional hockey. This will be tight.
1P 20:00:
Pleks line to start, with O'Byrne and Hamrlik
Heat wave:
Chris Higgins comes up in the pre-game video and my presbox seatmate, who shall remain anonymous, says "there are a lot of hotties on the team this year."
Further, she believes "the team with the most hot guys should win each game."
So what, we're going to make Jim Roberts return his Stanely Cup rings?
10 minutes to puck-drop:
And a lot of empty seats. Traffic is INSANE in Montreal today. I know, because like an idiot I drove in from the 'burbs.
Chris Simon:
Hey, if every player requiring counselling were sent home, we'd have 20 teams and 18-man rosters. And what do Simon's repeated incidents of ice rage say about a pharmaceutical situation that Bill Daly says isn't a problem in the NHL?
Everyone's got one:
Bell Centre PA announcer Michel Lacroix is wearing a Santa hat also. I should have brought mine.
Nothing says Christmas ...:
... quite like Youppi in aa Santa hat.
Boone reverse jinx:
Vokoun has been hot. Florida plays Jacques Martin's stifling, hermetic style that will frustrate the Canadiens and anaesthetize 21,273 patients.
Panthers 3-2
Revisionist history:
Interesting piece by Mathias Brunet of La Presse asked two scouts and a player agent to do the 2003 draft over. None had Andrei Kostitsyn, who was taken 10th overall by the Canadiens. in their Top 10
Noses out of joint:
The over/under is two: Cristobal Huet and Guillaume Latendresse
Tough press:
Does George Gillett think he gets a rough ride from Réjean Tremblay, Bertrand Raymond and my learned colleague, Jack Todd? Check out the lead item in today's Fiver, the Guardian's take-no-prisoners soccer column:
A RAF ON THE KNUCKLES
It isn't too often that the Fiver feels sorry for anyone connected with Liverpool Football Club, mainly because they're so adroit at feeling sorry for themselves. However, in recent weeks we've started to feel just a little bit of sympathy for their manager, Rafa Benitez. A proven winner and a decent football man, the Spaniard is currently struggling under a yoke forced around his neck by a pair of dollar-obsessed, interfering Yank businessmen who know nothing whatsoever about football and number the most moronic American president in history among their closest friends.
In the wake of his public criticism of the manner in which Tweedledum and Tweedledumber keep sticking their nebs into team affairs and their subsequent transatlantic slap-down, Benitez was summoned like a naughty schoolboy to see them in the wake of Sunday's home defeat to Manchester United. "We needed to clarify the situation and it was a very positive meeting," he ole-ole-ole-ed today. "The conversation was very fluid because we were face to face, whereas it's more difficult over the phone or by email." Now the Fiver's never heard a conversation described as "fluid" before, but does anyone else think Benitez may have meant spittle-flecked and flowing one way?
"My English isn't always the best but having the chance to talk to them slowly ..." continued Rafa, conjuring up a wonderful image of two clueless American buffoons being patronised to within an inch of their lives by a glowering, sarcastic Spaniard pushing little Hyypia- and Torres-shaped red discs round a magnetic whiteboard. In his letter to Santa this year, Benitez asked for the Javier Mascherano to be made a permanent signing, along with money for a new centre-back, and enough spare change to cover the wages of two free signings. With Grinch Gillett and Ebeneezer Hicks more worried about the weak dollar and spiralling costs of Liverpool's planned new Football-O-Dome than 50 years of etc and so yawn, he may have to make do with an orange and a spinning top.
Share the agony and ecstasy of Habs fandom and read live blogs from every game with Gazette columnist Mike Boone.
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Guys I FIGURED OUT WHY THE HABS KEEP LOSING AT HOME!!!!!!!!!!!
By show of hands, how many people here attend the Bell Centre games?
Personally, I'm fed up. And I'm 20. and it's not because we keep losing but because I've been to like practically all the home games this year lol.
I digress.
Remember last year? How "CRAZY" by Gnarls Barkley would get the entire crowd CHEERING LIKE CRAZY and set the tone for the rest of the evening?
