The Sultan of Swank

Well if he puts up 4 goals a game a few more times it shouldn't be too hard.

I don't understand you Plubby. Ovechkin hits Komisarek while he's turning. Big hit yes, but nothing bone crushing. Bouillon runs over Ovechkin later in a hit that more than made up for 'Vechkin knocking Komisarek... That's all I was saying. I'm pretty sure before that I was praising his unbelievable ability. That being said, I'm not going to feed the troll anymore.

not quite... but Bouillon got him back in spades for it.

Fuck Crosby, Ovechkin just single handedly beat the Habs. 4 goals 1 assist in a 5-4 ot win. Holy shit he's incredible. Montreal played bad, they showed up for the last 5 or min of the second(scored 2 goals) and the last 5 or so min of the third(scored another 2 goals) outside of that... all around shitty game by the Habs. The only good that could come out of this game is that if Ottawa loses, we move to within 5 of the Sens with a game at hand.

4-0 woo woo!

I'd like to believe that the month of February will decide the rest of the season for Montreal. Montreal has 33 games remaining in the season, they will play 14 games in 28 nights in February, that is a ton of hockey. We finish January where we've played 7-2-1 so far this month with 2 games against a recently very good and very hungry Washington team. They beat us last time at the Bell comming from behind to win a 5-4 OT thriller on the backs of their young Russians and nothing less than a complete effort from the Habs will merit the wins. February will decide the season in my eyes for a few reasons. First, almost half the games we have left to play are played in this month, and the games we play are mostly against Playoff teams, we play the Rangers and Senators twice each, and we haven't beaten either team this year. New York has just ravaged us, and Ottawa has produced some of the most exciting games of the year, unfortunately we don't win them. We've also got two games against a very good Philadelphia team and one against the Pens, both teams always produce very hard games for the Habs to win. Then there's Atlanta and Florida. Both teams just give the Habs incredible amounts of trouble when we play them. Like how we give Boston a hard time, they give us a hard time. The remaining 4 games are against the Isles, Leafs, Blue Jackets and Sabres. If Montreal doesn't win at least 3 of those games, it's going to cause problems later on. The good about all this is that Montreal started off the year playing .500 or so hockey in October, and then had a bad November where nothing clicked, December brought us back to .500 and the usual nay saying from everywhere that this is where Montreal falls and the other teams overtake the Habs. But from December 27th which is around where the collapse happens(and a mini-one had occured as the Habs had dropped 3 of 4) until Tonight the Habs have played their best hockey that I can remember them playing in the last few years. They have gone 9-2-2 in that stretch and they have played only one bad game in it. A 4-1 loss to the Rangers which is widely considered to be our worst game of the season. They have gotten scoring from all over, all four lines are contributing goals, assists, grip and strong defensive play. They've been probably one of the fastest teams in the East and one of the best passing teams in the league and everyone is simply gelling. Resulting in an amazing 20 of out 26 possible points in their last 13 games. This is a team that is playing for keeps and are currently only 6 points back of the Ottawa Senators for the Conference lead. The bad. Nobody believes that Montreal is for real. Everyone picked them to be a bottom dwelling team this year and it's not happening, so it's gotta happen soon right? Well there is some merit to that statement. As well has Montreal has played in the last month, Philly and Pittsburgh have kept pace or amazingly played even better. Out of the 16 games I mentioned that are comming up, 12 of them are against teams that generally beat the Habs. There is still a lot of hockey to play and this could be the Habs peaking early rather than comming together later in the season. Injuries, cold streaks and trades could ruin the team. What happens if the Kovalev-Plekanec-Kostitsyn line just goes cold for 10 games, they're a huge production line for us. As many points as we're behind the conference lead is the same amount down to 9th place. Now what I like is that the good certainly out weighs the bad. The good right now is our team is playing exactly as I would expect it to. Montreal isn't going to rattle off 8 or 9 wins in a row like Ottawa or Pittsburgh, but playing .650 hockey is what I could expect from a team with such amounts of young already proven talent (Komisarek, Markov, Higgins), young talented players (A. Kostitsyn, S. Kostitsyn, Plekanec, Latendresse, Georges, O'Byrne) and veteran leaders enjoying a great season (Kovalev and Hamrlik). Our goaltending is solid but could be better and we're a playoff ready team. I would expect at least the semi-finals from the Habs and not making the conference finals would be disappointing if we continue to play as we have since late december down the stretch. A Stanley Cup team this is not, but we're far better than the 10th place losers of yesteryear. Obviously so much is up in the air with a third of the season left to play, we still have O'Byrne comming back from injury, we've almost got a Big 3 defence going with Markov, Komisarek and to a weaker extent Hammer all having phenominal seasons so there's a lot that could happen. What's important is to keep the intensity up, we still have 6 games against the Sens, that's 24 points right there. If Ottawa shuts out the Habs on the season, we're fucked. If Montreal somehow manages to win 4 or even 5 of those 6 games, they might even overtake the Sens for first in the conference. 49 games into the season, I would call Montreal a playoff team, and not the 8th place sweeps team of the last 10 years. This is a team that right now is playing for keeps and would be a failure if they fell from 4th or 5th. If and when they do so, as there is so much hockey left to play, I will stand by the statement that if the Habs fall, it wasn't a lack of talent or big names, it was a lack of effort, because clearly in the past month they've cared about playing well and it has translated into 9 wins in 13 games.

