Failing hands: The worst Habs since 1979

The form calls to be classy and reverential on the occasion of the Montreal Canadiens centennial, of course.

However, bigger and brighter minds have it covered off so well. CBC is airing a special creatively titled 100 Years, 100 Stars this evening. TSN.ca, playing provacateur to the hilt, has unveiled an Ultimate Canadiens lineup which does not include anyone named Cournoyer, Lafleur or Roy. Venerable Montreal Gazoo scribe Red Fisher has a million stories to tell.

There is not much to add. Others can talk about Big Jean Béliveau, the Chicoutimi Cucumber, the Rocket, the Flower, Big Bird and Newsy Lalonde until they're bleu in the face. Someone needs to take up the cause of the justly neglected Canadiens, the most abject sextet of shinny stumblebums to have (dis)graced the sacred flannel. They won't get a parade, just this post.

LEFT WING: DANIEL GEOFFRION (1979-80, 32GP-0G-6A-6PT-12PIM)

The nicest thing that can be said about Geoffrion's brief NHL career is just by being there, he did his part to create a four-generation hockey family. He came after his Hall of Fame father (Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion) and grandfather (Howie Morenz) are each in the Hall of Fame. His puck-chasing progeny, Blake Geoffrion, is a hotshot Nashville Predators prospect.

It probably wasn't for lack of trying, but Dan Geoffrion went goalless in 32 games in '79-80, which is dismal for a forward on a team which led the NHL with 328 goals. Couldn't someone at least have gifted him with the chance to score an empty-netter, just to break his maiden?

It must have been tough to be in that situation with his bloodlines, especially since the tightly wound Boom Boom was trying to follow Scotty Bowman as coach. (He lasted until Christmas.) Let go after that season, Daniel Geoffrion played only two more NHL seasons, one with the '80-81 Jets, one of the worst teams of all time.

CENTRE: MATT HIGGINS (1997-2000, 57GP-1G-2A-3PT-6PIM)

It would be remiss to not include a first-round draft choice from the era of late-'90s Habs GM Réjean Houle, who's mortal lock for the Hockey Hall of Fame if it ever adds a Destroyers' Wing. It might as well be Higgins, the No. 18 pick in 1996, since he did very well when Habs fans at hfboards.com debated the worst Canadiens in recent history. Judging by the stats, he had a phobia about seeing his name appear in a small type, i.e. on the scoring summary.

Hindsight is 20-20. Higgins was taken ahead of a Québec player who turned out to be a very good centre, Daniel Brière. At the other end of the physical spectrum, Zdeno Chara was a third-rounder in '96, and Habs fans now know him very well.

RIGHT WING: TURNER STEVENSON (1992-2000, 385 GP-45G-66A-111PT-609PIM)

A great rainy-day post would be "Worst Examples of NHL GMs' Power Forward Fetish, 1990-2004." People have milked a doctorate-level thesis from less.

The Canadiens made the 6-foot-3, 220-lb. Stevenson (61 points, 276 PIMs in his draft year) the 12th overall pick in the 1990 draft, perhaps figuring he would be their version of Cam Neely, who had helped Boston knock them out of the playoffs in two of the previous three post-seasons. Sure. They were both B.C. boys. They both shot right-handed. The similarities kind of faded.

Far from being some monster reincarnation of John Ferguson, Stevenson panned out like a John Ferguson Jr. draft pick. He had only 27 points in his best season with the Canadiens. He was the middle of three straight Montreal first-rounders from Seattle of the WHL, and the only one who had a significant NHL career, but the Habs took him over a hometown goalie named Martin Brodeur. After leaving the Habs in 2000, Stevenson, ironically enough, helped the Brodeur and the Devils win the Cup in '03.

DEFENCE: CHRISTIAN LAFLAMME (1999-2001, 50 GP-0 G-5 A-5 PT-42 PIM)

This one is being taken more on faith. The Habs at the dawn of this decade, with ownership turmoil and a 65-cent Canadian dollar, were leaking oil pretty badly. Laflamme might have been the greatest guy in the world, but a seventh defenceman on that team rates a spot here.

DEFENCE: PATRICK TRAVERSE (2000-03, 109 GM-4G-19A-23PT-48PIM)

Time was, the Habs never would picked up a player who had just been with Boston, but they did with Traverse in 2000-01. The Ottawa Senators, who were a pretty smart organization in those days (hard as it's getting to remember), had thought better of keeping Traverse. Still, he ended up in Montreal for parts of three seasons and was a healthy scratch during the '02 playoffs. He's since settled into a nice post with the Sharks' AHL team.

GOAL: DOUG SOETAERT (1984-86, 51 GP, 3.13 GAA, .873 save percentage)

Hey, if TSN doesn't see fit honour Patrick Roy, then one should follow suit and omit his backup, the notorious André "Red Light" Racicot. Racicot probably shouldn't have been there, so he's spared. Soetaert makes it on the basis of the unique double he pulled off in the 1984-85. He faced the fewest shots per game of any goalie in the NHL, 23.2, yet managed to have the worst save percentage. .854, which means this team could not exist without him.

