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Updates, apologies, and perhaps explanations to follow.

4-28-08: Flyers 3, Canadiens 2

I’m incredibly busy this week, so ain’t no time for a cutesy recap today. Nope, we’re going straight to the core conundrum with no detours anywhere else. The Habs are losing. Who or what should we blame? Here are random thoughts.

1. The skaters are playing as well as they ever have. Yes, they’re having trouble finishing, but Biron has been fantastic and the Habs have always been a two-posts-for-every-goal kind of team even under the best of circumstances. Our offense never comes easy, frustration is par for the course, and if I hear the term ‘snakebit’ one more time I’m going to throttle someone. Coming close and not quite getting the puck over the line all the damn time isn’t bad luck, it’s just who they are. They’re getting their chances: Koivu and Higgins have been fabricating impressive near-misses out of half-chewed bubble gum and bits of twine, Plekanec is improving every game (although his line might have some puck-sharing issues to work out), Kovalev and the Kostitsyns are getting pounded and stifled but doing pretty well anyway, and the lower lines are working their asses off as per custom. Markov has been unremarkable but Gorges and Bouillon are really stepping up, the D is good. Certainly there are marginal improvements that could be made, but nothing worth whining over.

2. Except the power play. For some reason, with the man advantage, the Habs have convinced themselves that they are a dump-and-chase team. THEY ARE NOT A FUCKING DUMP-AND-CHASE TEAM. I know it sounds bizarre to say that any team sucks at dump-ins, but there you have it. This is how the power play goes: Habs dump in, Flyers dump out, repeat. There is nothing that annoys me more in hockey than the phrase ‘we just have to get pucks in deep’, which for some reason every North American-trained hockey player says in response to the question ‘what do you need to do to win this game?’ (most of my respect for Kovalev stems from the fact that he doesn’t say this). It doesn’t matter if the player in question has scored every goal in his entire career on an odd-man rush or a slapshot from the point, he’ll still talk as though banging around the back boards is some sort of magic secret to hockey success. For the Habs, it’s not. Sure, sometimes they can score from that kind of a set up, particularly any line with Kostopolous and/or Begin, but it’s exactly the kind of game our ‘best players’ do not do well. It’s time to face facts and admit that we are a fancy-shmancy team, a twirly, pretty-pass kind of team, and that’s the strength we need to play to when the calls go our way and we have some extra room to play in.

3. Paradoxically, we are shutting down the Flyers better than they’re shutting us down. The Habs’ D has done a good job of keeping shots on net low and they’re still making, by and large, very good outlet passes. The forwards are doing their part to keep play in the offensive zone. The Flyers defense is all about stickiness, and it’s slowed us down somewhat, but it hasn’t stopped us. However, I am getting really annoyed with all the stick-grabbing. Fine with me if they want to try to thwack us into oblivion, but disarming your enemy is just bad form.

4. Carey Price has been playing badly, and badly in a very distinctive way. Either all the stress and anxiety that he’s repressing is finding its release via his glove hand, or he’s concealing some kind of injury to his wrist or arm. And by ‘concealing’ I mean ‘not acknowledging in words’, because it’s getting pretty obvious in his play, especially considering that his catching used to be one of his greatest strengths. But whatever the cause, he’s not doing well. I’m not going to argue over whether the goals he’s let in are ‘bad’ or not, all I’m going to say is that an NHL goalie who faces 7 shots in a period should never ever be letting in 3 of them. Even goalies on teams with incredibly weak D who face 40+ difficult shots a night do not have save percentages that bad.

That’s where my convictions end. Does Halak get a real chance out of this? My instinct is no. Should he? Probably, unless Price really isn’t injured. Would Ryder give us more offense? I kinda doubt it, although he might get one of his inexplicable hot phases, you never know. Should we worry? Yes. In the regular season, a couple of games wherein one outplays one’s opponents and still loses are no particular cause for anxiety- you figure that the hockey gods are harsh but just, and eventually good effort will get rewarded. But now… it doesn’t matter why you lose. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad play by everyone or someone or no one, all that matters is the result. There’s no comfort in a moral victory, and two moral victories that haven’t translated into actual victories have put the Canadiens in a hole they may have a hard time climbing out of.

4-26-08: Flyers 4, Canadiens 2

Fucking karma.

1. There are bad wins, and there are good losses, and all too often getting one of the former means that there’s one of the latter in your near future. If Martin Biron was playing normally, the Habs would have taken this game decisively. As it was, the puck was snuggling into his pads like a sleepy kitten all night, no matter how much force the Habs tried to get behind it. At least you can say they made Biron and the Flyers’ D work hard for this one.