Sweet we beat Jersey... when does that happen. Montreal sits 4th in the East, 2nd in points in the East going into the break. That's pretty awesome. Hopefully we can keep it up the remaining 35 games or so.

RAWR! 8-2 you sonofabitch Boston. Komisarus scored! Sergei Kostitsyn threw a hip check and then got in a fight and did pretty dang well in it, the place went fucking crazy for him afterwards. Sergei and Andrei hook up for a brother to brother goal to seal it at 8 to fucking 2. Montreal dismantled the Bruins. Boston played about 145 seconds of inspired hockey which resulted in their second goal. Montreal just fucking took it to them tonight. I mean scoring 14 seconds in and then again with 1.1 seconds in the period with 2 inbetween those... that's gotta hurt some. Montreal was just relentless tonight. Everyone showed up and we put up a score that seemed perfect. Boston has a depleted roster, Montreal is a top team in the east, 8 goals shouldn't be unreasonable. When the Kovalev/Pleks/Big Tits line is out, it's like the Soviet national team vs. Barbados

Cliff Fletcher in?

True... Hey Plub, I lost could a little while ago, but how many more than Toronto would that be?

All I'm gonna say Plub is that at least the Avs benefit from the leadership of Joe Sak-- wait no he's out. Oh! Ryan Sm-- shit, wait not him either he's injured too. Well at least you can rely on the young talents of Paul Stas---... oh, wait he's out too. Yeah, have fun.

Grr. Fucking Sabourin. Montreal and Pittsburgh played a really evenly matched game, just they got the only goal of the game and that was that. Exciting to watch, super frustrating that we lost, because we needed those 2 points to seperate ourselves a tiny bit from Pittsburgh.

#4 Habs with the second highest point total in the East Host #5 Pens who have the third highest point total in the East. If the season were to end today, this would be a playoff preview match. The Pens are without Crosby tonight, but I somehow still see this as a very hard game for Montreal to win.

Montreal wins again on the Road. Great game overall, Huet made a boneheaded move but what can you do. When you look at some of the stats like odd man rushes where Montreal had 9 and Atlanta 1 while we held them to 18 shots... we played a solid defensive game. Also, Andrei Kostitsyn made another highlight reel goal... too bad it happened the same night as that Rick Nash tomfoolery of magnificence or else it would definately made highlight of the night. He's so good. He hits, plays a two way game solidly, has great hands and a wicked shot. Love him. AK-46

What happens if the Leafs don't get the #1 pick in the lottery... I mean they still get a quality prospect, but no Stamkos.