No doubt some of you have some nomimations. This was gleaned from, oh, 45 minutes' research, give or take a half-hour. The fact it took took that long to come with of six players who made people think Montreal's iconic CH chest stood for "Crappy Habs" attests to how good the Canadiens have been. You could have come with four full lines, three sets of D and a goalie tandem for the Leafs in half the time.

Related:
Richard or Lafleur? TSN picks the ultimate Canadiens team (TSN.ca)

Monday night snark ...

Type your summary here

Via From Deep: "Sam Mitchell. Is there anyone who doesn't want this guy fired right now?"

Slap Shot 3: The Junior League will be in stores tomorrow ... it's a good thing Paul Newman is already dead.

New rule: Anyone who purports to be some guardian of baseball but who spells Cal Ripken Jr. "Ripkin" and prefaces his oh-just-slightly-xenophobic rant by saying "Let me say right off that I have nothing personal against Indians in general," isn't worth a rebuttal.

(The Pittsburgh Pirates signed the two pitching prospects from India, righty Dinesh Patel and lefty Rinku Singh, which is awesome.)

Charlie Weis' record after Notre Dame's game at USC this weekend will be 28 wins, 21 losses. That's if they lose.

Strange, is it not, that Patrick Roy had his sweater retired by the Canadiens last Saturday and there was precious little in the media about his son Frédérick Roy viciously cross-checking a player during a game on Friday in Montréal (and getting suspended).

Blog blast past: St. Patrick's day of reckoning

Jonathan Roy, son of Montreal Canadiens legend Patrick Roy, has been charged with assault for his attack on QMJHL goalie Bobby Nadeau. There's no word if the Quebec courts will accept the he was "standing there like a Nancy Boy" defence advocated by hockey writer Pierre LeBrun. From March 23, 2008, here's our post, after the jump.

Hall of Fame goalie Patrick Roy is in a whole lot of hot water. Roy, as you know, is the coach and owner of the QMJHL's Quebec Remparts. Long story short, his son, Jonathan Roy, a goalie, left the net during a line brawl against rival Chicoutimi yesterday and apparently with his old man egging him on, attacked opposing goalie Bobby Nadeau, who as you can see, had no intention of fighting back.

The fact TSN made light of it by running a split-screen of Jonathan Roy whaling on Nadeau with a clip of the elder Roy fighting in his playing days suggests the hockey pucks will stick up for St. Patrick and paint this as an isolated incident. As a sidebar, handling the story that way was in poor taste. Did they not know, not care or not remember the elder Roy being arrested for domestic violence in 2000 (the charges were later dropped) when his son happened to be 11 years old, a very impressionable age?

Nadeau being attacked also wasn't an isolated incident that can laughed off. It was also one of two borderline assaults on QMJHL goaltenders on Saturday. Ryan Mior got nailed by a Shawinigan player after a whistle in the late stages of the Gatineau Olympiques' 9-3 win, touching off a line brawl that led to about 10 ejections. The Quebec league's commissioner, Gilles Courteau, will have to do some major damage control. Fights as a honest outgrowth of emotion and pent-up hostilities are one thing; keeping a game from becoming a gong show is another.

Patrick Roy's reputation takes a hit here. He's enjoyed a halo effect and as a junior hockey maven, he probably gets away with a bit because, well, he's Patrick Roy and he's in Quebec, out of sight and out of mind to most of the national media in Canada (such as it is). Now he's exposed. The temper tantrums as a player, the 911 call his then-wife made to police eight years ago and the night his son wigged out on the ice are a troubling tableau. Judging by the comments left on the RDS.ca website, there's some clamouring to see the rumbling Roys booted from the rest of the QMJHL playoffs.

(You can't make this up. Today is Bobby Nadeau's 20th birthday. Some gift!)



Related:
Ça dégénère à Chicoutimi (RDS.ca)
Roy's son bares knuckles in QMJHL brawl (CBC.ca)

HOW SWEDE IT MIGHT BE FOR ALFIE, MATS

Some morning tidbits to tide us all over; someone has travel plans today...

• It's impossible to abide The Canadian Press' Pierre LeBrun saying QMJHL goalie Bobby Nadeau acted like a "Nancy Boy" in a column for sportsnet.ca.
  
  

  Cripes, if anyone should be criticized it should be Chicoutimi goalie Bobby Nadeau for standing there like a Nancy Boy and not trying to defend himself when (Jonathan) Roy came after him?
  -- March 26, 2008

  The Tao of Stieb called it "creepy" that LeBrun, for all his virtues as a journalist, is arguing for 19-year-olds whaling on each other.
  
  (Granted, on-ice violence in hockey never, ever spills over into how a minority of fans behave in normal society. (Tell that to the guy in the Oilers sweater who received a 5-on-1 beatdown in Calgary last Saturday while he's convalescing from his broken nose).
  
