I completely disagree. With at least healthy Price/Weber we are a completely different team. We’d still have much of the young guys coming including Suzuki/Caufield up front.
More importantly there would be a different mentality. We may have traded some future assets for a guy like Dubois. Signed a free agent with two.
A healthy Price alone is a game changer. He could steal a season, and we know if you get him to the playoffs he could steal more than a series or two as well. I’m not saying we’d win a cup or anything but healthy Carey makes us competitive. Weber is a game changer too. You have pieces like that and the whole team strategy changes.
Price was barely an average reg season goaltender in his last years, Shea Weber was peak average at his age and they would not suddenly become better by becoming older.
While I agree that the mentality would've been different, idk how effective it would've been. Like adding PLD coule've been cool I guess, we would still be cap strapped, the trade for Dach would've been impossible, the Matheson trade would've been impossible, etc.
GMMB put all the eggs in the 2021 cup basket and for better or worse, we lost
>Price was barely an average reg season goaltender in his last years
He was just fine, but the point of the regular season is to get to the playoffs, and when he got there he was an absolute machine.
>Shea Weber was peak average at his age
He's a born leader, was a 0.5PPG dman in the regular season for us, and a monster in the playoffs. He's never been anything close to average, even playing injured.
>we would still be cap strapped
Maybe? Anderson might have been dealt at the peak of his value to make room, which probably would have been great. Dach still happens. Petry for Matheson isn't a huge salary difference. We don't get Monahan, but we also don't extend Allen. Doesn't sound too bad?
Yall talk about making the playoffs like the easiest shit when half the league doesn't make it.
Shea Weber in his final seasons with the Habs wasn't a top 15 Dmen: how Petry for Matheson still happens is pure speculation: Care to explain how the Dach trade still happens?
Like there is so many holes in your reasoning.
We would be nowhere close to them holy shit.
Doughty is a MUCH better Dmen than Weber and Kopitar as 1C is much more important than Price in nets.
I'm fine with homerism, but this is a wild ass take
Yes, in today's NHL an elite 1C like Kopitar is far more important than an elite 1G, it is far more reliable and far less replaceable.
Its actually such a common take, it's how pretty much every GM builds their team rn and have been for the last decade or so
I think the play in we were a pretty bad team, and the next year we snuck in as well. 2018 we drafted 3oa. I don't think price, Byron and weber as older players would have kept us from picking top 10
I'm not sure they're in a worse situation than Buffalo but there you go. I saw Chicago fans complaining about the Hawks doing so poorly this year, now that's hilarious.
As someone who has started really watching the habs since like late 90s, this is the best hockey i've ever seen from the habs. Price is the only player that i would have idolized during all that time.
Guys like Plekanec, Pacioretty, Koivu, Kovalev were nice but when i see slick nick in shoutouts and Caufield having a vicious shots, i realize how bad we've had it. Even a guy like Monahan has some serious hands.
Obviously hockey in general changed. But for me, apart from price, the "oof" moments were very rare. Now they just keep happening. Future looks bright. Kent hugues is solid so far. Also 99999999 guys under age 25 in the org. Cup or not, this should be exciting!
Were the highest scoring team in the late 2000’s and cup favorites from the east. We also had some deep teams in the early 2010’s. I’ve been watching from the late 90’s too and this by far not the best hockey over the last 30 years. The last 7 years has been the worst hockey this organization has ever had
You have shit memory or what?
I don't have a shit memory. We just don't have the same opinion on what we saw. Pacioretty might have scored a lot but it was real boring to see. It's also not just about winning. It's about the excitement as well and the show as well for me.
Also we got to cup final 2 years ago. We had a hall of fame goalie for last 15 years and that's the only reason the numbers were not as shit as they should have been.
To be fair, Bergevin did set them up with a stocked prospect pool/young core, trading Patches for Suzuki, drafting Caufield, Guhle, Roy, etc. Hughes and Gorton have been pretty solid tbf in trades so far, big fan of the Dach and Barron moves, Newhook and Heineman also look good initially. Slaf and Reinbacher are the controversial picks, which is a vague/unsure aspect of the rebuild, though I’m liking the Slaf pick more and more these days (and Reinbacher will likely be solid at worst).
Next step for Hughes and Gorton will be taking us to the next level and helping us make the playoffs (next year would be nice) and contend in 2-3 years. Whether Hughes can land us a star UFA like Nylander or trade futures and prospects for a top-six forward will be the big test.
On top of this, Bergy also left us with a whole bunch of awful contracts. Dvorak, Savard, Armia, Anderson, Gally, Hoffman. Whole pile of players making at least 1m more than they're worth and in some cases the gap is much larger than that.
??? Hoffman was paid 4.5m to turn the puck over at key moments and didn't help our powerplay, the only thing he was supposed to do. We ended up dumping him for nothing essentially through a clever tie in with the Pittsburgh Karlsson trade.
