À la prochaine

National Sports Editor Poor Len Canayen analyses the Montréal-Philadelphia series which ended last night with the Canadien suffering a 3-2 loss.

So dat's it, den. Hard to come back from a deficit of 3 games to 1, but the Habs gave it a pretty good shot, and in the end just had bad puck luck. The Flyers first two goals (in 5 minutes of the first period) both went in off the sticks of Montréal defenders. The third one, which proved to be the winner, hit the goalpost and then caromed in off the back of Carey Price's leg.

You can't blame Price for any of those, or indeed for any of the losses in the series. The problem was not so much bad luck as lack of scoring -- pure and simple. You can't not score for over 130 minutes and expect to win. Your goalie can stand on his head and allow 1.25 goals per game (see my previous post), but if you score 0.0 goals per game, as the Habs did twice, you lose.

Getting back to what Kelly Hrudey called "bad luck"... you can't call it bad luck (entirely) for the goalie when the guys in front of him forget the basics of how to play, or at least one of them. I know, I know. It's hard to think fast when you're out there on the ice in one of the world's fastest games, and it's easy for mere spectators like moi to second-guess, but...

Don Cheery told me more than once this basic rule of defence. It you are between your goalie and the opposing team's shooter, and both you and your goalie are square to the shooter -- directly in line between him and the goalmouth -- what you do not do, as the defender, is stick the blade of your stick out to the side. Let the goalie use his stick to stop the shot. If you try to block the shot with your stick (as opposed to your body), what happens, all too often, is that the puck deflects off the blade of your stick and goes in. That's what happened on the Flyers' first two goals last night. Not bad luck.

For fans of les Glorieux, the playoffs are over. But there's a team called the Canucks, from Vancouver, I believe, who finished off the defending champion St. Louis Blues last night, so it's possible that Lord Stanley's silverware might yet return to the Great No-longer-white North for the first time since the Canadien brought it home in 1993, defeating the Los Angeles Kings.

The winning goal in that series was scored by none other than Kirk Muller, who (because of Claude Julien's heart attack) was coaching the Habs last night. We wish Coach Claude a full recovery and hope he'll be back next season. If that's not possible, the team will be in good hands with Captain Kirk.

And, with some promising prospects coming along, and Nick Suzuki emerging as a potential superstar (he scored both goals last night), I predict with great confidence that 2020-21 will be a much better year for La Sainte Flannelle than this one. And, all things considered, this year wasn't all that bad!

VIDEO: Les Canadiens sont là!

Ed. here. In last week's confusion about who was doing what in the absence of Walt, our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, didn't get a chance to expound on the Montréal Canadiens chances of advancing through the National Hockey League playoffs. He is just about wetting himself with joy and optimism, so I'll turn the keyboard over to him... NOW!

Tank youse, Hed. Because of the "pause" in the NHL's regular season, the playoffs this year are different from years before, and I don't just mean playing in August! Instead of the top eight teams in each division playing down to the final four and final two, the league started with the top twelve teams in each divison. So the Habs barely squeaked into the series, as the No. 12 seed, meaning that they go against the top seeds in each round, starting with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the "play-in" round.

To the surprise of many, including perhaps themselves, les Glorieux polished off Sid the Kid and the mighty Pens, 3 games to 1. I'll turn it over, now, to Adam Susser and the gang at the Montreal Gazette's Hockey Inside Out, to analyse how they did and the outlook for the confrontation with the Philthydelphia Flyers.



That video was recorded before Wednesday night's game, which the Flyers won 2-1. The Habs got off to a slow start, as they did in the first two games against the Pittsburghers, and allowed the first goal around the five-minute mark of the first period. But they woke up towards the end of the first and proved that they could skate with the Penguins, with Captain Shea Weber finally scoring a power-play goal in the second. Unfortunately the Pens responded with a pinball-type goal just a few second later, and made the 2-1 lead stand up for the win.

The Habs played well enough to win, but only for 50 minutes or so. And sometime that evening -- if it was during the game I didn't see it -- coach Claude Julien had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital, where he had a stent put in on Thursday. Get well soon, Claude! We're pullin' for ya! That left assistant coach Kirk Muller in charge for yesterday's second game. It turned out all he had to do was say "Go out and win it for Coach Claude!", et voilà.

Yesterday afternoon's game was as lopsided as the 5-0 final score indicates, as Montréal put on a real clinic for the (perhaps) over-confident Flyers. Jesperi Kotkaniemi (mentioned favourable in the video) scored twice, as did Tomas "Tuna" Tatar, and Joel Armia potted one, so for once the Habs didn't needed their defencemen only to do their job at the blue line, which they did. Carey Price was full value for his 7th careeer playoff shutout, stopping 30 shots.

The game was a real team effort for la Sainte Flannelle, with only four skaters not getting on the score sheet. Even Victor Mete got an assist, he who has scored only two (2) goals in his entire career with the Habs. The other defenceman whose game has improved markedly (as noted by the HI/O panel) is Brett Kulak, meaning that the Habs now have four reliable D-men, with the other two -- Mete and Xavier Ouellet -- playing well enough.

I don't know that I'm ready to predict a Montréal win, but I'm mighty encouraged, and looking forward to Sunday night's close encounter of the third kind. Until next time, keep yer stick on the hice!

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!

Habs shocker! Therrien out, Julien in

Cazart! Should have seen it coming. I (Poor Len) was watching the Montréal Canadiens get blanked by the Boston Bruins on Sunday night, and thought to myself, "Are these guys trying to get [Michel] Therrien fired?"

Well of course they were! Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, it appears to me that the team was hammering the final nail into the coffin that they began building the night Therrien yanked Carey Price after a couple of soft goals, and get the Stare Seen Across Canada. Et maintenant, pour Michelle, c'est terminé.

The lack of cordial relations between Michel Therrien and some of his players has been the subject of discussion before, notably last year when Habs GM Marc Bergevin was forced to choose between the coach and the "transcendant defenceman" (Dave Stubbs' phrase -- where's Dave now?), and, predictably, chose Therrien. Subban didn't have a lot of friends in the room.

With Price, and (to a lesser extent) Max Pacioretty, it's a different story. Both are genuine team leaders on the ice and in the dressing room, one by virtue of the "C" on his chest, the other by being, on many nights, the best player on the ice. As Price goes, so goes the team. And after an amazing start in October and November, Price... and the Habs... have been going steadily downhill. Price is untouchable, and rightly so, so... adieu Michel!

The funny thing is that this same thing happened before, in 2003. Therrien had coached le CH for three or so mediocre years, so he was given the boot and Julien brought in to replace him. Three years later, then-GM Bob Gainey gave the other boot to Julien and went in behind the bench himself, not that it did any good. I hope we're not going to go through this every 14 years!

As for Michel Therrien, my guess (since I missed this week's shocker) is that he'll wind up with the Las Vegas Golden Knights, due to join the NHL next year as Gary Bitchman's craze for promoting hockey in the desert continues unabated. All the talk last week, when Julien was fired, was that he'd be a perfect fit for Vegas. Since Julien and Therrien have the same physique, the same temperament and are both French-Canadians, Therrien should do just fine in Sin City. American fans won't even be able to tell the difference. Lifetime pct .986.

À lire: "Les défis de Claude Julien", de Mathias Brunet, La Presse, 15/2/17.

À voir (to see!): This week's edition of the HI/O show, with Montreal Gazette sportswriter Pat Hickey, and two former CH bruisers: Knucks Nilan and Georges Laraque. [That guy -- Laraque -- is HUGE! Too bad he wasn't really mean. Ed.]