The Habs needed to keep their grit togehter and they did that yesterday. Great move by Gainey. The Oilers proved this year that grit will get you far in the playoffs before what I call the curse of ‘93 hit them.

(The curse is that no Canadian team has won the cup final since the Habs in ‘93 and no canadian team will win it till the Habs do in what I believe to be the next 1 to 2 years)

Get rid of Ribeiro and Zednik immediately, Bonk they won’t be able to get rid of because of his massive contract and he showed at the end of the year to be a good #4 centre.

Keep the defence intact because they were the fidth highest scoring unit in the NHL, they were very good defensively at the end of the season and now I think Souray’s gotten used to the new NHL they will be even better next season.

Kovalev needs a real centreman to play with (i.e. Lang,Arnott. These are the only viable options folks because they’re not getting Richards obviously and unless Gainey is willing to trade Higgins, Ryder, and Komisarek which Tampa would reportedly be asking for, Vinny Lecavelier will not be wearing the CH any time soon, and Savard would want to much and would not want to play second fiddle to Koivu.)

As well as either getting someone like Mark Parrish or Jamie Langenbrunner to play the second line wing or moving Perezhogin up there and having Kostitzyn play on the third line with Plecanek and Murray, both of which I like a lot. Elias would be far to expensive to also go with the more pressing need at second line centre.

By the way, everyone saying that Latendresse will come and play for the big team next season. GET REAL!!!!! He had a good preseason sure but after that he had a very average season in the QMJHL, he apparently has terrible work ethic and attitude( i.e. Ribeiro) and he did absolutly JACK ALL in the world juniors so Gainey will make him go the hard way through the QMJHL one more season, hopefully have a better showing at the ‘Juniors’ and then at least the 3 manditory seasons on his AHL contract.

There are three rumored people to be in the running for asst. head coach. All are ex. Habs I believe, and all are good buddies with Carbonneau and I think played with him.

They are Larry Robinson, Mario Tremblay(I really don’t think we want to go down that road again), and Kirk Muller.

Robinson retired because he couldn’t take the pressure in NEW JERSEY! so how would he deal with it in Montreal? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he’s just an assistent. I never liked Mario Tramblay and the dark days of the Habs/Molson family marriage started with him and got really bad with Vingealt(not his fault that he didn’t have any good players though) and Kirk Muller’s never had a proffesional coaching job before.

There’s risks to which ever one you take. I would like to see Muller. Who do the rest of you loyal Habs fans think would be the better fit?

As far as the coach goes, I love the possibility of Robinson coming back. He’s been an assistant with us before and did very well. So well in fact that he got plucked from our staff to become a head coach in the show. As an assistant he would shoulder virtually none of the pressure and due to his unwillingness to be a head coach again it would be pretty safe to say he’d be in it for the long haul at that position. Obviously my second choice would be Muller for lack of a better option in Tremblay. To be fair, because one sucks at the head coach position does not mean they can’t be an effective assistant. They are two completely separate and differing roles, therefore I would even be willing to bring Tremblay into the fold. Now let’s sign Huet and find a decent scoring forward.

i dont think the habs will do good next yr if they dont sign some good free agents this yr