Enough with the bullshit!

Seriously do you really believe the Habs injury list is that long. If so I got some everglade swamp land I like to sell you real cheap!!! The thinking by Montreal management is simple they rather stink up the join in the pre-season with AHL players who are mostly not ready for primetime than risk losing a major piece! The problem is fans are paying good money to watch this sorry spectacle. At least be honest about it and maybe if you got to charge something for tickets to these crappy game make them a charity events. Don't be surprise if come October 6 almost everybody healthy "comme par magie". 


This bring another subject. To be this cautious Jacques Martin and Pierre Gauthier must be under some serious pressure to deliver NOW not in 2013 not in 2014 right fucking NOW. Nothing bad with that unless off course it lead to some rather idiotic panic move.


Geoff Molson must be itching to clean house already. He and his family just bought the damn thing for like the fifth or sixth time in franchise history. (I lost count) Make up your fucking mind about that you want to own it or not? If Gauthier not careful the next Irving Grundman or Réjean Houle will end up GM! lolll By the way that would be an unmitigated disaster better a professional GM than one of these idiot shove in during a panic move. Even if he's a loner who creepily call everyone of his players "Mister" at least he know his job! He's not a former bowling alley manager or your former marketing VP but Pierre Gauthier is a Pro NHL Gm! 

Ranking the worse Habs current TV network!

I been considering doing that list for a while. This is a list of the current major three Habs Canadian TV network ranked on my highly suggestive, totally partial and soon to be patented Suckinest Index. The Suckinest Index or simply S.I method is quite straight forward I list all the stuff peoples have been bitching about for every network give them a -1 point for each and the network with the lowest score "win".

I said current because I leave the all time worse Habs TV network for another blog post. Now if you got more complains about a network that I have not listed please comments and they will be added in an update later this week so the "winner" may actually change. To be fair I will also list positive points and they will count against the S.I.

TSN S.I -1
Pros +1 Actually own the rights with RDS to the old HNIC anthem. +1 Good game sound. 1+ Decent HD picture.
Cons -1 Pierre "Douchebag" McGuire. -1 Owned by Bell who own a piece of the Habs so not likely to do better to keep the rights.  -1 created a TSN-Habs channel for regional games but gave Bell the apparent if not real exclusivity. -1 To get TSN HD you got to pay extra even if you already have TSN in your package.

CBC S.I -3
Pros +1 Great game sound +1 Cheapest alternative you got basic cable chance are you got CBC Mtl!
Cons -1 Bob Cole and Don Cherry need to be retired! -1 Too cheap to have an HD truck in Mtl most of the time! -1 Anybody else but the Habs bias! -1 Lost the rights to the HNIC anthem because they were too cheap to keep it! -1 With our tax dollars we all actually pay for CBC to produce HNIC and yet almost all the HD games come from fucking Toronto!

RDS S.I -5
Pros +1 Actually own the rights with TSN to the old HNIC anthem! +1 Got all 82 games!
Cons -1 Got all 82 games and did not bother investing at all to put a quality product on TV! -1 crappy game sounds! -1 Crappy HD feed that look like an up conversion! -1 Game commentators and annalists who talk about everything but the fucking game in front of them! -1 Not even an HD camera for the intermission! -1 Too many low quality hasbeen commentators! -1 L'Antichambre! -1 Owned by Bell who own a piece of the Habs so they never going to lose the exclusive French rights to anybody else who could do better! -1 Pandering way too much!

In conclusion the clear winner for a lack of a better term is RDS they are clearly the worse current Habs TV network. Ironically they are the mirror image of TSN who almost scored a neutral S.I but TSN got competition while RDS is the only French sports broadcaster in Canada and got all the Games. Let just hope Pierre Karl Pelado change that someday a little competition would wake them up fast. Meanwhile CBC is stuck in the past and could well lose all NHL rights to Bell/CTV who are getting more and more cozy with the NHL.  

TSN-Habs regional feed still MIA on all but one provider!

The Habs have always been a big draw on TV in Canada. Recently TSN announced that they had a new deal to present 24 extra Habs games in this season to viewers in Quebec, Atlantic Canada and parts of Eastern Ontario, including Ottawa, Belleville, Kingston and Pembroke, on a TSN alternate feed. Actually let be precise TSN made this announcement on October 21, so when they did this press release three weeks ago I expected that my provider Shaw Direct would jump on it. I mean they did not hesitate to bend over backwards for Rogers new channel Sportsnet One just two months ago but nothing happen!

It not only my provider Videotron did not pick it up either in fact nobody but Bell who were on board even before the press release was made did. And Videotron got a hell of a lot more to lose than Shaw Direct if they don't carry it! So why nobody but Bell carry the new feed by now? It not a technical reason the Habs are premium content to carry and usually providers will find a way even if they have to dump some trash to make space! I keep coming back to Bell being in on that deal before it was even made public. Bell who now own CTV, TSN and RDS, Bell who also own 15% of the Habs by the way! Was TSN told to not accept any offers or to make outrageous demands that could never be met?
One can only speculate because so far nobody talking!