i think our odds of winning against either the leafs or the rangers are pretty equal.. both teams have been good of late, but in my opinion on the whole are less complete than us. toronto has been really lucky of late too (squandering leads and then getting OT goals)
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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That was the sorriest piece of shit... Why bother showing up when the game is already determined??? I'm getting a ref jersey so I can blend in with you fucking leaf assholes.
That was the sorriest piece of shit... Why bother showing up when the game is already determined??? I'm getting a ref jersey so I can blend in with you fucking leaf assholes.
Hey at least you will look good for once in your life (LOL). Buy a Leaf Jersey and the women will be falling at your feet. Anyhow i would'nt worry to much. It's gonna be hard for us to get in if the Devils put there farm team out there. If the Leafs don't make it there are a number of games that i will look back to in retrsospect and use as an excuse for why they did'nt make it. Particularly the 2nd last game of the year against the Islanders with the disallowed Sundin Goal. We could be Frasered again. Looks like you guys got SHICKED, i guess thats becuase your teams owner is named Gillette. Not the best a man can get on this night (LOL).
1. Toronto, Ontario 09-21-1996 (MAPLE LEAF GARDENS)
2. Barrie, Ontario 08-22-1998 (MOLSON PARK)
3. Toronto, Ontario 10-05-2000 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
4. Toronto, Ontario 06-28-2003 (MOLSON AMPHITHEATRE)
5. Boston, Massachusetts 09-28-2004 FLEET CENTER (NOW TD GARDEN) VFC TOUR
6. Boston, Massachusetts 09-28-2004 FLEET CENTER (NOW TD GARDEN) VFC TOUR
7. Hamilton, Ontario 09-13-2005 (COPPS COLISEUM)
8. Toronto, Ontario 09-19-2005 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
9. St. Johns, Newfoundland 09-24-2005 (MILE ONE)
10. St. Johns, Newfoundland 09-25-2005 (MILE ONE)
11. Toronto, Ontario 05-09-2006 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
12. Toronto, Ontario 05-09-2006 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
13. Sydney, Australia 11-07-2006 (ACER ARENA)
14. Sydney, Australia 11-08-2006 (ACER ARENA)
15. Melbourne, Australia 11-13-2006 (ROD LAVER ARENA)
16. Melbourne, Australia 11-14-2006 (ROD LAVER ARENA)
17. Adelaide, Australia 11-21-2006 (ADELAIDE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE)
18. Adelaide, Australia 11-22-2006 (ADELAIDE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE)
19. Perth, Australia 11-25-2006 (SUBIACO OVAL)
20. New York, New York 06-24-2008 (MADISON SQUARE GARDEN)
21. New York, New York 06-25-2008 (MADISON SQUARE GARDEN)
22. Toronto, Ontario 08-21-2009 (MOLSON AMPITHEATRE)
23. Buffalo, New York 05-10-2010 (HSBC ARENA)
24. Toronto, Ontario 09-11-2011 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
25. Toronto, Ontario 09-12-2011 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
26. Hamilton, Ontario 09-15-2011 (COPPS COLISEUM)
27. London, Ontario 07-16-2013 (BUDWEISER GARDENS)
28. Buffalo, New York 10-12-2013 (FIRST NIAGARA CENTER) FORMERLY HSBC ARENA
29. Detroit, Michigan 10-16-2014 (JOE LOUIS ARENA)
30. Ottawa, Ontario 5-8-2016 (CANADIAN TIRE CENTRE)
31. Toronto, Ontario 5-10-2016 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
32. Toronto, Ontario 5-12-2016 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
That was the sorriest piece of shit... Why bother showing up when the game is already determined??? I'm getting a ref jersey so I can blend in with you fucking leaf assholes.
you had a 5on3 earlier in the game or can't you recall, the guy cut wellwood with his stick, it's not supposed to be a penalty.
London 2005
Toronto 2011 night 2
Hamilton 2011
London 2013
Report: Habs offer contract to Brisebois
with RDS, Journal de Montreal files
7/28/2007 11:52:52 AM
The Montreal Canadiens could be turning to a familiar face on defence for next season.
Le Journal de Montreal reports that General Manager Bob Gainey has offered unrestricted free agent defenceman Patrice Brisebois a one-year, $700,000 contract for the 2007-08 season.
Brisebois signed a two-year, $4.5 million deal with Colorado in 2005 after the Canadiens declined to exercise an option on his previous contract.
The 36-year-old played the last two seasons with the Colorado Avalanche and missed the last 46 games of the 2006-07 season with a back injury.
The veteran blueliner had one goal and 11 assists in 33 games last year. The six-foot-two, 203-pounder has 90 goals and 301 assists in 904 career games with Colorado and Montreal, and was a member of the Canadiens' 1993 Stanley Cup-winning team.
MONTREAL (CP) - Sam Pollock, who built a hockey dynasty as vice president and general manager of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1960s and 1970s, has died. He was 81.
His death was confirmed to the RDS television network by his son, Sam Jr., on Wednesday and was noted on the Canadiens' website.
The Montreal native, born Dec. 25, 1925, won nine Stanley Cups during his tenure as general manager from 1964-65 to 1978.
Friends and colleagues said he had been ill for some time with cancer, but even they had few details.
''He was a very private man,'' said former Canadiens star Jean Beliveau. ''I'd bet that even his closest friends didn't know how sick he was.''
Beliveau first met Pollock when he ran the Junior Canadiens in 1949. He was a player when Pollock became the Canadiens' GM and they later worked together in the team's front office.
''He had great vision of what his team would look like in three or four years time,'' the former Canadiens captain said. ''He loved to win and he was such a hard worker.
''Even after hockey, I was on the board of a company with him and he knew every word of all of the information they sent us a couple of days before a meeting. He was the same in hockey. He wanted information right away. We'd see the coach calling him after games on the road.''
