East Meets West

Playoffs!

Last night the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning. And immediately the calculators started calculating.

First off, I am a big believer that the Habs are done.

For the Habs to make the playoffs they would have to play like an elite team until the end of the season. Whether it's .670 or something else, Montreal would have to play a lot better than they have been playing so far. 

I'd like to believe, but unless Markov and Gomez show up and turn this boat around, it's going to be a long summer without the Habs.

At least the San Jose Sharks have kicked up their performance a notch winning 5-2 against the Washington Capitals...

The Montreal Canadiens, the salary cap and 2012

Pierre Gauthier's remarks are so infrequent that when he makes them they have more effect.

Intriguingly no one picked up on the most interesting remark he has made this year.

Of the 39 games the Montreal Canadiens played at the time he made his remarks that only in 4 of them were they above the salary cap floor.

You'd think this would have set the blog-o-sphere, press etc a-flame. That the internet meme would be that the Habs have had a GREAT season fielding essentially a team decimated by injuries. You'd think we would be reading how it's impossible to make any reasonable determinations about the team based on the injuries. That this year is a wash because of those injuries.

You'd think.

I found maybe three references to this on the net.

Instead we have the regular asinine clap-trap about how the team sucks with no context. From Mr. Boone whom, I respect I had to read this nonesense.

It’s becoming painfully clear, with each dispiriting loss, that if Gauthier is still employed by the Canadiens at the end of February, he’s going to be dealing players to a contender.

No Mr. Boone he doesn't or shouldn't. That would be tantamount to saying that next year HE WANTS TO FIELD A LOTTERY PICK TEAM. I expect more from journalists -- well I don't but that's just me.

If you've read my blog in the past you know that I am really frustrated with the attitude of the Montreal press in particular, the Montreal blog-o-sphere somewhat and most Montreal fans in general.

The team sucks because the team has been playing inexperienced players on defense. The fact that the team is competing for a lottery pick has nothing to do with Mr. Gauthier or Mr. Martin or the lack of a French speaking coach. The reason they are playing like a lottery pick team is that for 35 of 39 games they were a lottery pick team.

We can certainly argue that a team can be badly mismanaged in their salaries, but the Montreal Canadiens are not that team. Sure they have bad contracts, but not epically bad contracts. The problem the team has is that too many of those contracts are injured.

If the players come back from injury and avoid further injury then the team will win a boat-load more games.

And when they do win a boat-load more games, Mr. Cunneyworth will be declared a genius for rescuing Montreal from it's worst season evah.

This team as constituted is not a lottery pick team. It may not be a Stanley Cup Contender but it's not a lottery pick team.

Of course, you heard it hear first, the problem was and is injuries.

 

And the fork is in

One of the more interesting blogs out there remains Olivier's En Attendent Les Nordiques. What Olivier showed was how Montreal was losing the puck possession battle over time. I suspect that the game of smoke and mirrors played by Montreal with it's juvenile defense has finally been exposed. Why did Gauthier let Martin go? Who knows. Maybe Martin knew the game was up and was demanding some trades for some players that were more experienced and could play defense and Gauthier said no. What is clear to me at least is that the bottom has dropped from this team. Whereas at the beginning of the year we could look at the data and feel confident things would change, now all I feel is despair.

Wishing for a healthy Gomer

I've ranted about this early in the year, and I'll rant it about later in the year... but man oh man do my beloved habs miss Gomez.

So the standard operating theory is that Gomez sucks because his 7 million dollar contract is killing the Montreal Canadiens. If only we didn't have Gomer we would be so much better.

The theory guys like this:

Gomez's contract is killing Montreal because it costs 7 million dollars that Montreal could have spent elsewhere. 

The folks arguing about the 7 million dollars fail to illustrate what alternative players at a lower price point would bring a similar value to the Montreal Canadiens. They just object to the contract dollars. 

Gomez's is a horrible player and adds no value to the Montreal Canadiens. Because he doesn't score goals. He doesn't get points like other 7 million dollar men like??

Of course our precarious and stunning decline in Corsi, roughly starting the same date the Gomer got injured, has nothing to do with Gomer. A stunning and unbelievable coincidence. Or maybe the fact that Plekanec's performance declined coincides with his disappearance. Maybe having a real second line center who can play against good teams is a good thing for a team

If we had never traded for Gomez we would have Ryan McDonaugh and ... 

So the theory here is that our biggest problem is the performance of our defensemen. Or that having a top-4 defensman is more valuable than having a top-2 centerman. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that our problems are not our defensmen, it's our damned forwards.

So here's the problem either you don't like Gomer's salary, or you have a concrete proposal for what you would do with Gomer's money that isn't based on fanciful mirages. 

And the argument that we can't sign player X or Y when we don't even know that for a fact is also bull crap. 

So, yes, Gomer is costing us a pretty penny, but not having him is a lot worse. 

And if we had a healthy Gomer we would be in a lot better shape.

So I am going to wish for a happy Gomer. 

