Poor Len Canayen's advice for Habs' coach

After over four months of no hockey -- death, for a true Canuck sports fan -- the National Hockey League (((G. Bettman, Prop.))) resumed its 2019-20 season yesterday, with a slate of exhibition games, to be followed by playoffs beginning August 1st. Our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, viewed the match between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montréal Canadiens. Here are his comments.

Tank youse, Ed. What I saw on the idiot's lantern last night was not so much a win for the Maple Laffs as a loss for la Sainte Flannelle. The final score was 4-2 for the boys in white and blue. Two of the Leafs' four goals were scored while the Habs were on the power play. Maybe now we should call it the powerless play. I'll come to that in a moment.

The other problem Canada's team has -- one they struggled with throughout the abbreviated regular season -- is playing only 18 minutes per 20-minute period. It seems to take the first minute of each period for them to wake up. Then, when the stadium announcer intones "ONE minute remaining in the period", they stop playing to see what will happen. The other two goals, last night, were scored against them at 0:33 of the first period and 19:35 of the second period.

I have a solution for dat. What Coach Claude Julien should do is put an extra man on the ice at the beginning of the first period and when the clock shows one minute left in all three periods. That will result in a "too many men" penalty, forcing the team to play short-handed for the first and last minutes of every period, which they do pretty well. I should mention excellent work by Paul Byron and Arturri Lekkonen on the PK last night. Problem solved!

As for giving up goals while they have the man advantage, one possibility would be to punish severely [How? Ed.] power players who stand at the opposing team's blueline waiting for the defence to recover the puck. A better solution, given last night's performance, might be to comb through the NHL rulebook and see if it's possible to decline a penalty, as can be done in football. They played well enough 5-on-5, so next time an opponent hooks or hacks a Hab, Coach Julien should wave at the refugees -- those guys in the black and white stripes -- and say "That's OK. We don't really mind. Let's just play on."

Another problem solved through the power of creative hockey analysis. The Canadiens have three days to rest up and think about those things. Next game, the first of the "play-ins" vs Sid the Kid and the other Penguins, will be on Saturday night. Stay tuned!