All Habs News: Wednesday April 20, 2011
Happy Birthday!! All Habs community: tell us! NHL: Brent Seabrook, Chris Mason, Nick Bonino
►Eliminated in seven: The word “ouch” seems to be the only one to properly sum up how the Shawinigan Cataractes and Michaël Bournival ended their season last night against the Quebec Remparts, in the seventh and deciding game of their series at the Colisée Pepsi that saw a 9-2 final in favour of the home squad. Head coach Patrick Roy‘s son Frédérick opened the scoring at 15:27 of the opening frame, and Mirko Hoefflin, Jonathan Audy-Marchessault and Mikaël Tam (2) brought the score to 5-0 before Shawinigan could respond, but by then it was already much too late. Bournival registered a point on the second Cataractes’ goal, took two slashing penalties and was 19/32 on the faceoff dot in the loss. Quebec now moves on to face fifth seed Gatineau in the QMJHL semifinals.
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►GM awards: No residents of Vermont were named as finalists for the NHL’s general manager of the year. At best, Pierre Gauthier’s season can be described as mixed. Despite having cap-room at the trade deadline, the Canadiens GM elected to pass.
Gauthier deserves credit for the addition of James Wisniewski as a partial replacement for Andrei Markov. But the trade that sent Ryan O’Byrne to Colorado was dreadful. Gauthier deserves a great deal of criticism for getting nothing in return for Sergei Kostitsyn (Some mistakenly say Dustin Boyd — he was signed as an unrestricted free agent.)
David Poile of Nashville was the mastermind on the other end of the Kostitsyn deal. Adding a top-3 forward who became their top goal scorer for free was a stroke of genius by Poile. The Predators GM also picked up Mike Fisher for draft picks. Fisher is in the top-10 in playoff scoring.
When Steve Yzerman let it be known that he was interested in being the GM of the Montreal Canadiens, President Pierre Boivin said ‘Non, merci!’ Now Yzerman is recognized as one of the top GMs in the league. He teamed up with Canadiens castoff Guy Boucher to lead the Tampa Bay Lightning to a 23-point improvement over last season.
Mike Gillis of the President’s trophy winning Vancouver Canucks was the third candidate named.
Gilles, Poile, Yzerman are nominees for NHL general managers award
(Photo: Sylvain Mayer)