 

 

An Open Letter to Mr. Molson

Mr. Molson,

It pains me to no end that you have to read this:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Memo+Montreal+Canadiens+owner+Geoff+Molson+fire+Gauthier/5909649/story.html

Clearly Mr. Todd and his kind are frustrated that Mr. Gauthier has decided that pandering to their access is not a priority for him or for the team.

First of all, I want to applaud Mr. Gauthier for having the balls to put a coach he thought was the best man for the job. Although down here in Californiat that counts as "doing your job", in Montreal apparently it doesn't. I also want to applaud Mr. Gauthier for stating the obvious: It's far easier to teach a man French than it is to teach a man how to coach.

Instead of applauding Mr. Gauthier's courage to actually find the right coach for the Habs he is being eviscerated for not picking a Franco-phone. The Anglo-press loathes his unwillingness to talk to him. The French press never considered him one of their own. He was always an outsider.

And as an outsider, maybe he and he alone could figure a path out of the mess Montreal is in.

I'm not saying Mr. Cunneyworth shouldn't speak French, but he can be taught the minimal amount of French that he needs to speak to deal with sports journalists. And the fact that the Montreal Press refuses to acknowledge that is, well, sad.

Mr. Moslon don't listen to those dip-shits.

Please.

kostadis

 

Reflecting my values.

I am big believer that most fans and most professional sports viewers suffer from confirmation bias.

They remember the data they want to remember and fits their world view, and don't remember the data that doesn't fit into their hypothesis.

Only morons, and I mean morons, could claim that PK Subban is playing anything but great. Remove him and the team stinks. Not kinda-sorta-maybe stinks, but stinks on an apocalyptical level. Yes he makes dumb passes, but actually pay attention to what he is doing on the ice, and you realize that the entire game plan of our competition is keyed around the kid. We put him on the ice with our weakest forwards just so the bloodletting can stop. 

But he sucks says the mighty boone. And the mighty therrien. And the mighty blogospher. He sucks and should be benched. 

Jacques Martin said he would turn the Montreal Canadiens into a puck possession team. And by any reasonable statistical measures of puck possession he did. The team outplayed, and outchanced their competition 5 on 5 for almost two years under JM, but still the fans railed how he had betrayed the team.

And we get hit by so many injuries,  and JM tries to play smoke and mirrors defense with the cards he's been handed, but the rest of the NHL is figuring it out, and guess what they did. And so the team starts to get hammered, and it's his fault.

So we fire him.

Why?

Not because he failed, but probably because he felt he could do PG's job better than PG. Let's be clear, JM and PG's egos probably didn't fit into the same room. And at some point one of the two had to go. 

And it wasn't going to be PG. It was always going to be JM. 

So we fire JM, because the team was failing. And it wasn't failing because our defense had 3 or 4 rookies on any given night, and it wasn't failing because we had actually used up to 53 players and we were playing every rookie we could so we could actually have 21 players on the bench, no it was failing because JM was a bad coach who had LIED about puck possession. 

Really. 

But all of that would have been okay, if Randy Cunneyworth wasn't the replacement. Not because he sucks, but because he doesn't speak French.

Look, I'm an allophone (non-native speaker of English or French)... I learned French and English in Quebec. I don't get the Quebecois grievances. I don't. I also know enough to know that I'll never get them. And I'll always be the other ... And I get that too. And frankly it's their team even more than it is my team. 

And if they want to have a guy who speaks French, if that's more important to them than anything else that's fine. And I respect that. 

But the team's a wreck because of injuries.

And it's a wreck because it fired a great coach.

And it's a wreck because the fans think their best player is sucking wind. 

But it's a train wreck because Montreal would rather have a coach that speaks French instead of the best coach. It's a train wreck because it's turning Randy Cunneyworth's dream of being an NHL coach into a nightmare because he doesn't speak French. Because I am told, that he doesn't reflect the values of Quebec. 

After having watched a bunch of great Montreal institutions destroyed because of language laws, watching my beloved Habs get sucked into that vortex is depressing.

But I am an allophone, and I understand so little about what it means to be a Quebecois. And so maybe as a Quebecois this all makes sense. 

But...

My core values are about having the best people in the right job regardless of the color of their skin, their ethnic origin, their sexual orientation, their gender. I want the best person for the job. And I want my teams to reflect. I want to cheer for organizations that reflect that. I don't want to explain to my kid why being the best at your job isn't good enough. 

Somehow the Montreal Canadiens don't want to reflect those values, and that's sad. 

So I'll cheer for the San Jose Sharks. Because the Sharks like to have the best players regardless of ethnic origin, language or color or language play...

And I like my teams to reflect my values, and those are my values. 

 

 

If we make the playoffs with these injuries I will be stunned.
Spacek - undisclosed - day-to-day - will miss Wed & Thurs games
Gill - infection - day-to-day - released from hospital Nov 18, won't play Sat.
Kostitsyn - groin - placed on IR Nov 16
Markov - knee - no set date for return - won't be back before California road trip (Nov. 30 - Dec. 3) per Martin
White - sports hernia surgery - won't be back until after Christmas per Martin (Nov. 9)
Campoli - hamstring/tendon - skated alone Nov. 8

Why I hate talking to most fans

After almost 20 years since I stumbled on the bill james baseball abstract, I finally figured out why I like sports.