2. Good things: Koivu, who’s been a force every night since he’s been back and is getting more confident, more ambitious play out of Higgins. Smolinski/Kostopolous/Begin are still way more dangerous offensively than they have any right to be. Bouillon is playing better and especially smarter than he tended to in the regular season, which is a pleasant surprise; Hamrlik remains unbelievably cool under every kind of pressure. And hey, look, another power play goal. Those are always nice.

3. Bad things: Remember back when Markov and Komisarek were our best D pairing? I miss that. The Lapierre line has yet to do anything that gives me any confidence in them. The Pleks line played well but Biron was completely on top of them all night. Price blew epically in the first and intermittently thereafter. Kostopolous marred an otherwise good game with an unfortunate suckerpunch at Timonen which was only the most successful (I use the term loosely) of a lot of attempted post-buzzer shit-fits by the Canadiens. When you’re playing the Flyers and you’re the ones with the discipline problem, that’s an inauspicious omen. Good thing the refs were in willfully-oblivious mode all night.

4. Ugly things: Every time a Hab gets one of those playoff haircuts, a small child in Bolivia dies of sheer aesthetic horror. And nothing says, ‘Celebrate too loudly and we’ll trample you to death with a large mammal’ like a cop on a horse. Good tactical move by the Montreal police, though- if anybody tries to set unattended horses on fire, PETA will be after them, and that’s way worse than having the law after you.

Somebody go ahead and point out that, the day after I said that I didn’t think Biron would slaughter us, he went out and slaughtered us. This is because every time I say something about the future with any degree of confidence, the opposite happens. Behold, I am the anti-Cassandra: I predict things inaccurately and for some reason people occasionally believe me (which, incidentally, is far more common in hockey than Cassandra-ism proper, so at least I feel included for once). So for next game, I’m going to say that the Flyers will win 3-0, getting two goals by Steve Downie, who will also decapitate Josh Gorges and ritualistically devour his glands after the game. The Habs will absolutely not win 5-2, the Plekanec line will not step up dramatically, and Price will not bounce back with a much better effort. No way.

4-24-08: Canadiens 4, Flyers 3

It’s peculiar how games develop different characters. Some are like long slogs through peat bogs at midnight, where anybody getting any kind of goal feels like an unrepeatable miracle, and you just know that that one fluky 2^nd period deflection is going to be the end of it. Others, however, are so light and loose that teams pick up points like snatching feathers out of the air, and the only thing that decides winner and loser is the clock- who happens to have snatched more when the time runs out. This was one of the latter. As tense as it was at moments, I (nor apparently many of the people watching with me) seemed to feel much doubt that the Habs would come back from their deficits, it was only a question of whether they’d do so in time. It didn’t feel like a playoff game. For half a second at the end of regulation I caught myself thinking, “Hey, at least we got the OT point…” Even if they’d lost, I don’t think there’d be reason to be overly anxious about their chances for the next game. Still, I called Habs-in-5 in my lame two-person playoff pool, so thanks Canadiens for doing your part to salvage my pride.

1. If I was a ninja, I would use my powers to cleverly sneak into the Habs dressing room before the next game, stand in the doorway, and shriek “THE REBOUNDS!!!!! GET THE FUCKING REBOUNDS!!!!!” Because although I love Pleks and Kovy and the Kostitsyn boys (see #2), I think nothing hurt ahbabi so much in the series against Boston, or in the game tonight, as the fact that they rarely have anyone in position to get the second chance when the puck takes a juicy bounce off the opposing goalie. The Smolinski line is good at that, as evidenced by Kostopolous’s overtime game-winner tonight (on not just a rebound but a 2^nd rebound), and the Koivu line is increasingly on top of it, but it breaks my heart to see a puck go merrily hopping through the slot for eons before being picked up by some belated Flyer and chipped out of the zone.

2. Fath Ali Shah Qajar had 158 wives and 260 children. It’s too bad that these days the world is so much more hostile to mass polygyny, because I want the Kostitsyn boys to spend their retirement on a comfortable ranch in Russia churning out babies with nubile Slavic beauties. Even figuring that some of them might go into figure skating or gymnastics or archery or ballet, there’d still be more than enough Kostitsyns left for every NHL team to have a couple, thereby ushering in the new golden age of hockey. Even the girls would be at least good enough for Phoenix or some such. As it is, I guess we’re just going to have to pin our hopes on puckbunnies with lax attitudes towards contraception.

3. We in Montreal didn’t see much of Biron this season, for some reason the Flyers played Nittymaki against us often. So Martin is kind of a mystery to me- virtually all of my memories are of him being the NHL’s Most Beloved Backup in Buffalo. Even now, I’m inclined to think he got into goaltending just so he could wear a mask and give people spooky glares through it. Thomas was more intimidating, and that’s saying a lot, because Thomas looks like a panda bear on sedatives. (Not, by the way, that I’m saying Thomas is a bad goalie. He’s a terrific goalie and I have vast respect for him. In fact, I think he probably follows the Brodeur school of using a chubby, cuddly exterior to conceal his malevolent inner nature.) Anyway, the point is that based on a totally cursory initial impression, I don’t get the ‘he’s going to slaughter us’ vibe off of Biron. Although he is terrifically sharp on breakaways.