A moment of silence was held before the Toronto Blue Jays game at Rogers Centre on Wednesday in honour of Pollock, who was on the club's board of directors in the 1990's before serving as chairman and CEO from 1995-2000.
Pollock later served as vice-chairman on the Jays Care Foundation board.
''On behalf of the organization I would like to extend our sympathies to the Pollock family. His contributions to the Toronto Blue Jays were many,'' team president Paul Godfrey said in a statement. ''The Blue Jays organization has benefitted greatly from his leadership and vision. I was honoured to have worked alongside him. Sam brought the same fierce competitiveness and intelligence to baseball that made him a legend in hockey.''
Pollock is the standard against whom other National Hockey League general managers have come to be measured.
He was considered the shrewdest evaluator and dealer of talent of his era, pulling off brilliant moves to land greats like Guy Lafleur and Ken Dryden and build a team that was the class of the league.
''He always had the players ready and the coaching staff, too,'' said Rejean Houle, one of his former players. ''That way he helped us be a better team.
''I had a lot of respect for Mr. Pollock.''
In one of his oft-recalled moves, he sent two undistinguished prospects to the Boston Bruins for the rights to Dryden, then a relatively unknown goaltender at Cornell University who would grow into a Hall of Famer.
But it was the landing of Lafleur that cemented his reputation.
Among the first to recognize that the entry draft, inaugurated in 1963, was the key to team building, he found fellow general managers from the six clubs that joined the NHL in the six-team expansion of 1967 willing to take aging but well-known players in exchange for their draft picks.
In May, 1970, he sent Ernie Hicke and a first-round choice to Oakland for the obscure Francois Lacombe and the now defunct Seals' first-rounder, all the while with his eye on the gifted Lafleur, then tearing up junior hockey with the Quebec Remparts.
The following season, when it appeared that Los Angeles may finish last and claim the top pick, Pollock sent veteran Ralph Backstrom to the Kings to boost them ahead of Oakland and allow Montreal to claim Lafleur first overall in the 1971 draft.
Lafleur went on to become the best player of his era. His No.10 is now retired by the Canadiens. ''That move was unbelievable,'' said Houle.
Amassing draft picks allowed him to claim future stars like Larry Robinson, Steve Shutt and current Montreal GM Bob Gainey to build the team that won four consecutive Stanley Cups in the late 1970s.
He left the team after the 1977-78 season when Peter and Edward Bronfman, who purchased the club in 1971, sold it back to the Molson family. His team won the Cup again the following season, but the now-legendary coach Pollock had hired and nutured, Scotty Bowman, left because he had been passed over as the new G.M. in favour of Irving Grundman. The team then went into a funk until another Pollock protege, Serge Savard, was named G.M. in 1983 and built Cup-winners in 1986 and 1993. ''He was all business, but when I think about it, he brought to our organization a kind of discipline we needed to be able to win,'' added Houle. ''As a person, he kept things inside, but when I'd see him, he'd always ask about my family and how they were. I think that inside, he had a very tender heart.''
Pollock coached teenagers in the 1940s and managed a softball team that included some Canadiens players. He was hired as a scout by the club in 1947 and within three years was named director of player personnel.
Junior teams under his management won Memorial Cups in 1950 and 1958. It was after helping the Omaha Knights win the Central Hockey League title that he was named GM of the Canadiens.
Pollock was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder in 1978 and received the Order of Canada in 1985.
MONTREAL (CP) — Both Larry Robinson and Bob Gainey wondered as rookies how they would ever be able to crack the lineup of the powerhouse Montreal Canadiens teams of the 1970s.
They not only made the club, but their tremendous contributions to one of hockey's greatest dynasties was cemented Wednesday when the Canadiens announced that Robinson's No. 19 and Gainey's No. 23 will be retired this season.
"The first thing I thought was that I would never get to play," Robinson said of being drafted in 1971 to a team that already had future Hall of Famers Serge Savard, Jacques Laperriere and Guy Lapointe as well as standout J.C. Tremblay on the blue-line. "When I first got drafted I figured I would get lost with all these great defencemen."
Gainey said he had much the same sentiment when he was the Habs' first-round pick in the 1973 draft, coming to a Stanley Cup champion team loaded at forward with names like Guy Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire, Frank and Pete Mahovolich, Yvan Cournoyer and Henri Richard.
"It was difficult to look at this team and see a spot for a rookie, but eventually the cream comes to the top," said Gainey, who made the team out of camp as a 19-year-old that year. "The demands on this team were very high, but the background I had prepared me to meet those demands, and we had 15 extraordinary years.
"What a group we had, what a family we had, and it showed in our results."
Robinson's No. 19 jersey will be retired on Nov. 19 before a game against the Ottawa Senators, while Gainey - Montreal's vice-president and general manager-will have his No. 23 retired on Feb. 23 before a game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Robinson and Gainey will become the 13th and 14th players to be so honoured by the Canadiens, joining Jacques Plante (No. 1), Doug Harvey (No. 2), Jean Beliveau (No. 4), Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion (No.
5), Howie Morenz (No. 7), Maurice (Rocket) Richard (No. 9), Guy Lafleur (No. 10), Dickie Moore and Yvan Cournoyer (No. 10), Henri Richard (No. 16), Serge Savard (No. 18) and Ken Dryden (No. 29).
"Most of the things that happened in my career as a player happened as a dream," Gainey said. "Most of those things, I had dreamed them. But not this one."
For Robinson - who is returning behind the bench this season after a brief hiatus as an assistant to New Jersey Devils head coach Brent Sutter - Wednesday's announcement put an end to years of speculation and campaigning by others to have his number retired, and he admitted to feeling relieved the moment had finally arrived.
