Even without Lucic, Bruins better Habs
Marchand scored the game-winner/By S. Bradley
BOSTON — Maybe Milan Lucic’s absence due to a one-game suspension took a little of the snarl out of the Bruins-Canadiens match-up tonight.
There was a little less physicality and much more speed and skating on display at the TD Garden, but that didn’t stop the Bruins from continuing to sizzle.
The Bruins got goals from three different lines, including Brad Marchand’s game-winner, in a 3-2 victory over Montreal. Benoit Pouliot and David Krejci also scored, as Boston improved to 19-2-1 in their last 22 games.
Tim Thomas stopped 33 of 35 shots during his 13th win in his last 14 starts.
The Bruins are off until they host Florida Friday night.
Never dig a guy for a paying gig.
Werme – you ditched Matt b/c he’s a pro, and not a homer? That’s weak sauce, Bro.
That’s the beauty of this site – if you disagree with his prediction, or if his leanings piss you off as a fan – Matt will debate it with you right here in these threads.
Sure, he was a dumb-ass for picking a team without goaltending, but rather than boycott – tell him so, and hang out with the rest of us!
Matt’s alright – even if he’s writing for NHL.com more than here. Just a dig, Matt
Keep up the good work!
Guys I gave up on this blog when Matt picked the flyers over our beloved B’s last year. I keep coming back to read your comments. the habs need more heart if you ask me
Love you JPT – finding the climate a little to harsh to crawl out of your hole, these days?
Or maybe french for ‘Bungling Boneheads’?
How about french for ‘sinking ship’?!
Montreal Titanics!
JPT,
How do you say “dive” in French?
Probably the first word your new coach should learn..
Also, Hal Gill? Seriously? I’m pretty sure I can walk faster than he can skate.
Montreal has bigger problems than what language the coach speaks.
1) This is a fact
2) Well, the streak has begun.
3) Agree (should is a key word here)
4) Depends how you look at it. When the English soccer team hired an Italian as their coach with no English, there was an uproar and he did in fact work on his English
5) Agree
My opinion:
1. The Habs sucking doesn’t diminish the Bruins being awesome.
2. I hope the Habs never win again.
3. That the Habs’ coach doesn’t speak fluent French should be irrelevant.
4. The people complaining about it are morons and teetering on racist.
5. Montreal looks foolish once again by involving their government resources in something like this
PatrickD
Josh Georges is a good defender as well, and I agree that Darche would look good with a spoked B on the front of his jersey. You are right, size and strength are skills that help define a player’s worth.
From what I hear Roy rules with an iron fist as well. Which is fine for junior but millionaires won’t respond to that I don’t think. I can’t think of too many star players who turned out to be good coaches actually.
As far as the system goes the difference between the Habs and Bs is size. Its easy to play the defense first system if you have size and can win battles in your own end. With the exception of Cole and Pach who do the Habs have that has any size? Gill? He’s big but he is a pylon. Habs need to start to use there speed or get some size. When they are playing run and gun they are a very good team and with Price back there to help with the eventual defensive break downs they can actually play that style and win. That being said the one guy who I covet on that Habs is Darche. That guy would look great in a Bruins uniform. But he is one of the few French Canadian guys on the team so I imagine they will do what they can to keep him around.
Ditto on Patrick Roy. He’s running a QMJHL club and doing quite well but getting 17 year old kids to haul ass is a different task than getting men to do it.
I’m ok with Cunneyworth linguistically. He’s said he’s willing to learn. My problem with this guy is that he’s Pierre Gauthier’s man. He was the captain of the Senators when Gauthier was in charge and in the off season, brought Cunneyworth in as the AHL coach and then brought him up when Muller left.
He’s also captained under Jacques Martin which makes me wonder if we’re going to see anything different. Fans were tired of the system. They want to see these guys open up. If you bring in a guy that’s going to push the ‘system’, why did you fire the guy that basically invented it?