  "Nancy Boy" should never get to the webpage when it's used in such a derogatory way. The term implies someone is gay or, short of that, that being gay is a lesser form of humanity. One reason LeBrun has skated on demeaning Nadeau is that sportsnet.ca might not get a lot of traffic from Chicoutimi, in the virtually 100% French-speaking Saguenay.
  
  LeBrun's job doesn't require him to be a "tree-hugger." (His term from the same article.) No doubt he didn't mean it that way. That's not an excuse. It's like that episode of The Office when Michael Scott, Steve Carell's character, gets in trouble for saying "faggy" in front of Oscar, a salesman who is gay. This is not funny -- it's a little funny -- and it's not a firing offence, but LeBrun and sportsnet.ca should know better.
  
• The joke's on Ottawa Senators management that the all-important Sens-Leafs match tonight is a pay-per-view game.
  
  The first reaction back in August when the team's broadcast schedule came out was, "Why in the hell are they putting that on pay-per-view -- it's probably going to be a nothing game because the Sens will have clinched and the Leafs will be out of it."
  
  It turns out it might be found money for Sens management. This presumes Sens fans pony up instead of sticking with the radio. Agonizing over a sports event which you cannot see is a much better way to stress-test vital organs, after all.
  
  Thing is, the Sens organization can't make too big a deal of their windfall, since it would look like they're revelling in rolling in dough while the team goes down the tubes. That's really more of a MLSEL thing.
  
  It's most likely Ottawa gets in by virtue of beating the Leafs without Mats Sundin and Nik Antropov, but who can be proud of that? Perhaps they back into the playoffs if the Flyers blow it and then there's a chance that they will complete the worst collapse in NHL history, and cause Leafs fans, a la Brent Leroy when the Corner Gas Guzzlers earned their first-ever tie, to taunt, "Ha-ha, you suck as much as us."
  
• It's good to see Daniel Alfredsson and Mats Sundin -- each among Sweden's greatest exports not have a name such as Ulrika or Malin --cross paths tonight. (Ignore for a second that Sundin is sitting out the Leafs-Sens game.)
  
  After all, Mats and Alfie, they're so busy and now it appears that they each might be free to lead Sweden at the World Championships in a couple weeks. Are they going to meet up in Ottawa and take a scenic drive down to Quebec City?
  
  That's the joke going around. Sundin refused to let the going-nowhere-fast Leafs trade him to the Canadiens because he really, really wanted to play for Sweden in the Worlds in his original home NHL city. Never mind that's the equivalent of a college basketball team skipping the NCAA Tournament to play in the NIT.
  
  (For the record, cheering for Sweden in hockey, as a Canadian, seemed like a reasonable thing to do two years ago -- before Deadspin's Will Leitch had a chapter in God Save The Fan about why it's American to root against the U.S. in the Olympics. The World Juniors get an exemption since our guys really seem to care about that event.)

A hockey post is up at Epic Carnival, by the way. That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

GRAPES GETS LAST WORD ON THE ROY-AL RUMBLE

Don Cherry's comments about whether he'd hire Patrick Roy to coach a NHL team might be the most perceptive thing I've heard anyone say about last weekend.

"I'd hire him because he's a winner and that (his intensity) is what made him a winner as a goaltender. But he's got to learn. All he's done is hurt his club."
-- globesports.com

Two points to piggyback on to what Cherry said. He made the point I was trying to make about six days ago; he just understands people better than I do.

Last Saturday, we saw the dark side of the intensity that made Patrick Roy the only three-time Conn Smythe Trophy winner come out in a very ugly, regrettable way. Roy's passion gets romanticized and hyperbolized, so people should just be willing to accept that dark side. Take all of him or none at all.

The second point is that for all people say about him, Don Cherry goes a little deeper than a lot of TV talking heads. That's an underrated part of why he's a national treasure. American media has often used Dick Vitale, as an analog to help explain Grapes' act, but that was so far off; one-note acts such as Vitale don't dare to go so deep.

Granted, Bobby Knight, who's demonstrated more than any other sports figure that your strength is often your weakness, is now working for ESPN. Americans might better able to relate to Cherry soon enough.

(The quote's from a William Houston column which also has choice insights into Jays TV voice Jamie Campbell, if anyone's interested. Thanks to Pete Toms for the link.)

EARL'S PEARLS...

Those of you who didn't catch Earl McRae's appearance on the FAN 590 this morning, consider yourselves unlucky. He was that priceless. I'll try to get a link or a transcript; it was that good.

Another sports radio note: James Mirtle, of Mirtle fame, is on 940 AM Montreal at this moment to talk about the Jonathan Roy incident. James has raised an excellent point; that the YouTube factor has amplified the attention given to hockey violence; what happened in Chicoutimi was not exactly new. The images just travelled much faster. Of course, you know what they saw about sunshine being the best disinfectant.

Could you imagine if YouTube had been around back in 1978 when Kenny Linseman kicked that guy in the head with his skate?

(UPDATE: Patrick Roy got a five-game suspension.)