At first it was because I believed that mathematical analysis would allow me to determine the outcome of a game. I believed that with sufficient information I could determine with a high degree of probability the outcome. That it was a scientific endeavour to understand and then eliminate doubt.

As I got older, that experiment floundered. Then I began to adopt the annoying attitude that only aggregate behavior mattered and wining a specific game or small sample of games was irrelevant. In other words, that winning a championship was a random event, and therefore uninteresting.

Now in my recent mature phase, i realize that what I love about sports is that the analysis can determine if a team is positioned to win, but watching the game allows me to see random rare events. Events that occur only once and are breathtaking in their beauty or stupidity.

The reason I can't stand most fans is because they don't understand the analysis.

So what happens is that, for the most part, they feel that the only thing they can control is their attitude. They can't control their boss, they can't control their lives, but they can control their approach to a problem.

Believing that the attitude is all important, they assume that a coach is about creating attitudes and that if you have the right attitudes the team will win. Or perhaps, differently, they believe that like their personal failures or success are the result of the actions of their boss, they assume that the success or failure of teams is controlled by the coach.

So when a team loses its becasue their attitude sucked or because the coach is an idiot who doesn't know how to use his team effectively.

My attitude is different. Any single game is a random event. What matters in my mind is whether the coach is stacking the odds in his favor. if he is, then he is doing his job, and everything else is in God's hands.

And so when I talk to most ignorant sports fans I hear about how the coach did X or Y or Z (usually didn't communicate with the right people in the right way, delivering the right inspirational speech) or that the team isn't trying because of Z, W or M, I want to scream:

A GAME IS A RANDOM EVENT.

You can try and stack the odds in your favor but it's just odds.

So I go and cry in a corner. And realize that most people think of sports in the same way they think of their jobs, and that in their jobs they have way more control than athletes do in a game. So they don't understand.

Sigh.

 

What the F*K did you really expect to happen?

Really.

The Montreal Canadiens are playing with 3 rookies on defense: Alexei Yemelin, Raphael Diaz, Yannick Weber and then to make things just a little bit more interesting their top defenseman is a guy named PK Subban who has, oh, 1 year of experience in the NHL.

And our supposed stabilizing defensive influence, Josh Georges, is making mistake after mistake after mistake. Whether it's asinine clearing mistakes or passing to the wrong player at the wrong time, he's killing us. Icing the puck with David Desharnais on the ice is a crime. David's a good player but he gets destroyed by the other team's top line.

Watching the Habs last year it was clear to me that the team was going to go as far as Subban could take them. And boy did he make rookie mistake after rookie mistake.

Without Markov we're in the same boat, we will go as far as PK takes us.

He's the guy we play against the top team lines.

And he's being destroyed. He's being asked to do everything and he's failing. And that's okay. He's a frigging second year defenseman. Going from being the other guy to the man is hard, frigging work.

Our problem is not 5on5 scoring. Our problem is not generating offense. Our problem is that if you have to play a game with PK Subban as your top defenseman you're going to get screwed on a regular basis.

The fact that were not being blown out of the water on a regular basis is a tribute to the coaching.

The hysterics, the mania, and the calamitous press focusing on JM's coaching are the kind of asinine stupidity that infuriates me.

The team has a crappy, porous defense that is being destroyed by better teams. That defense is affecting our forwards ability to play. That defense is killing our goaltender.

 

 

One time event: Congratulations Bruins

This is an epic, one-time event, never to be repeated. I am congratulating the steaming pile of shit that is the Boston Bruins and their franchise. And,for the love of God, if a Bruin fan ever lectures me about the Horton hit, I will laugh in his face so hard ...  

Tim Thomas and Zdeno Chara deservedly win the Stanley Cup after crushing the Vancouver Canucks. If not for the brilliant play of Luongo in three games of the 7, this series would have been a sweep by the Bruins. 

Claude Julien deserves credit for doing what was necessary to shut down the Nucks powerplay, something the Sharks could not do.

As for the rest of the team, opportunistically taking advantage of the gaps in the Nucks defense caused by injuries (a theme it seems with these Bruins) and brain farts by big Lou, the Bruins won the cup.

The Bruins demonstrated, again, that winning isn't about being better, but it's also about playing your best when you have to play your best. And after two collosal failures in the last two years (3-1 up against Carolina and losing and then last year's epic collapse), the Bruins won the cup because they learned that to win you have to actually do whatever it takes to win.

So in spite of the dumbass decision by Chiarelli to give Milan-who sucks-Lucic a 4 million dollar contract instead of Phil-who doesn't-Kessler, the Bruins have a cup.

So good for them. Bravo. And hopefully either the Sharks or Montreal will soon get a chance at the goblet.