HMIC:Hockey nite in crisis,lol

HNIC

hey xtrahabsfan; I was thinking the same thing. send Price and Huet to Hamilton, and bring up Halak and Denis. I heard Halak is playing great. because honestly I don’t see the habs making the playoffs with Huet and Price. They both stink! actually, Edmonton has a goalie, Roloson, that’s available. trade for him, or else it’s not happening for the habs.

The team that Gainey built ,YIKES!!!

All I want is a 60 minute effort, and good goaltending. Is that so much to ask for?

Huet is the goalie they should ride. Price is a great goalie, but he’s not ready to carry an NHL team on his shoulders. Give him another year. It wasn’t until later in his 21st year that Roy was able to carry the Habs.

If Huet fails when given the torch; fine. That just means he’s not a rideable goaltender in high pressure situations. If Price fails when given the torch; what does that do for the confidence of the future Canadiens’ goaltender.

Price is a great goalie; but he isn’t ready. He isn’t mature enough yet (and who would be at 20?) It has shown the last few games.

HALAK!HALAK!HALAK!HALAK!HALAK!HALAK!HALAK! I think you know who I want in goal!

east coast; you said the magic words: DIDN’T SHOW UP! how many times this season have we heard that same song? more than times they’ve showed up!
I’m fed up.

Ok goodbye Ryder. No goals. No Offence by anyone. Bob Gainey is going to get someone huge! Hopefully not Hossa! Tanguay or Sundin!!!

Makes you wonder why the Habs couldn’t win one for their GM. They couldn’t get up for the game that was suppossed to honour the guy who signed them. HELLLOOOOOO!

I didn’t see the first period of the Columbus game, so I don’t know how bad the goals were. I do know that the goaltending (from both goalies) hasn’t been the greatest of late. But it is usually a mistake to shake things up too much with goaltenders. It’s a very different position that relies on other types of qualities than most players such as confidence, mental focus, etc. And although these qualities are imporatant for all players they are especially so for tenders. And these can easily be damaged. Introducing another goalie to the mix right now, via Halak, would not be in the short term interest of the team. That would be next to conceding defeat this season. Halak is a good goalie, but he should not play in Montreal this year. If this was December or earlier I’d say go for it. But this is not the hunt for playoff positioning and Halak would only come in if they thought he could be the playoff goalie. And he can’t. The organization knows that Price is the better between Price and Halak so won’t send Price back down. Huet is obviously supposed to be the number one who will go into the playoffs.
I think the real question is will Montreal trade Halak before the deadline to give him a chance and send a message that Huet will likely be re-signed in the off season, or will Montreal hold on to Halak as the back-up for next year knowing that Huet will likely leave or not be re-signed in July?

Hi Barrie:

The goals were pretty bad; one of them was terrible. The first goal was a cross-crease pass one-timer from about a 75 degree angle at 15 feet out. Nash didn’t get all of it, so Price had about 1 to 1.5 seconds to get across. The problem wasn’t so much that Price should have had it, but that he wasn’t even close. All he had to do was get from post to post, but instead he got caught standing still, hardly moved, and it showed quite clearly a nonchalance in a bad way. It was a save an NHL goaltender makes 9/10 times.

The second goal was absolutely terrible, five-hole from 45 degree angle at about 25 feet out. Patrick Lalime style. Totally brutal. Down 2-0.

The third goal you saw, but notice as well how many absolutely pathetic rebounds that Price gave out throughout the whole game. He didn’t bail his teammates out once; they bailed him out a bunch of times. He wasn’t even a good AHL goalie last night.

The comments by the players after the game pretty much summed up some thinly veiled criticism. Komisarek: “it felt like 2 shots and 2 goals”. Carbonneau: “I don’t mind when you give up goals when the other team works for them. But when you just give them away, that’s another thing. Shots happen in a hockey game. I have never seen a game where shots didn’t happen”. In other words, Price sucked again.

I say send him back to the minors. A number 1 goaltender, Huet, should be allowed to have bad game without losing a bunch of games to the second string. When Price is number 1, the same should apply to him.

I think that the previous poster (groundworking) makes a great point – how many other teams are there that bench their first string goalie as soon as he has a bad game? If we want Huet to get back into a groove (which he’s shown he’s capable of, and which, I think we should face it, is what we’ll need if we’re actually going to make some kind of impression this season), give him a chance to bounce back after a game like Saturday instead of sitting him on the bench.

Huet has the 12th best save percentage in the NHL, the 10th best among goalies with more than 30 games played, and the fourth best in the Eastern Conference. Goaltending isn’t a problem on most nights. If the Canadians can get a goaltender with more than a .900 save pct on any given night, there’s a good chance that they’re going to win. Unlike the Leafs, we don’t need Tretiak and a young Hasek guarding the net simultaneously in order to win hockey games.

