A spectator casts vote against Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau in Dallas last night. The Habs beat the Stars 3-1. Glenn James, NHLi via Getty Images
Big Brother:
Note: I have been sick for over a week so I missed a lot of the last events. Sorry about that.
Wow. This is an unexpected turn of events considering the win against the Stars. I know it wasn’t pretty but it was showing some interesting signs. I liked the grit and physical presence presented by some of the players. Fittingly enough, Gregory Stewart showed why forced his General Manager to trade Begin to Dallas. When he attacked Ott he placed a message that he wouldn’t accept dirty players to deliver cheap shots to his teammates, especially not his captain. And for the first time in a long time, the team responded. After killing 3 minutes and a half of 5 on 3 where all players involved were superb, the players kept battling and using their bodies to hurt their opponent. At that point, all of Dallas’s momentum was gone and the Canadiens cruised to an easy victory.
But don’t be fooled by the numbers of shots Carey Price faced. 31 shots in a game where the Habs killed 16:33 minutes shorthanded including more than 4 minutes of 3 on 5 is nothing. The game was easy and Dallas didn’t battle enough. The Habs just wanted it harder. That’s why I think it’s strange to see Bob Gainey showing the door to Guy Carbonneau right now to take his place. It was finally showing some sign of response, an answer from a team that has been all too silent all year long. A team that didn’t answer when Bob told the world that his team was good enough to win. Bob then again, was Bob message really sent to his players like we all assumed?
I respect Bob Gainey. I really do. We all know how patient this man is, how every decisions he takes are pondered. So if he fired Guy Carbonneau today, when did the process begun for Bob? In hindsight, when he said at the trade deadline that “his players had to perform better than they have been all year”, the message could have been directed as much towards Guy Carbonneau as the players. Maybe what Gainey wanted his coach to hear is “With the talent level you have on this team, there is no excuse. You have to win.” And while the Habs are still in 5th place in the Eastern Conference, there is no question that the team didn’t play well this season. How many times did we see the Habs steal a game with one good period and two mediocre ones? Too many. Rocket was clamouring for months that Guy Carbonneau was as close to the anti-christ as we could get. And while I tried to defend Guy for quite some time, it’s been increasingly difficult to find reason within some of his decisions.
Switching lines within the season is something most coaches do and I can totally understand. However, in the past month or so, nearly every single loss was followed by changing combinations. Like one loss indicated that the players couldn’t work together. Not only is it entirely false but it also sends a wrong message, a wrong vibe. A team needs some stability to progress and right now Guy was doing the complete opposite.
While I have no problems with rolling four lines all game long as a general concept, I can’t accept how he somehow became stubborn over it. When losing by one goal with less than two minutes to play you have to put your best offensive weapons on the ice. And for all the respect I have for Lapierre, Kostopoulos and Dandenault, I sure hope we have better than this sitting on the bench. Or sometimes he’d pull his goalie and replace him with those same players. No matter how many injuries we’ve had this year we always had more reliable than Tom the Bomb for a goal.
And I must admit, I can never recall him explaining his decisions or admitting to making a mistake like that. He is stubborn on a lot of stuff and this could be his biggest fault: he can’t adjust. His powerplay that worked so well last year didn’t evolve and became one of the biggest worries for the Habs this year. His communication skills were a problem (note: I do not agree with Rocket’s statement that he has personal problems with many players but that he can’t communicate well with his players) for a long time and it wasn’t fixed. And his yelling towards officials never brought back a victory, from what I can remember. The new coach also can and will probably make mistakes but most of the time he was able to fix them. Samsonov was sent in the minors and dealt away, some players brought up too soon were sent down and he just fired what he considered his best decision as GM of the Canadiens two months ago.
But enough dwelling on the past mistakes. It’s time to move forward and look at how the players will react. Now the man who said his team was better than they were playing is coaching his team. The boss is in the room. The man upstairs came down to get his hands on his players. This will be a shock for most of them. There is a huge contrast in personality. Gainey, we know, is a calm, collected, cold man. Guy Carbonneau was an agitated, hot headed, impatient one.
I wonder what it will look like to get from Sonny to Micheal Corleone?