4. Briere, on the other hand, I thought might slaughter us. But based on the overall quantity of booing per shift, he wasn’t much of a presence tonight. Good omen.

5. Here’s a question for speculation: given that Carbonneau usually doesn’t like to change a winning lineup, what are the chances that all of Brisebois, Dandenault, Streit, and Lapierre play in the next game? Breezer is probably hoping that everyone will forget that he opened the scoring by deflecting a puck past Price, but it was an all-around unimpressive (look how polite I am) game for him and Hamrlik’s value is compromised if he has to be watching his partner’s ass all the time. And if part of Carbo’s strategy is to roll four scoring lines, it doesn’t look like the current Lapierre line is going to help with that. Streit is obviously important for the power play, and can be an offensive force at even strength, but Lapierre has been more theoretically good than actually good thus far, and Dandenault seems to be a break-even proposition at best. If the coaching plan is really to press the attack as much as possible, the obvious question is whether Ryder gets another go. It’s unlikely, but I don’t think that line could have been much worse, so a little tweaking might not go amiss.

6. Certain of my Oiler-oriented readers will be pleased to know that Thoresen (Go Norway! Go Intact Testes!) and Smith acquitted themselves well. They may be more ambivalent about Lupul, who did score, in spite of not acquitting himself particularly well. Between all the ex-Sabres, ex-Oilers, and ex-Predators, Philly still seems to me like a Frankenstein monster cobbled together from the discarded limbs of other teams. Damn you Gainey, you’ve made me uncomfortable with rosters built through trading and free agency.

5/16. Again the Habs are heavily favored to win the series, again it might prove more difficult than anticipated. We’re going to find out what the team really learned from the ups and downs of the long first round, although it’s all the more interesting because Philly went through a very similar initiation. The Flyers don’t have the vengeful spirit of Claude Julien hovering over them with a shift chart planned out like a train timetable (although there is something about their coach suggestive of an accountant with a poorly concealed cocaine problem), so I doubt they’ll be quite as adept at shutting us down, but that’s probably not the only strategy that could beat us. The games could be heart attacks on ice, but I have no idea whether that’ll translate into roughly even wins and losses. Still, better these guys than the Rangers.

[A note to all the readers who left concerned comments: shukran jazeelan, I’m very touched and grateful for the encouragement. I realize that my reaction to the riots was petulant and somewhat naïve, but I appreciate that y’all seem to understand where it came from. A further explanation will follow. In the meantime, I have decided to keep doing this as far as the season lasts. After that… well, that’s going to be complicated.]

Who Gives a Fuck Anyway

I wrote a post after the victory. It was partly about the game, but largely about Montreal and the fans here. La Ville et Hockey and all that. It was a nice post. I rather liked it.

I got to be exuberant for a couple of hours. And then I saw the news.

Now I'm depressed and embarrassed. There are so many things wrong with last night's 'celebrations' that I don't even know where to begin. Wrong on a hockey level. Wrong on a human level.

I want to take it all back. Everything. Issue a uniform pan-blog retraction. Everything I've ever said here has been completely wrong. Consider this a place-holder until I figure out if there's anything else worth typing.

Fuck hockey.

Fuck Montreal.

4-17-08: Bruins 5, Canadiens 1

Among the various hockey books sitting on my shelf is a copy of the 2007-2008 Canadiens Media Guide, which I keep around so that I can peruse assorted facts and stats that I’ll never remember. It’s comfort reading, a Habscentric little tome that I can turn to when I want to forget that other teams exist. It’s got a nice faux-deteriorated photo of a vintage sweater on the front. Tonight, however, I would gladly trade in the folksy nostalgia of the image for the words DON’T PANIC in large, friendly letters.

I want to panic. No, wait, first I want to throw a giant screaming tantrum. I mean, another one, in addition to the one I already threw during the third period. And I want to burn a teddy bear in a Bruins jersey. And punch a Kennedy. So order of operations: recap, tantrum, teddy bear, Kennedy, panic.

1. Pop Quiz! Carey Price has:

a. A rather unfortunate, and possibly unlucky, new haircut.

b. Something still to learn about when to glove the puck and when to play it.

c. Asperger’s Syndrome

d. Balls like fossilized Mesozoic watermelons.

e. Un-fucking-believable talent that doesn’t preclude the occasional crappy period.