Well, i've been wanting to say this for the past 3 weeks but I keep forgetting.
the Habs suck at home because of the freakin BORING-ASS INTRO!!! no disrespect to Bono, but U2 must be the most BORING music to listen to before a game! Nobody's cheering during that crap... everyone's texting their buddies in the Centre, writing "You know how I know the habs are gay?..."
Plek-Andrew strikes again.
You know, I didn't really like the intro too much, but it's starting to grow on me... and it's funny seeing the guys trying to speak French ;)
But apart from that, well, you all know I was crazy about "Crazy".
"Fix You" is what really gets the crowd going!
I don't mind the U2 but I'm not "crazy" about the player introductions. I much preferred the way they did it last year to music (Crazy). I would've changed the song but not the format. I still like the Coldplay (Fix You) when they come out and Vertigo when they score.
Mike, I'm likin your predictions
any numbers for me for this Fridays's super 7 draw?
here in Ontario, another die hard Habs fan cries himself to sleep
Why Santa why? why can't the Habs go on a winning streak??
Baby Kostitsyn (also known as Junior) ALMOST scored his first NHL goal tonight... but not quite. The new line is interesting, but Kovy looks lost on the first. But I'm not sure how to fix that.
Lapierre played an excellent game, as did Chipchura... and Price, well, was Price. Surprising us, as always. Just not in a good way this time. I'm glad he got his stick-handling confidence back by the end of the third, and you can bet he thanked his posts after the second goal. Still, he's gonna take less risks (i.e.: A perfect cross-ice pass opportunity to Kovalev midway through the third that he definitely would have made prior to this game), and that might cost us.
Oh, and Christopher Higgins' French is really not that bad!!! Definitely better than Komi's ;)
A blog post from the New York Times, entitled "The Most Joyous Seven Minutes of Hockey Ever?":
http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/the-most-joyous-seven-minut...
That video was really cool. It just kept going and going. Either the fans truly love and support their team or the beer is better over there!!! NHL fans, unfortunately, are fickle, especially the ones upstate New York north of the 49th parallel. A send-off with that kind of exuberance and energy would have been incredible after b**ch-slapping the Leafs last Sat. It might have been the energy needed to carry the enthusiasm onto the ice for Tuesday's affair with the Panthers.
BTW, could it be that the Habs play poorly against the Panthers because they just don't care much to play a team from Miami??? How anti-hockey boring is that? I know I'm digging deep to find excuses and that one certainly cannot be legitimate.
Its not Miami its Sunrise and don't knock it until you've tried it. But wear a coat. Its the coldest arena in the league.
I would kill to see Andrei Markov on skis on the Bell Center ice.
That was unbelievable. If only we'd receive such send offs... but i suppose we have to make it to the playoffs first.
Just watched the game on my DVR, and I thought the game was a lot more lopsided than the 3-2 score indicates. We were dominated in many aspects of the game and were offensively embarrassing (aside from the last-minute, desperate rushes). We couldn't handle Florida's aggressiveness, though one would think that our speed would have been able to overcome that.
Were it not for Price and Komisarek's mental blunders, we would have had a better shot to win the game, but we still only had 3 shots in the first period and were still very flat in the second (even though we were down).
This was a disappointing way to follow-up our magnificent play against the Leafs. Perhaps a road-trip is what the doctor ordered....
fourth line played about five minutes more than our third line. not sure what to make of that. i'd personally rather have chips on the ice than lapierre. to me, lapierre is over rated. he gets the puck, bounces it off the boards (most of the time, it doesn't even clear our zone) and then he's not quite sure what to do. chips has creativity, plus he's much better in our end than laps.
bizarro-carbo showed his head again today for a while. he finally shortened his bench, and low and behold, we made a game of it.
i thought the streit-lapierre-dandenault line was the best for us tonight. It seemed everytime they came on they would get the puck in the Florida zone and cycle it around. I didn't see the other 3 lines doing really anything consistently like the laps line.