"Now I don't have to answer that question any more," the native of Winchester, Ont., said.
Robinson's numbers with the Canadiens were extraordinary, setting franchise records for defencemen in games played (1,202), goals (197), assists (686), points (883) and points in a season (85 in 1976-77). He also has the NHL record for playing 20 consecutive seasons in the playoffs, 17 of them with the Canadiens.
But his most remarkable statistic is his career plus-minus rating of plus-730, including a staggering plus-120 in 1976-77.
Robinson, however, diverted the credit for those achievements to his teammates, most notably his fellow "Big Three" members Savard and Lapointe.
"I was very honoured to play on some tremendous hockey teams," said Robinson, who won six Stanley Cups with the Habs. "I wouldn't have been the player I was if I hadn't played with them."
Robinson played his final three seasons with Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings from 1989-92, largely because the Canadiens would not commit to keeping him that long at age 38 despite his integral role in getting Montreal to the 1989 Stanley Cup final.
He admitted how difficult it was for him to start over at that age on a new team and how often he thinks about not being able to finish his career as a member of the Canadiens. But playing for the Kings also opened the door to his first head coaching job with Los Angeles in 1995.
"I'm disappointed I wasn't able to retire here, but I'm happy for the opportunities Los Angeles provided me," he said.
Gainey's place in both hockey and Canadiens history is difficult to quantify because his game was not defined by statistics, but rather by wins. Gainey was the prototypical shut-down forward whose tremendous defensive play inspired the creation of the Selke Trophy, which he won the first four years it was awarded.
"I know there were players of that style before Bob Gainey," he said, mentioning Canadiens winger Claude Provost as an example. "One of the aspects of the award I've always appreciated the most was that it was named after Mr. Selke. He really was strong in his belief that style of player needs to be recognized."
Gainey won five Stanley Cups with the Canadiens and was the second-longest serving captain in franchise history with 569 games, trailing only Beliveau's 679 games. But what really made the world take notice of the Peterborough, Ont., native was a 1979 quote from legendary Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov dubbing him the greatest all-around player in the world.
"I got a lot of mileage out of that quote," Gainey said. "It still follows me, even today."
Gainey gave credit for the quote to Don Cherry, whose Boston Bruins were knocked out in the Cup semifinals by the Habs in 1979 after a too many men on the ice penalty allowed Lafleur to tie Game 7 in the waning moments.
Tikhonov made his comment about Gainey after watching him win the Conn Smythe Trophy in the Stanley Cup final against the New York Rangers.
"If it weren't for Don Cherry, we wouldn't have been in the final," Gainey noted. "I'm going to write him, I think."
LAVAL, Que. (CP) - In a city that talks hockey 12 months a year, much of the summer chatter dealt with one sentence from Saku Koivu.
The team captain told a reporter the Canadiens definitely have a team to make the NHL playoffs, but not to win a Stanley Cup.
It was a fair assessment, but not the message some felt the captain should be passing on to a young team that missed the post-season last spring.
But it made general manager Bob Gainey smile and say Tuesday that, "Saku spoke one line too many. Instead of the 40-second clip, he should have gone with the 20-second clip, because if we are in the playoffs six or seven months from now, we will have a chance to win the Stanley Cup and we can evaluate that question at that time."
They got to see a mass of media descend on Koivu.
"I said that on paper, we're not the favourite to win the Stanley Cup, but I'm very positive we will make the playoffs and from there on, everything's open," said Koivu.
"In 1993 when the Canadiens won the Cup, no one picked them to win, but they did. That's how I want to see it. We have to focus on what we have here, not on who's not here."
Few are picking the Canadiens even to make the playoffs. The Hockey News rates Montreal 13th in the Eastern Conference.
The predictions are based largely on off-season free agent signings, which saw Montreal strike out in a bid to land Buffalo centre Daniel Briere and lose hard-firing point man Sheldon Souray, who took his 26-goal season to Edmonton.
Briere opted for an eight-year US$52 million deal with Philadelphia, spurning Montreal's six-year offer.
"I don't know if in recent years, regarding the Canadiens, I've ever been more disappointed," team owner George Gillett said of Briere. "We honestly thought that he was coming here.
"We were enthusiastic and supportive and so was he. And, as of less than a half hour before the final decision was made, we had reason to believe he was coming here. So it was a shock."
But Gainey is confident the Canadiens will be better this season, largely from the continued progression of a strong group of young players.
The whole organization also got a boost when its top farm club, the Hamilton Bulldogs, won the Calder Cup with blue-chip prospect Carey Price in goal.
Price will battle with veteran Cristobal Huet, who fought injuries and inconsistency last season, and prospect Jaroslav Halak for a spot on the NHL club.
"Right away, I believe we're better in goal," said Gainey. "It's the only position by itself that can swing a game.
"We have talent, we have depth, we have competition from within, and I think it will provide us with the backbone for the other parts of our team."
Gainey sees no reasons why Price could not be kept with the NHL team even if Huet remains the starter, but coach Guy Carbonneau said the 20-year-old would be better off getting regular work in Hamilton than riding the bench in Montreal.
After the goaltenders, the Canadiens are looking for a young core of players including defenceman Mike Komisarek and forwards Chris Higgins, Michael Ryder, Guillaume Latendresse and Andrei Kostitsyn to make more impact.
And Gainey feels that some of the Calder Cup team, including centre Kyle Chipchura, defenceman Ryan O'Byrne and others, may be ready for NHL action.
There are openings heading into camp, even though Smolinski looks poised to replace departed third-line centre Radek Bonk and veteran defenceman Patrice Brisebois, the former whipping boy of Bell Centre fans, has returned after two seasons in Colorado.
Brisebois got a big hug from Koivu on his arrival at the golf club.