2. The trajectory of this game makes me think that the Habs’ primary problem was overconfidence. They came out, in the first period, absolutely flying and ended it with one goal that could easily have been three or four. The kind of game they’d play in the regular season when whomping the Bruins. During the second period they slowed down a bit, but the Bruins’ second goal early in the third- the one on Price’s misplay- seemed to hit them like Satan’s sledgehammer. They weren’t expecting it, and, suddenly faced with a deficit and not much time to make it up, they tried to push a kind of sloppy, desperate offense that offered the Bruins just the kind of mistakes they need. Cue shameful collapse. My only point being that, if they’d played the more disciplined, wary style they did on the road, they probably wouldn’t have lost, and almost certainly wouldn’t have lost as badly.

3. Kovalev Fan, one of my semi-regular commenters, gets prescience-points for sticking to his/her contention that the power play is a problem. Yes, the power play is most definitely a problem. Once upon a time, the Canadiens had the best power play in the League, but my friends, those days are over. The power play is dead, and the penalty kill is rapidly deteriorating into catatonia. I hereby call for the Habs to begin using a skillful combination of diving and retaliation to ensure that any penalty called against either team will actually result in simultaneous penalties to both teams. The four-on-four is still okay, let’s make the best of it.

4. Lapierre and Latendresse are determined to prove that there is a necessary trade-off between offensive pressure and defensive responsibility- their best game in terms of creating chances was also their worst for giving up goals. It’s probably just youth and inexperience, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the only solution is take cells from Begin and Kostopolous and use them to grow replacement organs to be transplanted into rookies. This is why the world needs stem cell research. Plekanec, on the other hand, is getting better with each game. And Hamrlik ends the night +1 in a 5-1 loss- now that is consistency.

You know what, though? Even bad games have their good points, especially in Montreal. Alex Kovalev takes one great shift, and simultaneously takes several million Habs fans- for one moment- back in time. Now we know why he doesn’t cut his hair.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a long to-do list.

4-15-08: Canadiens 1, Bruins 0

Is there anything more excruciating than a one-goal playoff game? One-goal regular season games are usually just dull, the kind of situation where you’re just as likely to get exasperated with your own team playing conservatively as with the opposition and scream for someone to just fucking open up a little. But now that it’s the playoffs, a full period of dump-in lead-protection is somehow the absolute height of drama. And there’s something poetic about it, isn’t it? You always hear that hypothetically a game might be decided on only one moment- one second of weakness or stupidity or distraction in 60 minutes of play- but it doesn’t really happen all that often. Now, of course, it does. The last game was decided on one bad change. This game was decided on one good screen. The rest of it is just tension and waiting.

1. Does this mean we’re not going to see any more of that really gorgeous Canadiens hockey anymore? Maybe it does. The guys who play pretty just aren’t getting the space to do their thing; these games belong to the guys who play steady. And if even the Bruins are able to deprive us of our style, then later opponents should be able to erase it even more easily. I suppose I should take comfort that we can win ugly, but I’m probably always going to feel a little sad that we can’t win with the sleek edge we used to.

2. Plenty of people said that Carey Price would be one of the keys to this series, and they were right- his superlative play and eerie calm have sustained us through a lot of rough periods. But I doubt many people had their money on Hamrlik and Kostopolous being the other big difference-makers for the Canadiens, yet these two have been- shift for shift- the most consistent players on the team. Gainey must be feeling terrifically vindicated right now.

3. Other performances: Plekanec is clearly putting in a lot more effort, particularly in terms of trying to hold his ground in the slot, but not many other Habs did so, and it showed in their inability to capitalize on Thomas’s big rebounds. Streit is still struggling; I don’t mind if the power play doesn’t score, but it absolutely should not be giving up that many shorthanded rushes. My frustration with Latendresse is not expressible in words, so just imagine a variety of inarticulate grunts and spluttered half-sentences, illustrated with dramatic arm gestures, centering on the word why?????? repeated over and over with increasing plaintiveness. O’Byrne, however, was quite useful- he’s playing the Bruins the way they play us, keeping them pinned and wriggling on the boards whenever he can.

4. We need Koivu. We need someone who can win faceoffs- Higgins is so bad that when he won one late in this game, Pierre and Yvon were almost as excited as they’d been for Brisebois’ goal- and more than that, we need someone with some hands who’s willing to battle to stay in front of the net. The 3^rd line does this with some regularity, and as I said I think Pleks is trying, and S. Kostitsyn does when the mood strikes him, but by and large I think Price is getting tried a lot harder than Thomas, especially in terms of 2^nd and 3^rd chances. On the other hand, the Habs obviously weren’t trying to score during the final frame, so perhaps my perceptions are imbalanced. Anyway, the team is noticeably different without Saku’s tenacity in pressing the attack.

3/16, and back in Montreal Thursday. Bell Centre mojo vs. terror of elimination: which is stronger? Place your bets here.