That's the way i see it. You go with the line that's working well and not the center.
did they (fourth line) score? i don't care how well you work the puck down low. if we are down by a goal or two, the guys with 1-3 goals on the year are not the guys you count on.
I have applaud your optimism Habs Nation but the truth is as long as Carbonneau is coaching we won't be able to have any continued success. Sure we won a couple of games but Toronto was tired from the previous nights game. It pains me to see the Habs struggle like they do, but anyone with half a brain can see that the coaching is well below par. Didn't Claude Julien get the boot a couple of years ago when the team was doing no worse than it is now? I guess its not what you know but who you know! Gainey has to realize that every day he lets Carbonneau keep his job he looks more and more weak. We are all in it to win it, friendships aside, if I were in Bob's shoes I would fire my own mother if she performed like Carbonneau. Didn't he look pathetic out there calling for the refs attention to add a second to the clock at the end of the game. Sorry Carbonnea, but that second you so desperately desired would not have changed the outcome of the game. Maybe you should put more energy into your line up so you don't have to fiddle with them every shift during the game. How much longer do we have to put up with this guy??? I honestly think the Canadiens have a solid team that could contend with the best of them, Guy Carbonneau, you are the weakest link, you have to go.
Spring is no fun without the Habs!
I would hope that the team would be better prepared in their game plan. Don't they have advance scouting?
The Panthers played a very aggressive forecheck with sometimes two player going a the puck carrier.
You'd think they would work on this in practice by making quick passes to the open man, albeit they only had one day to prepare. They seemed totally hapless out there in the face of the Florida forechecking and it's Carbonneau's job to react to this type of strategy. To just send your players out there willy nilly is not called preparation.
I agree that the Habs will do well on their road trip. This is the first time they even looked capable of making a comeback all season, and I think they were pissed that they didn't manage it. Price will rarely spot the other team a couple of softies, and Huet is back as well, so look for the competition to raise each netminder's game. The offense is flowing a little better too, despite the first two periods tonight. I think this is a case of a team coming out sleepy after a big win. It's probably just as hard for the players to care about the Florida Panthers as it is for us, after all.
http://yearofthehab.blogspot.com
I say the boys are going to ace that road trip.
Come on folks: we've got a promising young team playing in a league with increasing parity. There will be rough spots but I like the future outlook.
we'd have looked better with your 13 goals in the lineup, radek.
Get this straight, Radek would not have 13 POINTS with the habs, he would not have PP time.
and with Radek on your PP, you are 13th in the west...
EDIT: and oh, he is minus 10...
_______________________________________
CH is for Chris Higgins
Boone Reverse Jinx does not work ANYMORE!
HE PREDICTED A 3-2 WIN by the Panthers!
Blame Boone! ;-P
_______________________________________
CH is for Chris Higgins
i think boone meant to write: "good news: canadiens won't lose any more home games this year", not "this season"
maybe the boone reverse jinx will work and they will not lose anymore home games this season...everybody wish on the next shooting star they see...it could happen
I love Boones' writing style ....you summed that up in a friggin nanosecond dude!!!!
Thank you.
I hope no one is going to go on about not booing the team. Sorry but after the effort in the first 2 periods, they deserved every single boo they got. The effort was nothing short of pathetic. If they had showed up for more than 20 minutes they would have won the game. Brutal.
You know, I was at the game, and I was pretty frustrated too... But I totally disapprove of booing the boys off the ice after the second. Do you really think that'll get them all motivated for the third? The second period was actually pretty decent, especially compared to the first... Or at least it seemed that way at the Phone Booth.
I really got pissed off at the crowd for booing them at that point. It's ridiculous.
Like I said, vive la difference. I think the team deserved to get booed off the ice. It's not whether they are winning or losing but if they put in the effort. In previous post-game interviews where the team played badly both Higgins and Komisarek admitted they deserved the booing and said if they were fans they would have done the same.
To boo or not to boo..that is the question. No we're not going to go on about it, to each his own. But you have to admit...after Habs-Kat started the cheering section, they scored 2. Basic law of physics, for every action there is a reaction, for every negative a postive...for every ying a yang...the defense rests.
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