He will see power-play action and so will Hamrlik, who has even taken over Souray's old No. 44.
"I know he has a hell of a shot and he scored lots of goals," Hamrlik said of Souray. "He helped a lot on the power play. I think I can do the same thing he did."
Kostopoulos, a Mississauga, Ont., native, surprised the team and the media by doing interviews in French.
And Gainey looked looser than he has since his daughter Laura was lost at sea while working on a tall ship last winter.
"I think I'll be better this year - I'll be fresher for reasons we can all understand," Gainey said. "I think our coaching staff will be better - we had two (Carbonneau and assistant Kirk Muller) who were first-year coaches last year.
"There are all kinds of small areas (of improvement) that don't add up to headline on the first of July. We feel that we'll be a good, exciting, competitive team and it's up to us to prove it."
September 06, 2007
Ten Things I'd Hate About the Habs and Their Fans...
... except that there isn't enough of a rivalry there to really hate them. But let's see if we can take a stab at being humorous without being mean, and maybe be a bit informative too -- only you can be the judge of that. So, the Habs -- let's see...
10. The "Habs" -- what's up with that? Their proper name is so unoriginal that they had to come up with a second one, Les Habitants, which in and of itself is not unusual (e.g. the Broadway Blueshirts as a second Rangers' nickname), except that they went and put an "H" inside the "C" on their jerseys to confuse the heck out of everyone.
9. In order to understand what their local papers say about them, you need to take a Berlitz course -- and even so, even the French have a hard time understanding them.
8. They're such fair-weather fans, that every single Montreal native I know who moved to New York (and that's not a small number) immediately became a Ranger fan.
7. They pretend to be a small market team when in truth, in terms of hockey economics, they have one of the broadest and deepest fan bases in the NHL. They pretend to be a small market team in order to squeeze as much profit as they can out of their fan base.
6. It wasn't enough for them to be so good all those years, they had to be ridiculously lucky on top of that, like in 1979 when they made it to the Cup final because of Boston's idiotic too many men on the ice penalty and then in the final reversed the Rangers' early dominance because Bunny Larocque (or however the heck you spell his name) was conked in the head by a puck in practice (or whatever the heck happened to him), forcing the semi-injured Ken Dryden back into net to steal the remainder of the series.
5. They drafted Doug Wickenheiser instead of Denis Savard, passing up the Quebecois superstar during a disastrous string of top picks that lasted from 1974 until 2000 -- a quarter century of top picks that did not produce a single superstar, only a few good players in Saku Koivu, Mark Napier, and Andrew Cassells, a couple of decent defensemen and tough guys who should probably not have be drafted that high, and a whole lot of bona fide busts.
4. They foisted Jacques Lemaire and his neutral zone trap on the NHL -- some even claim they invented the neutral zone trap, although we believe Lemaire was the culprit, bastardizing the Habs' defensive approach to hockey during their firewagon days.
3. Claude Lemieux -- 'nuff said.
2. Needed anglos like Dick Irvin, Toe Blake, Sam Pollock, and Scotty Bowman to manage them to success. Did a francophone ever coach or manage them to a championship season? Perron, Ruel, Demers -- a couple, but not many, that's for sure.
1. They sit on all their Cup wins without seeming to understand that they never would have happened without the 50-mile rule -- or at least they do so without an ounce of humility. If the NHL had an 18- or 20-year-old entry draft based on reverse order of finish instead of exclusive rights to players within a 50-mile territorial radius, Rocket Richard, Henri Richard, Jean Beliveau, Jacques Plante, Yvan Cornoyer, and Jacques Lemaire, all among their top-ten all-time scoring leaders (except of course for Hall of Fame goalie Plante), would have been drafted by the Blackhawks, Rangers, Bruins, or New York Americans, the first three of those four teams being U.S.-based Original Six teams who had no hockey players within their 50-mile territories and won only three Cups between them from 1942 to 1972.
Or to look at it another way, would they have won only two Cups in the last quarter century-plus (after winning fifteen in the prior quarter century) had they gotten BOTH Guy Lafleur AND Marcel Dionne in 1971, had gotten Savard in addition to Wickenheiser in 1980 (erasing that mistake), and had gotten Mario Lemiuex in 1984? Without the 50-mile rule, Hab management suddenly looked a lot less smart than they used to, using their top draft picks on the likes of Dan Geoffrion, Mark Lee, Robin Sadler, Alain Heroux, Eric Charron, Lindsey Vallis, Terry Ryan, and David Wilkie. Amazing what a level playing field will do to a bunch of smart people who were accustomed to enjoying such an unfair advantage all those years. But rather than recognizing any of that, their fans whine about how unfair present-day NHL economics are to their team (see reason 7)
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Donate Organs and Save a Life
While he's obviously trying to be funny, and failing, he actually seems to see truth in some of the stuff he's saying...
Since it isn't funny, I'll just shake my head.
While he's obviously trying to be funny, and failing, he actually seems to see truth in some of the stuff he's saying...
Since it isn't funny, I'll just shake my head.
i figured you'd at least get a kick outta it.
hey its end of summer and camp about to open, so its all good.
see you on the ice.
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
ORGAN DONATION SAVES LIVES http://www.UNOS.org
Donate Organs and Save a Life
hey its end of summer and camp about to open, so its all good.
see you on the ice.
Meh, the French digs weren't too bad, but it wasn't terribly funny.
These types of things usually aren't. The one I dumped on your thread is practically the same thing only reversed.
edit: Although I totally missed the point if he's attempting to build a rivalry between the two teams..
Comments
the leafs are behind kenny boy
u should hope it comes down to sat night
Toronto 2011 night 2
Hamilton 2011
London 2013
awfully quiet tonight boys/gals ,
you guys okay ?