Anyways, we’ll see how it plays out. I remember last year you guys wanted to can Julien for his safety first approach.
RD
Has Cunneyworth said he is unwilling to learn French? I haven’t heard that. If he is the best coach available, and he is will try to learn French in the summer, then people should give him a chance. In fairness, most NHL teams wouldn’t consider hiring an excellent unilingual francophone head coach, even if he had won a number of QMJHL championships.
The Habs must realize that they need some better scouting/drafting in order to be an elite team. They put too much pressure on winning now, as opposed to building for the future.
Patrick Roy is NOT your answer. If you don’t believe me, check our youtube.
Hey PatrickD,
It’s a big topic but I think the Bruins fans are just about done discussing the win so I’ll dump a big post here.
The problem is that they were interviewing people on Ste Catherine’s street. They should head on down to Lacordaire, St Michel, and other much poorer areas. When you head to less afluent areas in the province, you’ll start to hear a lot more anti-english sentiment.
I’m of mixed descent. Mom was French, pop was English. I can see both sides of it. The coach needs to talk the language of the dressing room and that’s English. But, you also have 6-7 million crazed fans and 80% of them are Francophone.
I think there’s a middle ground. Take the best coach you can find and if he doesn’t speak french, hire an enterpreter and a tutor. Bowman was an Anglo but his French was excellent. This was enough to have undying loyalty from the French fans. Correction, that AND his 5 stanley cups.
I think this is one of those things that will work to divide people. I think sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and try to empathise a bit. For French people, the hockey team is beyond important. To them, it’s an institution that is part of their national identity. This sounds ridiculous but think of how nuts habs fans are and it will click. You put a English person in charge who has no intention of learning French and many people will feel like the English Molsons are sticking English people in positions of power. It opens a lot of wounds to certain Francophones and believe it or not, threatens their identity.
I think this separates the true hockey fans from the political hacks though. Personally, I just want to see the guys win the Stanley Cup. I’m tired of seeing old clips of Lafleur, Gainey, Roy and Muller holding up the cup.
wait. no jpt?
love watching the kelly’s heroes line. b’s seem to have three #2 lines and one #3 line.
RD, you mention the language issue. It has been discussed to death here in Canada (as I am sure you are aware). It is a creation of the French speaking press. TSN interviewed people walking down St. Catherine and asked them if they cared. Every single one said if the guy wins games who cares if he speaks French. Bowman and Irvin didn’t speak french and no one cared. Irvin reportedly openly disliked French people. The french press have been talking about boycotting press conferences or only asking questions in French. Management should let them. The press needs the Habs not the other way around. Do you think if La Presse stops printing quotes from The Habs coach people will stop going to the games? This is the worst case of making a mountain out of a mole hill. This team is in serious disarray as someone stated so how exactly is all this crap going to help? Sorry to go off on a Habs tangent. But every good guy needs a foil. And without the Habs contending against the Bruins its a little like Superman without Lex Luthor.
RD – you are absolutely correct about the cap. Not many teams have managed it worse than Montreal, and Boston has both proven smart and lucky in this area. We are very fortunate for the Kessel bounty, and b/c many of our core players just don’t demand the high salaries b/c they are not stats mavens (Krecji, Bergeron, Looch), but instead just solid two-way players. PC has proven that depth is the key, not star-power, and the Bs just simply wear everyone down.
I’d go to CapGeek and check out the Habs, but even as a Canadiens hater, I don’t think I could handle what’s on their books. Beyond toxic. Price is a huge problem. He’s what 24? Everything is in front of that kid – you have to have him on board, but would he be willing to give up some dough to stay with his team like some of the Bs have proven?
We’ll see. Best thing that could happen is for Markov to end up on LTIR, and for Gomez to get hit by a bus.
Bojangles…someone has to lose these games…Montreal is really not executing well right now and losing all the points is going to cost the team dearly if they ever want to make the playoffs.
