Why do player hands get stone when they come to montreal!!
This has been case for as long as I can remember, lets start with great recRhi he had 11 goals year he got traded, most of them empty netter, then we get Zubrus for him whose got even less intensity and could not finish, Then there was Valeri Bure who was non existent in Montreal and broke out in Calgary, And great Chow who had stone hands until we got him and then breaks out in New York, is it our system thats holding them back, This year the way things are going we won't see many 20 goal scorer for sure, Until now other then Zednik we had no success in getting true scorer, and i'm not sure if even he can do the job on consistent basis??
This has been case for as long as I can remember, lets start with great recRhi he had 11 goals year he got traded, most of them empty netter, then we get Zubrus for him whose got even less intensity and could not finish, Then there was Valeri Bure who was non existent in Montreal and broke out in Calgary, And great Chow who had stone hands until we got him and then breaks out in New York, is it our system thats holding them back, This year the way things are going we won't see many 20 goal scorer for sure, Until now other then Zednik we had no success in getting true scorer, and i'm not sure if even he can do the job on consistent basis??
I think you have to look at ever case individually. In the case of Recchi look at the team he left and the one he can too. Recchi played with a better group of offensive players in Philly than he did in Montreal. Zubrus hasn't been able to score with any consistentcy anywhere (career high 17 goals?). Bure was given a heck of a lot more ice time in Calgary than he received in Montreal.
Yeah Recchi didn't have great totals the year we traded him, but he had 32, 34 and 28 goals the three years before that. His hasn't scored more than 28 with Philly, so the Recchi arguement is out the window.
Poor defensive teams suck the life out of offensive players. They get worried about getting back on D and just give the puck away in the offensive end. Plus it is hard to get motivated when your D gets knocked on their can, gets the puck stolen away and gets off 6 shoots, and finally scores. :mad:
Bure was a causality of the Smurf line. Petrov-Koivu-Bure. Smart marketing move for 6 year olds, but in the NHL it spells trouble. Stupid team building got us there, and has continued with other small guys like Audette, Perreault and Dackell.
Hey, I don't love 'em but Gratton was available....but Phoenix got him.
Quick question....Who was the last 40 goal scorer on the Habs?
Quick question....Who was the last 40 goal scorer on the Habs?
Tought question but I think I got the answer: Stéphane Richer. Or it can be Damphousse, no, not Damphousse, it's definetively Richer and it was 50, not only 40.
Poor defensive teams suck the life out of offensive players. They get worried about getting back on D and just give the puck away in the offensive end. Plus it is hard to get motivated when your D gets knocked on their can, gets the puck stolen away and gets off 6 shoots, and finally scores. :mad:
Bure was a causality of the Smurf line. Petrov-Koivu-Bure. Smart marketing move for 6 year olds, but in the NHL it spells trouble. Stupid team building got us there, and has continued with other small guys like Audette, Perreault and Dackell.
Hey, I don't love 'em but Gratton was available....but Phoenix got him.
Quick question....Who was the last 40 goal scorer on the Habs?
It looks like it was Vincent Damphousse with 40 goals in 1993-94, the year after the last Cup. A couple of years later Turgeon and Damphousse both had 38...sigh...difficult to imagine that now.
It's been a while since we had an offensive threat, eh.....
The scoring in the league is down, but this is the Habs! We have a payroll much higher then many teams. This goes to show you what our "scouting" both amateur and pro has brought to the table. :moon:
Thank God there is some hockey guys on the staff now, not just friends and disgruntled fired coaches.
Ah well, as much as I'd like to say "if only we had a better GM this last decade...", there really isn't any point.
Yes, we've sucked rocks the last 10 years. Yes, we've drafted big fat potatoes for most of that time. BUT things are looking good, and the organization is somewhere on the right track.
Now if only the league could change to the international rink size, or magically put the Habs in a western conference, where all our little guys (now and coming soon) could take advantage... wishfully thinking, I know, but hey, I can dream. :p
To answer the starting thread, all the players mentioned got better elsewhere because there was less pression on their shoulders. They were not saviors but just addition to a well-established team in offence.