[size=+3] - _/ _/ _/ Lets Go Rangers \_ \_ \_ - [/size]
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
ORGAN DONATION SAVES LIVES
http://www.UNOS.org
Donate Organs and Save a Life
THEY ARE SCARED FOR SAT NIGHT
Anxious? Yes..
Scared? Nah.
will the habs win and get in
will they lose and give the isles and leafs a chance ??
these questions will be answered
Hey at least you will look good for once in your life (LOL). Buy a Leaf Jersey and the women will be falling at your feet. Anyhow i would'nt worry to much. It's gonna be hard for us to get in if the Devils put there farm team out there. If the Leafs don't make it there are a number of games that i will look back to in retrsospect and use as an excuse for why they did'nt make it. Particularly the 2nd last game of the year against the Islanders with the disallowed Sundin Goal. We could be Frasered again. Looks like you guys got SHICKED, i guess thats becuase your teams owner is named Gillette. Not the best a man can get on this night (LOL).
2. Barrie, Ontario 08-22-1998 (MOLSON PARK)
3. Toronto, Ontario 10-05-2000 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
4. Toronto, Ontario 06-28-2003 (MOLSON AMPHITHEATRE)
5. Boston, Massachusetts 09-28-2004 FLEET CENTER (NOW TD GARDEN) VFC TOUR
6. Boston, Massachusetts 09-28-2004 FLEET CENTER (NOW TD GARDEN) VFC TOUR
7. Hamilton, Ontario 09-13-2005 (COPPS COLISEUM)
8. Toronto, Ontario 09-19-2005 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
9. St. Johns, Newfoundland 09-24-2005 (MILE ONE)
10. St. Johns, Newfoundland 09-25-2005 (MILE ONE)
11. Toronto, Ontario 05-09-2006 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
12. Toronto, Ontario 05-09-2006 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
13. Sydney, Australia 11-07-2006 (ACER ARENA)
14. Sydney, Australia 11-08-2006 (ACER ARENA)
15. Melbourne, Australia 11-13-2006 (ROD LAVER ARENA)
16. Melbourne, Australia 11-14-2006 (ROD LAVER ARENA)
17. Adelaide, Australia 11-21-2006 (ADELAIDE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE)
18. Adelaide, Australia 11-22-2006 (ADELAIDE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE)
19. Perth, Australia 11-25-2006 (SUBIACO OVAL)
20. New York, New York 06-24-2008 (MADISON SQUARE GARDEN)
21. New York, New York 06-25-2008 (MADISON SQUARE GARDEN)
22. Toronto, Ontario 08-21-2009 (MOLSON AMPITHEATRE)
23. Buffalo, New York 05-10-2010 (HSBC ARENA)
24. Toronto, Ontario 09-11-2011 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
25. Toronto, Ontario 09-12-2011 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
26. Hamilton, Ontario 09-15-2011 (COPPS COLISEUM)
27. London, Ontario 07-16-2013 (BUDWEISER GARDENS)
28. Buffalo, New York 10-12-2013 (FIRST NIAGARA CENTER) FORMERLY HSBC ARENA
29. Detroit, Michigan 10-16-2014 (JOE LOUIS ARENA)
30. Ottawa, Ontario 5-8-2016 (CANADIAN TIRE CENTRE)
31. Toronto, Ontario 5-10-2016 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
32. Toronto, Ontario 5-12-2016 (AIR CANADA CENTRE)
Toronto 2011 night 2
Hamilton 2011
London 2013
with RDS, Journal de Montreal files
7/28/2007 11:52:52 AM
The Montreal Canadiens could be turning to a familiar face on defence for next season.
Le Journal de Montreal reports that General Manager Bob Gainey has offered unrestricted free agent defenceman Patrice Brisebois a one-year, $700,000 contract for the 2007-08 season.
Brisebois signed a two-year, $4.5 million deal with Colorado in 2005 after the Canadiens declined to exercise an option on his previous contract.
The 36-year-old played the last two seasons with the Colorado Avalanche and missed the last 46 games of the 2006-07 season with a back injury.
The veteran blueliner had one goal and 11 assists in 33 games last year. The six-foot-two, 203-pounder has 90 goals and 301 assists in 904 career games with Colorado and Montreal, and was a member of the Canadiens' 1993 Stanley Cup-winning team.
Canadian Press
7/29/2007 2:01:03 PM
MONTREAL (CP) - The Montreal Canadiens and right-winger Michael Ryder avoided arbitration by agreeing to a US$2.95-million, one-year contract Sunday.
Ryder's hearing was set for Monday in Toronto. He made US$2.2 million last season.
The Canadiens now have all their players under contract for 2007-08.
Ryder played in all 82 games last season, led the team with 30 goals and added 28 assists to go with 60 penalty minutes.
The native of Bonavista, N.L., has 176 points (85 goals, 91 assists) in 244 career NHL games since making his debut in 2003-04
that should put them over the top
Are you talking about salary cap, or just making a typically sarcastic comment?
His death was confirmed to the RDS television network by his son, Sam Jr., on Wednesday and was noted on the Canadiens' website.
The Montreal native, born Dec. 25, 1925, won nine Stanley Cups during his tenure as general manager from 1964-65 to 1978.
Friends and colleagues said he had been ill for some time with cancer, but even they had few details.
''He was a very private man,'' said former Canadiens star Jean Beliveau. ''I'd bet that even his closest friends didn't know how sick he was.''
Beliveau first met Pollock when he ran the Junior Canadiens in 1949. He was a player when Pollock became the Canadiens' GM and they later worked together in the team's front office.
''He had great vision of what his team would look like in three or four years time,'' the former Canadiens captain said. ''He loved to win and he was such a hard worker.
''Even after hockey, I was on the board of a company with him and he knew every word of all of the information they sent us a couple of days before a meeting. He was the same in hockey. He wanted information right away. We'd see the coach calling him after games on the road.''