Montreal has some talent in their lineup…they just really aren’t executing.
Gomez used to be a great player. Now he’s completely washed up. Gionta and Cammaleri used to be top scorers…now they are slumping incredibly.
I’ll tell you what I’m worried about. Price is worth a LOT of money and Montreal has a lot of money tied up in toxic contracts. A team that is desperate for a goalie (cough Philly) might turn around and offer Price the RFA big money and Montreal will have too much money committed to match. Montreal without Price is not going to be pretty.
The problem with firing everyone is that you have to bring in the right guys. Cunneyworth is there because they want to spend these months finding the right man for the job. Of course, language will factor in and then we might not get the best coach available. Then for the GM, it’s a similar story. It’s funny to say, but these problems come from the salary cap. Montreal has very deep pockets but now they can’t just eat bad contracts and sign new ones. They have to actually be skilled in how they put together their lineup.
I miss the Kovalev days lol
Ok – I’m over relishing that the Habs are losing to the Bs. It’s just no good for hockey what has happened up Nort! The team is in complete disarray, and they’d do well to fire the management now. No one could believe the Markov deal – probably not even Markov. Gomez? Does anyone remember who he used to be?
As much as I love beating the Habs – this just sucks. In fact, its going to be a long regular season without serious challengers.
Sorry RD – Its going to be very difficult to right this ship, and I’m afraid it’s going to take several years to overcome those contracts and drafting mistakes.
I can’t believe it, but I’m finding myself rooting for Montreal to dig out of this hole – I’m really going to miss hating them, but how can one hate a team that is so pathetic?
RD- I agree with you that Cole looked good. I’ve always been a fan of his game. Just gotta keep him on the ice.
I agree that Boston looked very fast last night with the obvious exception of Chara. When you get to be that size, movement is not going to be a strength.
The Marchand goal was a nice one. Hopefully he’s maturing as a player because he’s showing skills to be far far more than an agitator type of player.
For the habs, it’s not looking good. They managed to outshoot Boston in their home rink but did it really ever feel that way? They were always on the outside chipping towards Thomas and not making lanes to get good angles on Thomas. Fear may have been a factor there with the exception of Eric Cole. He’s been delivering fine while the rest are really coming up short.
Faceoffs are also key. I don’t know the Boston stats but David Deharnais was 2-15 which means his counterparts had a great night.
I love the speed they are producing as well, and the defense! I’ve always been a huge proponent of defense and although teams will always slide in the cheese now and again, it just looks so strong right now. the layers they produce, even on the PK, is just soo fun to watch.
Nice to see Seguin get a fire lit under his backside for the first time in a while. Turns out the kid doesn’t like his ice time cut.
Love that hard nosed hockey…
The third goal was one of the better goals of this young season so far.
They are faster because they replaced guys like Ryder, Wheeler and Kaberle, who appeared to never actually skate hard, with Peverley, Kelly and Corvo, who are always skating as hard as possible. Of course, Recchi out and Pouliot in will add speed too. Seguin is getting much more ice time as well. You are right, it is weird that with the movement of a few players, they seem to have much, much greater team speed.
This team is so much faster then it was last year and that was evident last night in snuffing out MTL’s rushes. It’s weird because there haven’t been too many changes from last season, but the difference in speed, especially from the back end, is great. Maybe it’s better/more defensive ready positioning, less pinching on the attacking blue line, when facing faster teams? I don’t know, but for that match-up, I like it.
Loved the 1st goal. Great play by AF on the second. Awesome pick, sauce, and dangle on the third. And like the Claude said, “…thank God for the 3rd…”
Defense wins championships. It’s very hard to get through that defense and that goalie!
Julien is doing a good job on those set plays off of faceoffs.
Good win as usual. I hope we got one more game in the tank then a well deserved holiday break. Campbell is such an old school true Bruin great game with a broken foot thats Boston hockey folks.