Jaroslav Halak Steals Games and the Montreal Canadiens’ No. 1 Spot

Just a quick question to ask all of my fellow Habs fans: Who would have believed me if I told me that following a game in which they lost their top-scorer in Michael Cammalleri, the Montreal Canadiens would give up 47 shots to the Vancouver Canucks and 47 shots to the Boston Bruins, and win both games?

Get well soon, Mike, Habs' fans need you back! (Jason Hitelman)

Let’s be serious, there would have been some major name-calling involved!

First of all, you can’t give up that many shots to the Canucks without any consequences; the Sedin twins and the rest of the ‘Nucks’ arsenal are dangerous when given opportunities, to put it lightly.

And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the Boston Bruins are not looking like a very good NHL team at the moment–how in the world are they getting 47 shots against this team, and how did Mark Recchi get seven?

All is now said and done and the biggest–make that only–reason that your Montreal Canadiens came out of the two games with four points is the little Slovakian that does the job between the pipes.

Jaroslav Halak has become the undisputed No. 1 goaltender in Montreal, there can be no argument there.

Talk about stealing games–Jaro has committed grand larceny!

He is the Montreal Canadiens’ starter of the here and now and if Bob Gainey and Jacques Martin want to have any shot of making the playoffs, they must stick with Halak, whether they like or not (and given Bob’s track record, he most definitely does not).

But for those of you who are screaming for a Price trade, please hold your horses.

The kid is still only 22-years-old and has a ways to go in his NHL career.

He may be disgruntled and upset he isn’t starting right now, but who can really blame him for that? Carey is a competitor and he wants the chance to play and win.

Unfortunately, the Habs are not in the position to afford him that opportunity right now. There is a little bit more media scrutiny and much higher expectations here in Montreal than there is in, say, Pittsburgh where the Penguins were glued to the basement of the league, acquiring high draft-pick after high draft-pick year after year (Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Jordan Staal) while Marc-Andre Fleury was steadily improving his game.

The Canadiens must win games to make the playoffs. If they ended up with a high draft-pick this season, the city would be burned and looted.

Jaroslav Halak has a better shot at winning those games–bottom line.

Jaro has won the battle...(Jason Hitelman)

As the old adage goes, you gotta ride the hot hand.

And then at the end of the season, you gotta hope the hot hand still wants to play on your team even though you never considered him to be a starter before this season.

Without forgetting, of course, that you gotta hope that the guy with the not-so-hot hand wants to work on his game so he can become willing enough to want to steal away the other guy’s job.

It looks like there is going to be a lot of hoping in the future.

Posted by Jason Hitelman on Feb 5 2010. Filed under Eastern Conference, Montreal Canadiens, Northeast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.