Take a look at key players most strong team are composed in offence:
In Philly you have: Reonik, Primeau, Leclair
Boston: Thorton, Murray, Samsonov
N-J: Madden, Elias, Langdenbrunner
Avalange: Forsberg, Sakic, Heyjuk (how does his name spelled?)
Red Wings: Yserman, Shanahan, Hull, Fedorov (I know he's out they let him out when Datsiuk and Zetterberg were ready)
What the CH have as key players:
Koivu (injured too many times, small player),
Zednik (makes too much individuals plays, should be a 2nd line winger),
Markov (is good recently),
Souray (always injured),
Rivet (a leader but very very average D on the ice),
Brisebois (everybody in Montreal knows his plus/and weakness. He is not a leader).
We don't have a strong and united group of leaders to welcome an addition here. None of these players (Chow, Berezin, Bure, Zubrus) are good enough to generate offensive by themselves. None of them are stars. They can only be nice addition to an already strong team. Like Kapanen is doing fine with Philly but would add much less playing with Montreal.
Gainey is looking for players “à la Ryder”. He wants probably Marleau, Doan, Battaglia; –guys with size and work ethic. Not superstars (impossible to get) but poor's man Bertuzzi. By chance we have Ryder and Bégin. Fast guys like Plekanek can be in the line up this year because even if he's small, he plays like he's big. A good mix of Zed, Koivu, Ryder, Bulis, Plekanek, Bégin, Kilger (???) is looking good. They have work ethic (Kilger?), skate fast and are not affraid of physical play.
Recchi's last year here was an aberration and he'll be the first to tell you it was probably his toughest in the NHL. I don't know how many recall this, but the guy had walking pneumonia for a great many games that he played in, and was then pulled from the lineup because of the same illness and that caused him to break his iron-man streak, which was the longest in the NHL at the time.
As I recall, management was keen on keeping him in there, and he later complained that he'd wanted out of the lineup to get better much earlier on. In fact, it's my opinion that he would not have been traded had he been pulled from the lineup when he first got sick. Particularly since he was supposedly traded only because management thought he was washed up after a significantly below average season.
The eventual line of trades fron him caused us to get Zednik, Bulis and Perezhogin, which is nice, but when you look back at how he played - at how he still plays, it would be nice to have one more guy that works his butt off every shift.
Let's hope Perez turns out as every bit the star some have projected him to be, because otherwise, I think that line of trading turns out iffy for us.
[QUOTE=Guy!]Recchi's last year here was an aberration and he'll be the first to tell you it was probably his toughest in the NHL. I don't know how many recall this, but the guy had walking pneumonia for a great many games that he played in, and was then pulled from the lineup because of the same illness and that caused him to break his iron-man streak, which was the longest in the NHL at the time.
[QUOTE]
Mark Recchi was such an incredible player for us. He never took a night off, and wore the CH with such pride.
What a sad day for the club when he was traded. A huge chunk of my loyalty flew out the window that day.
Mark Recchi was such an incredible player for us. He never took a night off, and wore the CH with such pride.
What a sad day for the club when he was traded. A huge chunk of my loyalty flew out the window that day.
Still one of my favorite players.
Yeah, he has fire.
What I disliked in his game was him complaining to the refs instead of getting back into the play. Complain after the whistle, don't put your team down 1 man because you are busy crying to th ref.
That and he has not a single inside move, he ALWAYS dekes to the outside. When he was on the Habs i yearned for a guy who could deke down the middle. Now we have him (Ribs) and I am still not happy!! Oh well..... :p
Bure was a causality of the Smurf line. Petrov-Koivu-Bure. Smart marketing move for 6 year olds, but in the NHL it spells trouble.
Wasn't this more of a sad attempt at copying Bowman's 5 Russians line? I can't remember what ours was, but possibly: Petrov, Kovalenko/Koivu ( ), Bure, Malakhov, Ulanov?
They get worried about getting back on D and just give the puck away in the offensive end. Plus it is hard to get motivated when your D gets knocked on their can, gets the puck stolen away and gets off 6 shoots, and finally scores. :mad: 