I'll take Antropov. He's the big #80 with great hand, decent speed, a quick shot, and isn't a bad 2 way player but he could pick it up a bit right? Yeah I think about 28 teams or so wouldn't mind having him. I think this should be a sign of the beginning of the end for Toronto if things don't change soon. CBC, which is really Leafs TV for those not privaledged(sp?) enough to have bought the Leafs TV package is bumping Toronto off the National broadcast this saturday, get this... in favor of a Canadiens/Pens game. Now I know, that the CBC's biggest boner besides for the Leafs is for Crosby, but still. CBC execs admitted that with Toronto not doing so hot, they're considering putting more and more Ottawa and Habs games on the National Broadcast since both teams are currently holding onto playoff spots quite nicely. I am shocked. I mean, I'm still gonna take the RDS feed, because It'll be nauseating to hear the two of em verbally felate Crosby all game(till Komi gets a piece of him at least), but the kids a bum in my books(sorry, the fake injury incidents in Montreal were a bitch move). Wicked talented, but I don't need to hear it every 6 seconds, I can clearly see it when he's on the ice.

Habs bounce back from their worst game of the year with a pretty complete effort. We held them to 17 shots, only 1 shot in the first period. We scored 3, easily could have been 7 with some of the chances we had. Kovalev - Plekanec - A. Kostitsyn continue to be the best line on the team. Pleks nets 2 goals, Kovalev a goal and an assist, Kostitsyn surprisingly threw the biggest hit I've seen in a little while and in the last 3 minutes of the game this line... especially Kovalev on the forecheck made it so that the Islanders couldn't even get out of their own zone to put pressure on Huet. In all, another solid game by the Habs who, since the x-mas break when Carbo made some dandy line changes and call ups etc are 6-1-2, points in 8 of 9 games is pretty sweet.

I like how everyone wrote off the Habs this year because we lost Souray and it was impossible to think that with a team where most of the players are under 25, that some may develop from year to year. It's fun to forever be the underdog, while we really sucked a dick in New York the other night... quite possibly our worst game of the year, it was also our first regulation loss in 8 games, so while you never want to lose, and losing like that really makes you embarrassed to cheer for the team, we've had a pretty good season so far... especially considering that nobody predicted us to be anywhere near the playoff picture.

Exception of Montreal? I'm confused.... I didn't see the game last night, but I heard that Carbo switched up the lines some more and that Montreal also didn't show up for a good 45 minutes. Cock. I was really hoping to beat the Rangers. But from what I heard, this was probably Montreal's worst game all year

I win.

Montreal faces the Rangers tonight. New York has notoriously given us trouble over the last 2 or 3 seasons. I feel real good about tonight's game, Montreal's won 5 of 7 and the two that they lost it was in OT or SO. If we can get the jump on the Rangers tonight, I don't see why we can't get 8 of 8 points on this 4 game road trip. If we continue to get scoring from all 4 lines like we've been doing since after christmas I think we'll beat the Rangers. What I really like about the Habs this year, we've not got any bonafide superstars(which I actually hate, but just gimmie a sec here), but we've got 3 players on pace for 30 goals or more, and another 3 who will hit 20 goals. Besides that, We've got Markov, KOMISARUS! and Hammer patrolling the Blue Line as though crossing into our zone is a personal attack. I mean seriously, the amount of huge hip checks that Komisarus has thrown at players comming into our zone in the last 4 games is unreal.

I think we should start a petition to change Komisarek's name to Komisarus.

Ovechkin signs for 13 years, 124 mil in Washington. Edit: make that 12 points and even amount of games played with Toronto. Man, Montreal rocked shit tonight. Komisarek is a complete monster, he just threw all sorts of huge hits. Also, Sergei Kostitsyn leveling... Axlesson? in the third, wow! amazing. Oh, yeah, Montreal had some freaking dandy goals tonight also. I think 3 out of 5 of them were highlight goals.

Montreal/Boston tonight. The young guys on Montreal are really pulling their weight this year. Too bad Smolinski is back and Begin is back soon too... I know that there's still 82 points to play for between now and April. But 10 points ahead of the Leafs with a game at hand... will Clawson admit that Montreal had a superior club through the first half.

I was at the game last night, the Hawks sure played like they wanted to win... they didn't get too many great chances... Montreal got some spectacular chances and really ran wild in the first and third. Exciting as hell though.