Holy Campoli, more like Holy Shit!

Remember what I wrote about panic moves! Probably not since nobody reading this shitty blog anyway. Go read my previous post...


Alright let assume you are up to date I said Gauthier was under tremendous pressure to deliver now or face a clean up imposed from the top soon. I also said that he was the lesser of two evil better him GM than another Rejean Houle. So yesterday Gauthier made another move that reflected his ejection seat situation. Defensively the Habs spent the better part of the camp throwing shit at the wall to see what stick the problem was none of it did. The two reason why they did it is that beyond Markov, Subban and Gorges the talent drop faster than an ACME anvil on top of Wile E. Coyote and Markov setback make that only two quality d-man likely to start the season. The rest are either getting too old Spacek, Gill not good enough Weber or had a so so camp Yemelin. And all the kids at least on defense are NHL ready.


Gauthier boss/owner who just paid a shitload of money for the fabled franchise and may well be eyeing the GM/Coach ejection button a lot lately. Picture a black box with a big red button under a  breakable glass cover. If press it will send a signal to a team of lawyers who are on 24 hours standby ready to draft Pierre Gauthier "resignation" letter. While two security guard also on constant standby will escort him to his car with his stuff in two cardboard box. lolll Yeah it not likely to end that way only the small fish in the corporate ladder get treated like shit!


After all none of these guys are his men and a new owner is really tempted the clean house even under the best of circumstance. When he look at his new team throwing money down the drain (Gomez) Mr Molson is likely getting heartburn. Make no mistake this is roster that got a middle of the pack result at best while spending to the cap in the past two years. And with slim to no chance at a meaningful playoff run except for a fluke Halakinan run. Hell if it was my money I would have likely fire just about everybody in management on day one after closing the sale.  


With all of that in mind and some salary cap left Pierre Gauthier addressed a clear need for a fourth or third D by snatching free agent Chris Campoli. Will that be enough to actually give the team some defense stability? Maybe but let pray that Markov will be back really soon. While Campoli stats are not stellar you can make the case that he played for some pretty rotten teams except the Hawks. Having bad stats on a shit team is like getting V.D from a crack whore you can't help it. Off course you can and should stay away from a crack whore but until you reach UFA status you can't really not play for the teams that draft you or trade for you.


Not everything is dark and cloudy Cole feel like a great addition, MaxPac is back in force and by the look of it Cammaleri is back to Super Saiyan 3 shape shit even Gomez looked good lately. The other good news the throw everything at the wall camp was not a total waste of time at least in offence where some guys did stick. Brendan Galagher may well be the one sticking around and good for him! He got a chance because the team still got some spot needing filling and with Eller not likely making it to the opener maybe somebody else will stick around. So two weeks left of camp and only two pre-season game left time to get serious.  

Good news: It official the Habs are eliminated!

Don't bother playing this season it already over at least if you believe all the experts!


The good news all the same "experts" who are predicting the Habs out have crappy accuracy in making Habs prediction in the past three years so it as likely that Montreal will finish third or win the President Trophy. Off course since the "experts" predicted the Habs will finish around 9th they are as likely to end up with a lottery pick. That's why you play the game to find out! 


And I don't know how they can say last year was all about Price when the year before almost the same players with Halak reached the conference final. I don't like Martin defense first system but you got to admit that it make the guy behind the pipe look good. You could say the same thing about the Bruins and Thomas in fact some of the experts even did! The Bruins who by the way won the cup came one bad bounce close to an early exit against guess who the Habs!

Let me list all the things that went bad for the Habs last year. Markov out again all year Georges out for most of it Cammalleri out for a month, Gomez worse season in his career, Pacioretty "Accident"... Still the team won a six seed. So let see in order for the habs to have about the same bad luck they need to lose two big piece for all the season and two more for months, Gomez should play as bad or worse and Martin should keep playing him! And they will not use that $3,979,490 cap space left because I don't know Molson cheaping out! Yeah all of this need to happen for the Habs to end up with a worse or as bad luck than last year.

I love how the experts point to Cole as the only addition of the Summer then totally forget to mention a guy like Yemelin. That the Habs ace up their sleeves, the team management did not spent six years trying to get this guy to come from the KHL for no reason. I feel like am repeating myself but what the fuck the game is played on the ice!    

RDS was the worse sports channel of 2010!

It been a long year and am not talking Hockey. 2010 would be remembered for that oil gusher that transformed the Gulf of Mexico in a toxic waste dump, the economy still struggling... So it was kind of fitting that RDS would close the year with one more fuck up to top it all off. The habs god bless them manage to tie a two goal deficit and force an overtime yesterday but no habs fans who watch the game on RDS saw it live. You see RDS lost the feed just when the overtime was about to start and instead of I don't know switching to the NHL Network feed and showing that they just sat around with their dick in their hands waiting for the feed to come back! It never did and we missed the goal live. Because of the crappy game sound, the analyst and commentators who are amateurish at best and this last fuck up RDS deserve the title of worse sports channel in North America in 2010.  

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!