A moment of silence was held before the Toronto Blue Jays game at Rogers Centre on Wednesday in honour of Pollock, who was on the club's board of directors in the 1990's before serving as chairman and CEO from 1995-2000.
Pollock later served as vice-chairman on the Jays Care Foundation board.
''On behalf of the organization I would like to extend our sympathies to the Pollock family. His contributions to the Toronto Blue Jays were many,'' team president Paul Godfrey said in a statement. ''The Blue Jays organization has benefitted greatly from his leadership and vision. I was honoured to have worked alongside him. Sam brought the same fierce competitiveness and intelligence to baseball that made him a legend in hockey.''
Pollock is the standard against whom other National Hockey League general managers have come to be measured.
He was considered the shrewdest evaluator and dealer of talent of his era, pulling off brilliant moves to land greats like Guy Lafleur and Ken Dryden and build a team that was the class of the league.
''He always had the players ready and the coaching staff, too,'' said Rejean Houle, one of his former players. ''That way he helped us be a better team.
''I had a lot of respect for Mr. Pollock.''
In one of his oft-recalled moves, he sent two undistinguished prospects to the Boston Bruins for the rights to Dryden, then a relatively unknown goaltender at Cornell University who would grow into a Hall of Famer.
But it was the landing of Lafleur that cemented his reputation.
Among the first to recognize that the entry draft, inaugurated in 1963, was the key to team building, he found fellow general managers from the six clubs that joined the NHL in the six-team expansion of 1967 willing to take aging but well-known players in exchange for their draft picks.
In May, 1970, he sent Ernie Hicke and a first-round choice to Oakland for the obscure Francois Lacombe and the now defunct Seals' first-rounder, all the while with his eye on the gifted Lafleur, then tearing up junior hockey with the Quebec Remparts.
The following season, when it appeared that Los Angeles may finish last and claim the top pick, Pollock sent veteran Ralph Backstrom to the Kings to boost them ahead of Oakland and allow Montreal to claim Lafleur first overall in the 1971 draft.
Lafleur went on to become the best player of his era. His No.10 is now retired by the Canadiens. ''That move was unbelievable,'' said Houle.
Amassing draft picks allowed him to claim future stars like Larry Robinson, Steve Shutt and current Montreal GM Bob Gainey to build the team that won four consecutive Stanley Cups in the late 1970s.
He left the team after the 1977-78 season when Peter and Edward Bronfman, who purchased the club in 1971, sold it back to the Molson family. His team won the Cup again the following season, but the now-legendary coach Pollock had hired and nutured, Scotty Bowman, left because he had been passed over as the new G.M. in favour of Irving Grundman. The team then went into a funk until another Pollock protege, Serge Savard, was named G.M. in 1983 and built Cup-winners in 1986 and 1993. ''He was all business, but when I think about it, he brought to our organization a kind of discipline we needed to be able to win,'' added Houle. ''As a person, he kept things inside, but when I'd see him, he'd always ask about my family and how they were. I think that inside, he had a very tender heart.''
Pollock coached teenagers in the 1940s and managed a softball team that included some Canadiens players. He was hired as a scout by the club in 1947 and within three years was named director of player personnel.
Junior teams under his management won Memorial Cups in 1950 and 1958. It was after helping the Omaha Knights win the Central Hockey League title that he was named GM of the Canadiens.
Pollock was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder in 1978 and received the Order of Canada in 1985.
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5i-aV660i5pKzubYtTrNu1JZfQ8cA
Larry Robinson and Bob Gainey to have numbers retired this season
MONTREAL (CP) — Both Larry Robinson and Bob Gainey wondered as rookies how they would ever be able to crack the lineup of the powerhouse Montreal Canadiens teams of the 1970s.
They not only made the club, but their tremendous contributions to one of hockey's greatest dynasties was cemented Wednesday when the Canadiens announced that Robinson's No. 19 and Gainey's No. 23 will be retired this season.
"The first thing I thought was that I would never get to play," Robinson said of being drafted in 1971 to a team that already had future Hall of Famers Serge Savard, Jacques Laperriere and Guy Lapointe as well as standout J.C. Tremblay on the blue-line. "When I first got drafted I figured I would get lost with all these great defencemen."
Gainey said he had much the same sentiment when he was the Habs' first-round pick in the 1973 draft, coming to a Stanley Cup champion team loaded at forward with names like Guy Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire, Frank and Pete Mahovolich, Yvan Cournoyer and Henri Richard.
"It was difficult to look at this team and see a spot for a rookie, but eventually the cream comes to the top," said Gainey, who made the team out of camp as a 19-year-old that year. "The demands on this team were very high, but the background I had prepared me to meet those demands, and we had 15 extraordinary years.
"What a group we had, what a family we had, and it showed in our results."
Robinson's No. 19 jersey will be retired on Nov. 19 before a game against the Ottawa Senators, while Gainey - Montreal's vice-president and general manager-will have his No. 23 retired on Feb. 23 before a game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Robinson and Gainey will become the 13th and 14th players to be so honoured by the Canadiens, joining Jacques Plante (No. 1), Doug Harvey (No. 2), Jean Beliveau (No. 4), Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion (No.
5), Howie Morenz (No. 7), Maurice (Rocket) Richard (No. 9), Guy Lafleur (No. 10), Dickie Moore and Yvan Cournoyer (No. 10), Henri Richard (No. 16), Serge Savard (No. 18) and Ken Dryden (No. 29).
"Most of the things that happened in my career as a player happened as a dream," Gainey said. "Most of those things, I had dreamed them. But not this one."
For Robinson - who is returning behind the bench this season after a brief hiatus as an assistant to New Jersey Devils head coach Brent Sutter - Wednesday's announcement put an end to years of speculation and campaigning by others to have his number retired, and he admitted to feeling relieved the moment had finally arrived.