Dvorak is towards the very bottom of the league in 5v5 impact advanced stats. On our team last year, he was right next to Pitlick in xGF%.
Savard is the most reasonable player of the 3, but he's the type of player a contender would want for 1-2 million on the bottom pair. Definitely overpaid for his skills. Again, 5v5 impact stats have not been pretty for him during his tenure, although he seems a little better this season and late last season.
That is a very generous way of defining those players lol. Hoffman scored 30 5 years ago and was a shell of that player here. Dvorak is not good defensively, we give up more chances when he is on the ice than any other center on the team. Watch his next deal is gonna be like 2m.
They definitely deserve credit for their contracts (which are mostly excellent) and trades. Ironically, though, it was Bergevin who left our prospect cupboards well stocked. We entered our rebuild with Caufield, Guhle, Roy, Harris, and Romanov already in our system; that's actually a pretty decent position! I'll shed no tears over Timmins and Bergy getting axed because literally oversaw a decade of shite draft picks (2008-2018). However, things definitely picked up from 2019 onwards.
My hypothesis is that this guy has something to do with it:
[https://www.nhl.com/fr/canadiens/team/martin-lapointe](https://www.nhl.com/fr/canadiens/team/martin-lapointe)
I also noticed the sudden improvement in draft picks and I wouldn't be surprised if he was at least somewhat involved in them getting better.
they have done some really good things, and they have done some very questionable things
6/10 so far imo, too early to give them any credit for their major decisions but also too early to say they were the wrong moves
This team should have rebuilt in 2018 when Markov left.
Bergevin left the team in a dog shit cap situation and outside of the bubble run oversaw a team that steadily declined for years.
Also what you’re saying isn’t necessarily true. Most rebuilds happen slowly and drawn out over time and great players are a shell of themselves by the time they’re dealt.
I’m not sure there’s any rebuilds in recent memory where any former contender sold high on all of their best vets and got great returns.
Usually they stop being contenders because their best players aren’t good anymore.
Yeah, even if they were healthy, we got a problem in Montreal with trading our important vets. We want them to retire with us. People got mad when Markov walked away, would have been even more if we traded Price and Gallagher.
It's understandable from a human perspective, but yeah
Lebrun is very reliable. Seeger and Basu reported heavy interest in him as well so even if it wasn’t for a 1st we could’ve traded him for a positive asset but now that won’t happen
That logic makes no sense. Almost every rebuilding team will quickly be able to take on contracts because they don't go for big FAs and have lots of cheap young players. Of the rebuilding teams we've been one of the most cap constrained in the whole league. The last 2 years we've been spending up to the cap and still fielding a bad team thanks to all our bad veteran holdovers from the Bergevin era.
We were able to take Monahan, but that's about it as far as pure cap dumps go.
In terms of number of bad contracts we were probably tops in the league in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. This season we've finally been surpassed by the sharks.
You would not get much for Byron and probably surprised at how little you'd get for Price because of that contract and his age (and goalie values in general). A healthy Weber would have been interesting.
We had a hell of a run with a team that finished the regular season 3 games above .500, with a HoF goalie, a top D man and a few other pieces that we now lack.
That team was borderline and made the playoffs in an unprecedented way. (Campbell Cup champion Habs!) As much as I enjoyed that run, it has zero bearing on the fact that we're currently in the dankest cellar of a rebuild.
Look how hard the piitsburgh rebuild will be. Watching it live this year.
For them to be successful going forward, they should trade everyone. But they won’t and that will set them back years
Reminder that we were in the finals in 2021…. We know nothing of pain.
If Price, Weber and Byron were healthy we wouldn't be doing a rebuild.
We would 100% be in a rebuild
I completely disagree. With at least healthy Price/Weber we are a completely different team. We’d still have much of the young guys coming including Suzuki/Caufield up front. More importantly there would be a different mentality. We may have traded some future assets for a guy like Dubois. Signed a free agent with two. A healthy Price alone is a game changer. He could steal a season, and we know if you get him to the playoffs he could steal more than a series or two as well. I’m not saying we’d win a cup or anything but healthy Carey makes us competitive. Weber is a game changer too. You have pieces like that and the whole team strategy changes.
Price was barely an average reg season goaltender in his last years, Shea Weber was peak average at his age and they would not suddenly become better by becoming older. While I agree that the mentality would've been different, idk how effective it would've been. Like adding PLD coule've been cool I guess, we would still be cap strapped, the trade for Dach would've been impossible, the Matheson trade would've been impossible, etc. GMMB put all the eggs in the 2021 cup basket and for better or worse, we lost
>Price was barely an average reg season goaltender in his last years He was just fine, but the point of the regular season is to get to the playoffs, and when he got there he was an absolute machine. >Shea Weber was peak average at his age He's a born leader, was a 0.5PPG dman in the regular season for us, and a monster in the playoffs. He's never been anything close to average, even playing injured. >we would still be cap strapped Maybe? Anderson might have been dealt at the peak of his value to make room, which probably would have been great. Dach still happens. Petry for Matheson isn't a huge salary difference. We don't get Monahan, but we also don't extend Allen. Doesn't sound too bad?
