Well, that’s something, and it’s about time that Carbonneau decided to go back to the line which was so successful last season.

Hopefully Komisarek’s presence will make forechecking a more difficult task for the opposition.

This team is very much in need of a five or six game winning streak, but I think that they’ll need Koivu and Price to accomplish this.

The game against Carolina was a joke. Is it me or has anyone else noticed that when the Canadiens play teams from the southern US states that the penality calls are out of wack with reality. I recall last season against San jose and Anaheim there were questionable calls. My personal opinion is the fix is coming from Bettman’s office to promote hockey to southerns.

I can say as a Canadian living in the US that Bettman’s quest for the ever elusive American market is doomed to failure. Coming originally from Southern Ontario, a place where you will find packed buildings for regular season peewee games, I will say that Hockey is doomed to remain an unacknowledged step-sister of the big 3 sports (Baseball, Football and Basketball). Given the amount of immigration from south of the border, we may even see a day when Soccer gains more popularity than Hockey. I live in Boston (probably the biggest Hockey culture in the US) and still the sport is almost entirely ignored in mainstream media coverage. There is one place where despite the economy or politics hockey will always be the number one issue: and that is Canada. Bettman has ignored this for too long. That is all the venting I want to do with regards to him.

It could seem when watching penalty after penalty that the fix was in, but I have to say – many of the penalties were warranted. You put your stick in a bad spot without moving your feet and you’re going to get called. And if Montreal had committed that many penalties I have no problem with the ref’s handing down punishment after punishment until they start skating. My problem is that when it came to the other end, and Montreal players were being interfered with there was no consistency in the way the officials called penalties. Montreal got no leeway, while Carolina got all kinds. That is my frustration with how that game was called. I think most of us prefer if the refs let the players play a little, just be consistent.

Maxwell is sitting out tonight as Big George is back in the lineup along with Komisarek. While it has been Montreal’s offense that has struggled since he was hurt, it should be a boost to have him back on the blue line beside Markov.

Lines for tonight:

kostitsyn-plekanec-kovalev
tanguay-lang-d’agostini
kostitsyn-lapierre-latendresse
laraque begin-kostopoulos

markov-komisarek
hamrlik-gorges
boullion-brisebois

halak

Of course.

Kovy still playing hard and starting to get some luck and the bounce of the puck.

Why to I feel uncomfortable with Halak in goal??? He played well tonight but when philly got that lucking goal in the third it just seemed to make me feel uncomfortable everytime he touched the puck. I guess I have to get over it, but I will be happy when Price is back.

Halak makes me very nervous. He should proably avoid handling the puck.

I hope that this post doesn’t repeat but way to go Kovalev, Latendresse, D’Agostini et al. Hopefully that kind of effort will be more consistent from this point on.

Oh, and Burnside and I are in complete agreement on at least one thing: Unnecessary Drama

I’m so relieved that Sundin didn’t come to Montreal and ruin the potential of this team.

Bad habits die hard I guess.

Too many missed chances.

I’ve figured out that it was actually me watching the games that was jinxing the habs on that streak since I’ve missed the last two. I was glad to see Sergei score two last night as well as Kovalev with an absolute beauty in OT. Go Habs.

As Kovy said the other night he was trying to do too much and so the harder he tried the worse it got. You could see lately that he was really working hard but no breaks were going his way, so now that he has the monkey off his back the whole team will improve, power play and everyone will loosen up more because with Kovy scoring there is less pressure on everyone else.

That comment was posted some time in between the second and third periods but came through later, and I did follow it up with another one which got lost in the mix I guess.

Senet1, you always see the positives in things, which is a great way to see things, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I watched a team miss that many chances at a gaping or at least semi-gaping net in one game. You expect a few to be chipped off the post or wide, but not 12. Are they holdiong their sticks too tight? Maybe. Either way, it honestly could have been a blood bath.

The NHL is a joke.

Incompetent/inconsistent officiating taints this league with the stench of sh*t, and this an enormous reason why so many would be fans choose to leave it rather than take it. It’s no fun at all–in fact it’s painful–to endure these clowns in stripes skating around, making terrible calls, missing text book penalties, calling something for a penalty in the first period, letting the very same thing go in the second period, and then calling it again in the third period. That’s enough to make a potential fan of this game lose interest in a hurry, and so it does. Sickening.

That said, anything that grows too large ultimately destroys itself, and it is my opinion that the best thing that could happen to the game of hockey and its fans would be the mass extinction of a pletora of franchises, the resulting disappearance of corporate logos from the boards, and ultimately a newborn desire to play the game for the sake of playing the game. Meanwhile, Bettman can keep his laughable circus. I’m about ready to get off of the carrousel for the last time.