"Now I don't have to answer that question any more," the native of Winchester, Ont., said.
Robinson's numbers with the Canadiens were extraordinary, setting franchise records for defencemen in games played (1,202), goals (197), assists (686), points (883) and points in a season (85 in 1976-77). He also has the NHL record for playing 20 consecutive seasons in the playoffs, 17 of them with the Canadiens.
But his most remarkable statistic is his career plus-minus rating of plus-730, including a staggering plus-120 in 1976-77.
Robinson, however, diverted the credit for those achievements to his teammates, most notably his fellow "Big Three" members Savard and Lapointe.
"I was very honoured to play on some tremendous hockey teams," said Robinson, who won six Stanley Cups with the Habs. "I wouldn't have been the player I was if I hadn't played with them."
Robinson played his final three seasons with Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings from 1989-92, largely because the Canadiens would not commit to keeping him that long at age 38 despite his integral role in getting Montreal to the 1989 Stanley Cup final.
He admitted how difficult it was for him to start over at that age on a new team and how often he thinks about not being able to finish his career as a member of the Canadiens. But playing for the Kings also opened the door to his first head coaching job with Los Angeles in 1995.
"I'm disappointed I wasn't able to retire here, but I'm happy for the opportunities Los Angeles provided me," he said.
Gainey's place in both hockey and Canadiens history is difficult to quantify because his game was not defined by statistics, but rather by wins. Gainey was the prototypical shut-down forward whose tremendous defensive play inspired the creation of the Selke Trophy, which he won the first four years it was awarded.
"I know there were players of that style before Bob Gainey," he said, mentioning Canadiens winger Claude Provost as an example. "One of the aspects of the award I've always appreciated the most was that it was named after Mr. Selke. He really was strong in his belief that style of player needs to be recognized."
Gainey won five Stanley Cups with the Canadiens and was the second-longest serving captain in franchise history with 569 games, trailing only Beliveau's 679 games. But what really made the world take notice of the Peterborough, Ont., native was a 1979 quote from legendary Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov dubbing him the greatest all-around player in the world.
"I got a lot of mileage out of that quote," Gainey said. "It still follows me, even today."
Gainey gave credit for the quote to Don Cherry, whose Boston Bruins were knocked out in the Cup semifinals by the Habs in 1979 after a too many men on the ice penalty allowed Lafleur to tie Game 7 in the waning moments.
Tikhonov made his comment about Gainey after watching him win the Conn Smythe Trophy in the Stanley Cup final against the New York Rangers.
"If it weren't for Don Cherry, we wouldn't have been in the final," Gainey noted. "I'm going to write him, I think."
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=217589&hubname=nhl
LAVAL, Que. (CP) - In a city that talks hockey 12 months a year, much of the summer chatter dealt with one sentence from Saku Koivu.
The team captain told a reporter the Canadiens definitely have a team to make the NHL playoffs, but not to win a Stanley Cup.
It was a fair assessment, but not the message some felt the captain should be passing on to a young team that missed the post-season last spring.
But it made general manager Bob Gainey smile and say Tuesday that, "Saku spoke one line too many. Instead of the 40-second clip, he should have gone with the 20-second clip, because if we are in the playoffs six or seven months from now, we will have a chance to win the Stanley Cup and we can evaluate that question at that time."
They got to see a mass of media descend on Koivu.
"I said that on paper, we're not the favourite to win the Stanley Cup, but I'm very positive we will make the playoffs and from there on, everything's open," said Koivu.
"In 1993 when the Canadiens won the Cup, no one picked them to win, but they did. That's how I want to see it. We have to focus on what we have here, not on who's not here."
Few are picking the Canadiens even to make the playoffs. The Hockey News rates Montreal 13th in the Eastern Conference.
The predictions are based largely on off-season free agent signings, which saw Montreal strike out in a bid to land Buffalo centre Daniel Briere and lose hard-firing point man Sheldon Souray, who took his 26-goal season to Edmonton.
Briere opted for an eight-year US$52 million deal with Philadelphia, spurning Montreal's six-year offer.
"I don't know if in recent years, regarding the Canadiens, I've ever been more disappointed," team owner George Gillett said of Briere. "We honestly thought that he was coming here.
"We were enthusiastic and supportive and so was he. And, as of less than a half hour before the final decision was made, we had reason to believe he was coming here. So it was a shock."
But Gainey is confident the Canadiens will be better this season, largely from the continued progression of a strong group of young players.
The whole organization also got a boost when its top farm club, the Hamilton Bulldogs, won the Calder Cup with blue-chip prospect Carey Price in goal.
Price will battle with veteran Cristobal Huet, who fought injuries and inconsistency last season, and prospect Jaroslav Halak for a spot on the NHL club.
"Right away, I believe we're better in goal," said Gainey. "It's the only position by itself that can swing a game.
"We have talent, we have depth, we have competition from within, and I think it will provide us with the backbone for the other parts of our team."
Gainey sees no reasons why Price could not be kept with the NHL team even if Huet remains the starter, but coach Guy Carbonneau said the 20-year-old would be better off getting regular work in Hamilton than riding the bench in Montreal.
After the goaltenders, the Canadiens are looking for a young core of players including defenceman Mike Komisarek and forwards Chris Higgins, Michael Ryder, Guillaume Latendresse and Andrei Kostitsyn to make more impact.
And Gainey feels that some of the Calder Cup team, including centre Kyle Chipchura, defenceman Ryan O'Byrne and others, may be ready for NHL action.
There are openings heading into camp, even though Smolinski looks poised to replace departed third-line centre Radek Bonk and veteran defenceman Patrice Brisebois, the former whipping boy of Bell Centre fans, has returned after two seasons in Colorado.
