Thoughts from HabLand wilderness

This week has been a wild one for the Montreal Canadiens or maybe it has been for many fans.

I listen to some sports talk radio and often hear many callers giving their opinions on the Canadiens. One of the themes I’ve been hearing this week has been “blow up the team and rebuild”.

While I understand all the disappointment that goes with seeing the team you are passionate about play a stinker or two I still think it’s a bit premature to start calling for a rebuild on a team that has just had a sort of rebuild a few months ago. I’m not sure what people’s expectations are but mine were not that this would be an instant winner although I do think it’s the organization’s responsibility to be as competitive as they can while they change the face of the team.

And I do believe that after roster changes like we’ve seen in Montreal there are more evaluations ongoing in regards to who they want to keep and who they want to trade. I don’t believe starting over in another rebuild would be “the answer”.

What I keep coming back to this year is this new team’s record despite losing their best player in Andrei Markov. They are a better team with key guys out. At least that’s what their record says.

And also having other significant injuries for the first quarter of the season.

It’s hard to evaluate or compare this team to the team that was iced the previous few years because of these injuries.

A few things about the team’s recent offense and defense….

Team Defense

I write this after just having watched Montreal’s game against the Washington Capitals in which the Habs played a pretty strong game and to be honest I was impressed. With another injury in the mix I didn’t expect them to play as well as they did against the Washington Capitals.

Carey Price had some strong performances of late and he would be in goal to face “the mighty” Ovechkin (whom I alway enjoy watching!).

Price played really well and he seems to have an edge that wasn’t there in the first couple of weeks in the season. Price allowed 2 goals on 34 shots. He looked confident, controlled his rebounds and had some decent help by Hamrlik and Spacek to tame Ovechkin and crew.

Carey can be a game saver and lately he’s been doing just that.

Tonight marked the night that Ryan O’Byrne was back in the lineup and he looked as though he didn’t miss a beat. Played a good game and helped clear some room in front of Price’s net.

While the shots on goal were many this week, Carey Price proved that he’s ready to play. This is a huge positive for the Canadiens.

Team Offense

A big concern so far has been secondary scoring and going into tonight it seemed very unlikely the Habs could come out on top with the huge lack of secondary scoring.

With Brian Gionta recently being sidelined with a broken bone in his foot the Canadiens would be considered desperate to get the team’s offense in sync. Fortunately tonight the puck went in for them.

Tomas Plekanec continued his very strong play scoring 1 goal and notching 1 assists in this game. Plekanec’s name was mentioned in several trade rumors last season and this summer but as he’s been playing the best hockey of his career there are many who would love to see a contract extension much sooner then later.

Scott Gomez left the game in the 3rd period after only playing a couple of shifts. Is he the latest to fall prey to this injury bug that’s not only picking away at the Habs but so much of the NHL??

The Canadiens certainly can’t afford to loose Gomez. But in the last couple of games we’ve got 2 guys who were off to a slow start that stepped up. Max Pacioretty and Andrei Kostitsyn.

Both Pacioretty and A. Kostitsyn had an assist and produced some scoring chances tonight. These 2 guys will be key players for the Canadiens as they move forward and try to stay in the playoff hunt while they wait for the return of Markov, Gionta and now possibly Gomez.

The Red Wings come to town tomorrow night…. can they keep it going tomorrow night??? I feel like it’s a cliff hanger but in the first chapter (tonight) they played a pretty nice game.

Yves Arsenault is a blogger from PEI. He also writes about the Canadiens on his blog Yves on Habs and can be found on twitter @yves_on_habs.

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