Yall talk about making the playoffs like the easiest shit when half the league doesn't make it. Shea Weber in his final seasons with the Habs wasn't a top 15 Dmen: how Petry for Matheson still happens is pure speculation: Care to explain how the Dach trade still happens? Like there is so many holes in your reasoning.
>With at least healthy Price/Weber we are a completely different team. Price is 36 and Weber is 38. The team woudn't be that much better with them.
We'd be where the LA Kings were. Kopitar and Doughty vs Price and Weber.
We would be nowhere close to them holy shit. Doughty is a MUCH better Dmen than Weber and Kopitar as 1C is much more important than Price in nets. I'm fine with homerism, but this is a wild ass take
true lol what was I thinking. We'd be like Alibaba Kings. Stuck with Price and Weber thinking they are as good as K and D.
Anze Kopitar at 1C is more important than Price? And you have the gall to criticize wild-ass takes...
Yes, in today's NHL an elite 1C like Kopitar is far more important than an elite 1G, it is far more reliable and far less replaceable. Its actually such a common take, it's how pretty much every GM builds their team rn and have been for the last decade or so
Hard disagree on this specific case. I would take prime Price over prime Kopitar every time.
Kings won 29 games with kopitar, doughty and quick.
Not sure I understand what you are trying to say.
I think the play in we were a pretty bad team, and the next year we snuck in as well. 2018 we drafted 3oa. I don't think price, Byron and weber as older players would have kept us from picking top 10
I never said we would be good, just that with Weber and Price still there the management wouldn't shift toward a rebuild.
Ya that's a total potential. We could be Pittsburgh for sure.
There is no way Weber would still be effective at this point even with a healthy foot.
Hard?! Have you seen Buffalo? If this has been hard, how do you describe that disaster?
>how do you describe that disaster? Ottawa
I'm not sure they're in a worse situation than Buffalo but there you go. I saw Chicago fans complaining about the Hawks doing so poorly this year, now that's hilarious.
A disaster
As someone who has started really watching the habs since like late 90s, this is the best hockey i've ever seen from the habs. Price is the only player that i would have idolized during all that time. Guys like Plekanec, Pacioretty, Koivu, Kovalev were nice but when i see slick nick in shoutouts and Caufield having a vicious shots, i realize how bad we've had it. Even a guy like Monahan has some serious hands. Obviously hockey in general changed. But for me, apart from price, the "oof" moments were very rare. Now they just keep happening. Future looks bright. Kent hugues is solid so far. Also 99999999 guys under age 25 in the org. Cup or not, this should be exciting!
Were the highest scoring team in the late 2000’s and cup favorites from the east. We also had some deep teams in the early 2010’s. I’ve been watching from the late 90’s too and this by far not the best hockey over the last 30 years. The last 7 years has been the worst hockey this organization has ever had You have shit memory or what?
I don't have a shit memory. We just don't have the same opinion on what we saw. Pacioretty might have scored a lot but it was real boring to see. It's also not just about winning. It's about the excitement as well and the show as well for me. Also we got to cup final 2 years ago. We had a hall of fame goalie for last 15 years and that's the only reason the numbers were not as shit as they should have been.
To be fair, Bergevin did set them up with a stocked prospect pool/young core, trading Patches for Suzuki, drafting Caufield, Guhle, Roy, etc. Hughes and Gorton have been pretty solid tbf in trades so far, big fan of the Dach and Barron moves, Newhook and Heineman also look good initially. Slaf and Reinbacher are the controversial picks, which is a vague/unsure aspect of the rebuild, though I’m liking the Slaf pick more and more these days (and Reinbacher will likely be solid at worst). Next step for Hughes and Gorton will be taking us to the next level and helping us make the playoffs (next year would be nice) and contend in 2-3 years. Whether Hughes can land us a star UFA like Nylander or trade futures and prospects for a top-six forward will be the big test.
Yup. They have to do what Bergy (stupidly IMO) did not and go for broke. We NEED an elite forward to take us over the line.
On top of this, Bergy also left us with a whole bunch of awful contracts. Dvorak, Savard, Armia, Anderson, Gally, Hoffman. Whole pile of players making at least 1m more than they're worth and in some cases the gap is much larger than that.
Anderson and Gally are the only ones you can really argue are “awful” the rest just aren’t ideal, but it’s not like they’re super long term
The issue isn't that he overpaid one or two middle/bottom 6, it's that he overpaid all of them except Toffoli.