Huet should be handed the torch. He’s older. If he can’t back a team in the playoffs now, then it’s better to know this now what next year or the year after when the Habs are clear favorites to win the cup.

I also agree that Halak deserves a shot, statswise. I’m thinking that the management might have some concerns with his attitude, and we’ve seen the great lengths that Gaigney and Carbonneau will go to prevent the culture of the dressing room from getting spoiled.

CM and I agree. Price is definitely a goaltender of the future. But there’s a thin line, as Alex Kovalev has shown us over the last few years, between being calm under pressure and not really caring that much. Between being confident and arrogant. And yet there’s also a huge gap between having all of the talent in the world and being a great hockey player.

I wasn’t going to say anything, but I’ll say it anyway. Price lets in 3 goals on 4 shots against the Rangers. In the second period, Habs losing 5-0, the camera zooms in on the Habs bench and Price puts his water bottle in front of the camera to joke around with the camera men. I don’t play in the NHL, but I play competitive sports. And it’s damn hard to find a smile on a hockey team, especially among elite players, when losing is in the cards. Just look at how Patrick Roy handled the 9-1 loss to Detroit. He was furious. Great players, and great fans, and great hockey teams, don’t accept losing. They hate it. It’s a disease. A cancer. It’s something you brush off because you have to, not because it’s easy. You feel like killing someone when your team is losing, you feel almost like crying when you lose. Champions hate losing worse than anything. They “handle it” gracefully when it happens; but they don’t accept it. There’s no such thing as a “good loser” in competitive sport. A 20 year old who can joke with the cameramen when his team is losing, and when guys like Begin are getting their heads smashed into the boards, when Kovalev is backchecking every shift, and when Ryder is breaking out of a 50 game slump, is a 20 year old who isn’t ready for the NHL, and most certainly not the jersey of the Montreal Canadiens.

There.

And yes, the Euros are definitely the problem. Damn them for being the 6 highest scorers on the teams and taking over the position of starting goaltender. As if that wasn’t enough, the wankers have given us a chance at the eastern crown. Seriously, let’s get rid of them.

I agree with you to a point Brock. Some people do overreact with every single loss and fail to look at the overall picture. But I do think that some complaining and even anger over poor play is what prevents the habs from becoming like the Leafs. Leaf fans will love their team no matter what. Some call that a strength, I call it the reason they haven’t won a cup since 1967!
So I do think there should be some malcontent, or speculation about trades when there is a perceived long-term flaw with the team. But, again, to support what you have said I do beleive that many of us do micro-analyse the team and can over react after one or two bad games or individual performances.

FACT: the habs have lost 8 of their last 12!
Fact: the rangers are beating Florida 3-0. If they win, they’re only 3 points behind the habs.
Fact: the habs have come out flat in almost every game the past month.
Fact: Huet has never won a playoff series for us.
He couldn’t win against Carolina, and he couldn’tstop a puck last season in the most important game of the season. He is a MEDIOCRE goalie at best. A CAREER BACKUP! STATS ARE FOR LOSERS!
He has never won a pressure game, and as soon as Price came back to the team, he couldn’t win. HE CAN’T HANDLE PRESSURE. AND THIS IS THE GOALIE SOME OF YOU WANT? Reality check people. We don’t have the goaltending to make the playoffs, not to mention the fact that this team comes out flat every game.
I’ll tell you who I respect. THE BOSTON BRUINS. they have less talent than the habs, yet manage to put in a 60 minute effort every game. They show up every game, and aren’t quitters, unlike our team. They have a terrific cosch who’se able to motivate players, and they have grit and toughness.
kudos to the BRUINS!

If Gainey doesn’t make a significant trade, the team will be totally demotivated. So if we think the team is flat now, look out! yes, we need size, strength and power. You see what happens to a small wimpy team by game #60?
out of gas, no energy and total fatigue! Isn’t 14 years enough time for a GM to acquire size?

hey CM: take the rose colored glasses off!

I say we get Jarret Stoll! He is a nice gritty player that can win face offs alot. And he’s also a right handed player too, which we lack. Also canadian and almost won with the Oilers.

Man, I knew before I read this page that all I would read would be HJ bitching about goaltending and saying we’re out of the playoffs. This guy is part of the reason why people don’t want to play in Montreal. This guy isn’t going to be happy until we win every game throughout the season. Just relax man, teams lose sometimes. Ottawa lost to Columbus last week too. We had a bad game Saturday night, there is no denying it, but why does every loss always have to be a sign of the team choking? Try a little support for once, we could be doing a lot worse than 5th in the Eastern Conference.