Morning After: Humiliated
I am humiliated. Last night’s game was embarrassing to watch. A SIX MINUTE POWER PLAY!
But I don’t want to harp on a game that was tedious to watch. I think the only reason I kept it on the television was because I don’t know what else to watch. Suggestions? Are there sitcoms any more? If so, what’s good?
What I do want to talk about is Pierre Gauthier and how fearful we should be that he is the one in charge right now. Pierre Gauthier is the equivalent of that guy in your fantasy hockey League who plays every year, but just doesn’t get how the game is played. Every league has these guys – you know the type – they likely drafedt Marty Turco as their goalie, consistently forget to set their daily lineup, and are probably willing to trade SPACEK FOR KABERLE!
If Pierre Gauthier were at the helm of a winning Habs team, I wouldn’t be so concerned. Not that I beleive that he would have anything to do with the Habs winning (it would be just dumb blind luck for him), but it’s easier to be a GM of a winning team, because come January, you don’t have the same weight of responsibility.
The next couple of weeks are huge in terms of personnel management. And Gauthier is 100% not the right man for the job. He is short-sighted and equated success as the Habs climbing back up to 8th and perhaps squeezing in a playoff appearance. Squeezing into the playoffs and getting bumped in the first round is not a success. The problem with Gauthier is that I don’t think he can see the opportunity in front of him. This is numerically the worst season in over a decade, and at this point we aren’t even on the bubble as a playoff team. We can sell older assets to Stanley Cup hopefuls for buckets of draft picks and prospects.
I love Hal Gill, but we don’t need him. He is however a playoff leader, the guy who can make the difference. You don’t think a team like Chicago or San Jose would pay a nice price of drafts and prospects to take him on for the rest of the season and a playoff push?
Again, I am an Andrei Kostitsyn fan, but he is a UFA. If Gauthier can’t sign him TODAY, and I mean literally in the next couple of days, then trade him. He is a great 3rd line scoring addition for the Rangers, or even the Blues. Another windfall of draft picks and prospects.
Those are two examples of what Pierre Gauthier should do but won’t.
But you know what Gauthier will do? He is going to load up on old vetrans with long contracts that no one else wants – and he is going to give away 2nd round picks and prospects.
A friend of mind brought up this concern about 3 weeks ago, but I said “don’t worry, he has to clear trades with Geoff Molson”. Since that time, I’ve lost confidence in Geoff Molson’s veto powers. How else can you explain him being okay with trading a player in the middle of a game? I think we can all agree that was one of the top 5 most classless moves of this organizations 100+ year history.
So now what? Nothing. Except I hope somewhere someone is talking sense into the owner of this team and opens his eyes to how to quickly turn this ship around WITHOUT Pierre Gauthier. It doesn’t take 5 years to rebuild a team. It just takes one bad season that allows you to dump bad contracts and UFA’s you weren’t going to resign anyhow.
Needless to say, I won’t be resting easy until 3pm on February 28th…
- Stephanie Darwish
Stephanie Darwish writes for ladyloveshockey.com, where this article first appeared. She can also be heard on our podcast – The Two-Four - as well as Wednesdays from 2:30 to 2:45 of CJAD 800 AM in Montreal.
I think one of the worst decisions that stands out to me in recent history was draft day 2006. We walked up to that podium to pick the 20th overall and we took David Fisher… He still has never donned the CH Sweater or any other from the NHl. Some people may recognize the name Claude Giroux, he was still availbe that day and is a montreal-born player who is currently the favorite for MVP this year. This embodies the opinion that management cannot and will not try to find talent in their own back yard!
That one hurt for sure…and FYI, guess who was named assistant GM just prior to that draft? Pierre Gauthier.
Exactly! That was one of many bad decisions by a management that includes the cancerous Pierre Gauthier. There was a great article in Sportsnet magazine this week about the decades-long decline of the Habs. Great reading, even though it tugs at the strings of my heart!
I certainly share your concern, Stephanie, as do most level-headed Habs fans at this point. I pretty much abandoned hope of a playoff spot after Halloween…in today’s NHL if you fall behind early as the Habs did, the overwhelming odds are that you don’t get back in. I’ve moved past anger, in to acceptance and now look forward to some kind of rebuild/retool/renovation/facelift…whatever we want to call it.
The players you mentioned should be moved, with the exception of Kostitsyn unless he can be signed awfully soon to a reasonable contract. But we don’t trust Gauthier, and we are dubious of Molson’s intentions. We know he’s a fan, and we know he’s a business man. It’s tough to wear both hats at a time like this, when we know deep down that a sell-off is the right path, but the allure of playoff money is too strong (and required by the board!)
Moen, Campoli and (please!) Kaberle should be moved as well. Weber and Desharnais could be other pieces on the move though I’m not banking on that. I believe the Canadiens will wait as long as possible before “officially” waving the white flag on the season. This is probably a politically-driven course of action, as giving up in mid-January means that they can’t solicit payments for playoff tickets from season ticket holders. Lord knows they want to rake in those millions of bucks even if deep down they know they’ll be reimbursing the money down the road. They’ll collect tons of cash in accumulated interest when they send out invoices for 4 rounds of playoff tickets that season ticket holders pretty much have to shell out for.
It’s too bad that such decisions have to get in the way in building a true winner, but this is what short-sighted management gets you, and Geoff Molson is lumped in with that line of thinking right now. He wears just as much stink as Gauthier does…he approves deals like Kaberle and so the result is lasting mediocrity as the team does whatever it can to at least hit 8th place.
Really, though, the season has been in the bag for many weeks now. Even if 50-60 games were still left to be played, history shows that once you’re out, you’re likely staying out. And as you said, finishing 8th and getting bounced is not success. Maybe it is for Columbus, or Long Island, but that’s not the bar here in Montreal.
I agree with everything you say.
It just surprises me that Molson is such a shortsighted business man. The $2-mill in potential playoff profits is nothing compared to what he would make if this team was a contender.
Everybody these days is after the low-hanging fruit. They’d rather the short-term cash grab over the potential of even more down the line.
This is where the fan/businessman conflict occurs, IMO. I believe Molson knows this, but even he has a Board to report to, and they are the ones that give him his marching orders at the end of the day. If they don’t like the bottom line, they sell, as they did back in the day when owning the Habs was not the profitable operation it once was. It’s really sad…big business keeps getting in the way of a true contender. They sell us on the promise of being a competitive team, but they do it in a way that is very difficult to do: overpaying UFAs that will soon be on the downslide (Gionta, Gomez, Cammalleri) and ones that are already declining (Gill – who was already on the way down in 2009, Kaberle, Spacek, Darche, etc). They hope to catch lightning in a bottle with the right mix of vets and youth, but there doesn’t appear to be a coherent plan on building as vets get too old, youth enters prime, & prospects ready for big time.
Gainey and Gauthier took the dynamite to the Habs a couple years back, and now they’ll have to break out the jackhammers to undertake another big overhaul.