Brisebois got a big hug from Koivu on his arrival at the golf club.
He will see power-play action and so will Hamrlik, who has even taken over Souray's old No. 44.
"I know he has a hell of a shot and he scored lots of goals," Hamrlik said of Souray. "He helped a lot on the power play. I think I can do the same thing he did."
Kostopoulos, a Mississauga, Ont., native, surprised the team and the media by doing interviews in French.
And Gainey looked looser than he has since his daughter Laura was lost at sea while working on a tall ship last winter.
"I think I'll be better this year - I'll be fresher for reasons we can all understand," Gainey said. "I think our coaching staff will be better - we had two (Carbonneau and assistant Kirk Muller) who were first-year coaches last year.
"There are all kinds of small areas (of improvement) that don't add up to headline on the first of July. We feel that we'll be a good, exciting, competitive team and it's up to us to prove it."
I think so, but at least we still sell out every game.
i know ur not talking about msg 18,200 every game
including me in the last row
18200 is a good number, but still 11th.
You know who's #1 on THAT list, my friend.
edit - and yeah, I know you were at the games last year, commendable stuff and I'm jealous (seeing as I'm 20 hours straight drive from BC :(
its not the fans fault that msg only holds 18,200 we cant pack any more in
add more seats we'll come
I'll give you that one.
I'm out, talk later.
September 06, 2007
Ten Things I'd Hate About the Habs and Their Fans...
... except that there isn't enough of a rivalry there to really hate them. But let's see if we can take a stab at being humorous without being mean, and maybe be a bit informative too -- only you can be the judge of that. So, the Habs -- let's see...
10. The "Habs" -- what's up with that? Their proper name is so unoriginal that they had to come up with a second one, Les Habitants, which in and of itself is not unusual (e.g. the Broadway Blueshirts as a second Rangers' nickname), except that they went and put an "H" inside the "C" on their jerseys to confuse the heck out of everyone.
9. In order to understand what their local papers say about them, you need to take a Berlitz course -- and even so, even the French have a hard time understanding them.
8. They're such fair-weather fans, that every single Montreal native I know who moved to New York (and that's not a small number) immediately became a Ranger fan.
7. They pretend to be a small market team when in truth, in terms of hockey economics, they have one of the broadest and deepest fan bases in the NHL. They pretend to be a small market team in order to squeeze as much profit as they can out of their fan base.
6. It wasn't enough for them to be so good all those years, they had to be ridiculously lucky on top of that, like in 1979 when they made it to the Cup final because of Boston's idiotic too many men on the ice penalty and then in the final reversed the Rangers' early dominance because Bunny Larocque (or however the heck you spell his name) was conked in the head by a puck in practice (or whatever the heck happened to him), forcing the semi-injured Ken Dryden back into net to steal the remainder of the series.
5. They drafted Doug Wickenheiser instead of Denis Savard, passing up the Quebecois superstar during a disastrous string of top picks that lasted from 1974 until 2000 -- a quarter century of top picks that did not produce a single superstar, only a few good players in Saku Koivu, Mark Napier, and Andrew Cassells, a couple of decent defensemen and tough guys who should probably not have be drafted that high, and a whole lot of bona fide busts.
4. They foisted Jacques Lemaire and his neutral zone trap on the NHL -- some even claim they invented the neutral zone trap, although we believe Lemaire was the culprit, bastardizing the Habs' defensive approach to hockey during their firewagon days.
3. Claude Lemieux -- 'nuff said.
2. Needed anglos like Dick Irvin, Toe Blake, Sam Pollock, and Scotty Bowman to manage them to success. Did a francophone ever coach or manage them to a championship season? Perron, Ruel, Demers -- a couple, but not many, that's for sure.
1. They sit on all their Cup wins without seeming to understand that they never would have happened without the 50-mile rule -- or at least they do so without an ounce of humility. If the NHL had an 18- or 20-year-old entry draft based on reverse order of finish instead of exclusive rights to players within a 50-mile territorial radius, Rocket Richard, Henri Richard, Jean Beliveau, Jacques Plante, Yvan Cornoyer, and Jacques Lemaire, all among their top-ten all-time scoring leaders (except of course for Hall of Fame goalie Plante), would have been drafted by the Blackhawks, Rangers, Bruins, or New York Americans, the first three of those four teams being U.S.-based Original Six teams who had no hockey players within their 50-mile territories and won only three Cups between them from 1942 to 1972.
Or to look at it another way, would they have won only two Cups in the last quarter century-plus (after winning fifteen in the prior quarter century) had they gotten BOTH Guy Lafleur AND Marcel Dionne in 1971, had gotten Savard in addition to Wickenheiser in 1980 (erasing that mistake), and had gotten Mario Lemiuex in 1984? Without the 50-mile rule, Hab management suddenly looked a lot less smart than they used to, using their top draft picks on the likes of Dan Geoffrion, Mark Lee, Robin Sadler, Alain Heroux, Eric Charron, Lindsey Vallis, Terry Ryan, and David Wilkie. Amazing what a level playing field will do to a bunch of smart people who were accustomed to enjoying such an unfair advantage all those years. But rather than recognizing any of that, their fans whine about how unfair present-day NHL economics are to their team (see reason 7)
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Since it isn't funny, I'll just shake my head.
i figured you'd at least get a kick outta it.
hey its end of summer and camp about to open, so its all good.
see you on the ice.
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
ORGAN DONATION SAVES LIVES
http://www.UNOS.org
Donate Organs and Save a Life
Meh, the French digs weren't too bad, but it wasn't terribly funny.
These types of things usually aren't. The one I dumped on your thread is practically the same thing only reversed.
edit: Although I totally missed the point if he's attempting to build a rivalry between the two teams..