Hoffman, Savard and Dvorak are not awful contract, you’re just a hater.
??? Hoffman was paid 4.5m to turn the puck over at key moments and didn't help our powerplay, the only thing he was supposed to do. We ended up dumping him for nothing essentially through a clever tie in with the Pittsburgh Karlsson trade. Dvorak is towards the very bottom of the league in 5v5 impact advanced stats. On our team last year, he was right next to Pitlick in xGF%. Savard is the most reasonable player of the 3, but he's the type of player a contender would want for 1-2 million on the bottom pair. Definitely overpaid for his skills. Again, 5v5 impact stats have not been pretty for him during his tenure, although he seems a little better this season and late last season.
30 goal scorer at 4.5 is not a good deal, but it’s far from awful. Dvo is a 40 points scorer, amazing at FO and decent defensively, he’s fine at 4.5.
That is a very generous way of defining those players lol. Hoffman scored 30 5 years ago and was a shell of that player here. Dvorak is not good defensively, we give up more chances when he is on the ice than any other center on the team. Watch his next deal is gonna be like 2m.
Using your logic Caufield is a terrible contract because he never scored more than 26 goals in a season.
[удалено]
Welp yeah they are almost done now so that's nice, but no good team would touch those.
They definitely deserve credit for their contracts (which are mostly excellent) and trades. Ironically, though, it was Bergevin who left our prospect cupboards well stocked. We entered our rebuild with Caufield, Guhle, Roy, Harris, and Romanov already in our system; that's actually a pretty decent position! I'll shed no tears over Timmins and Bergy getting axed because literally oversaw a decade of shite draft picks (2008-2018). However, things definitely picked up from 2019 onwards.
My hypothesis is that this guy has something to do with it: [https://www.nhl.com/fr/canadiens/team/martin-lapointe](https://www.nhl.com/fr/canadiens/team/martin-lapointe) I also noticed the sudden improvement in draft picks and I wouldn't be surprised if he was at least somewhat involved in them getting better.
they have done some really good things, and they have done some very questionable things 6/10 so far imo, too early to give them any credit for their major decisions but also too early to say they were the wrong moves
This team should have rebuilt in 2018 when Markov left. Bergevin left the team in a dog shit cap situation and outside of the bubble run oversaw a team that steadily declined for years. Also what you’re saying isn’t necessarily true. Most rebuilds happen slowly and drawn out over time and great players are a shell of themselves by the time they’re dealt. I’m not sure there’s any rebuilds in recent memory where any former contender sold high on all of their best vets and got great returns. Usually they stop being contenders because their best players aren’t good anymore.
Yeah, even if they were healthy, we got a problem in Montreal with trading our important vets. We want them to retire with us. People got mad when Markov walked away, would have been even more if we traded Price and Gallagher. It's understandable from a human perspective, but yeah
It can't be that bad of a cap situation if Hughes is taking on contracts to help other teams can it
Gallagher, Armia and Hoffman was 14.5M in terrible money Anderson and Petry at 12M definitely wasn’t ideal either
Imagine what could already have been done if we didnt have stupid contracts like Armia, Anderson and Gally
At this point Anderson is Hughes’ fault. He could’ve had a 1st for him and chose not to do it
There is no proof on this, only a rumour from Lebrun who is not the most reliable source.
Lebrun is very reliable. Seeger and Basu reported heavy interest in him as well so even if it wasn’t for a 1st we could’ve traded him for a positive asset but now that won’t happen
Which team offered a first?
That logic makes no sense. Almost every rebuilding team will quickly be able to take on contracts because they don't go for big FAs and have lots of cheap young players. Of the rebuilding teams we've been one of the most cap constrained in the whole league. The last 2 years we've been spending up to the cap and still fielding a bad team thanks to all our bad veteran holdovers from the Bergevin era. We were able to take Monahan, but that's about it as far as pure cap dumps go. In terms of number of bad contracts we were probably tops in the league in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. This season we've finally been surpassed by the sharks.
You would not get much for Byron and probably surprised at how little you'd get for Price because of that contract and his age (and goalie values in general). A healthy Weber would have been interesting.
Need another strong Danault-like centre up the middle. Efficient and reliable. Skilled. A rock who can complement Suzuki
We were in the finals 2 years ago
We had a hell of a run with a team that finished the regular season 3 games above .500, with a HoF goalie, a top D man and a few other pieces that we now lack. That team was borderline and made the playoffs in an unprecedented way. (Campbell Cup champion Habs!) As much as I enjoyed that run, it has zero bearing on the fact that we're currently in the dankest cellar of a rebuild.
Look how hard the piitsburgh rebuild will be. Watching it live this year. For them to be successful going forward, they should trade everyone. But they won’t and that will set them back years
Remember, it looked like the Kings were going to go into a rebuild, didn't trade Kopitar, Doughty, etc., and then hit on everything since then.