We've all seen the reasons the #Habs may struggle tonight, and they are legit concerns. But in the spirit of Erin's Optimistic Takes, here are the things that may make all the difference:

1. Jake Allen. Sure, Price has been so terrific you almost wonder if it's...
... even necessary to start the backup goalie until you remember that it's Jake. Goalies are the only players on ice for the whole 60 and a b2b like this would be brutal for Carey. It's nice not to have to worry about it.

2. The forward lines. I sincerely hope...
...the top 3 are exactly what we saw last night. As for the 4th, the option to play Lehkonen exists--not that Perry wasn't wonderful last night, but fatigue may be a bigger factor at his age. Again: just nice to have the possibility.

3. Fresh Mete. Can't help but think this...
...game would have involved Mete anyway to reduce the fatigue factor, but now it's a requirement. Mete has his strengths and weaknesses but he is energetic; it will also be interesting to see if he, too, shows positive signs of the Ducharme effect on younger players...
... which is entirely possible.

4. I think it's Ducharme's birthday. Got to expect the boys to pull out all the stops to give their new coach the gift of a solid win. In regulation, even.

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More from @emanningwrites

14 Mar
Okay, this is going to be hard, but you're still going to get Erin's Optimistic Takes. Because the Department of Silver Linings never sleeps, and finding positivity matters the most when it's not easy to do.

1. Every team in the NHL will play a "worst game" this...
...season. This was ours. It was painful to watch from start to finish. Everything that could go wrong did, from bad plays to misread cues to injuries to significant missed calls (no, boarding is not okay, especially when the player you just slammed up against the...
...wall by the numbers only just got back from concussion protocol). Attempts to fight for possession and regain the offensive zone were better than Thursday but had little success; same with shots on goal, which, again, were better than Thursday but didn't phase...
Read 17 tweets
12 Mar
Last thoughts on tonight's #Habs game: the only conclusions anybody can draw from this game is that this is not the kind of game from which you can draw conclusions. Unusual season, unusual schedule, and unusual circumstances led to a team that played a game...
...that ran from roughly 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m Van. time, got on a plane around 2 a.m., flew into a slightly different time zone, got settled into their hotel between 3 and 5 a.m. local time (according to Mete) after that, and had a game to play later that day. Why didn't...
...they stay the night in Vancouver and fly out after a decent sleep? Most likely explanation I've heard is Covid testing requirements, though I don't know for sure. In ordinary seasons, a back-to-back game usually has 24 hours between games, and if...
Read 5 tweets
12 Mar
Time now for Erin's Optimistic Takes. You didn't think I was going to skip them, did you? 😊

1. Yes, we lost to the Flames, in regulation. Not good. But not the end of the world, either.

2. Corey Perry. Enough said. The man...
...is a treasure to this team.

3. Jake Allen. It's his doing that the score remained within chasing distance until the (slightly bitter) end. He made some unreal saves and made it possible for Perry to ruin Markstrom's shutout.

4. Markstrom did not get a shutout. That...
...deserves its own take.

5. The boys were not on their game tonight, and it showed. They also played less than 20 hours earlier. I hear the "no excuses" crowd, and the people sneering that a one-hour plane flight is no big deal, etc. Do tell me: does the Habs' plane...
Read 8 tweets
11 Mar
Before I head to bed for the night, #Habs friends (I wasn't kidding when I said 3 a.m. was my bedtime; if anything, I was ignoring that it's often 3:30): a word about Suzuki.

I've seen people wondering what's wrong with him, questioning whether he's hiding an injury...
...and so on. He's not being dominant, so they say.

I can see what they're saying, but I'd be surprised if injury or anything else was going on. He was slipped into the 1C role before Julien was fired, and has quietly handled top line minutes, matchups, pressures...
...and responsibilities with no visible sign except the slight fall-off in the brilliance we've come to expect from him. And while many kids playing on outdoor rinks may dream of being top line center of a team like the Canadiens at the age of 21, the reality of...
Read 10 tweets
11 Mar
Confidence.

The word comes up again and again when we talk about the #Habs these days. Price's confidence is back, along with his game. Drouin and KK are visibly more confident, with results on the ice. From the kids to the vets the team radiates it, and tonight we saw...
...the results when the new system plus the little fixes plus that quality we call confidence all come together. Because it takes confidence to believe you can win, to avoid collapsing when the opposing team cuts a fragile lead in half, to stop and reset when discipline...
...falters and too many penalties rise.

Confidence. The Habs have got it back.

It raises the question: what happened to make them all lose it so badly in the first place? In a season where they started hot and everything was clicking, to all appearances, what happened?

In...
Read 6 tweets
13 Feb
I read Stu's column with some interest, because this theory--that it's the rolling of four lines that isn't working--is the opposite of my own inclination to think that rolling four lines *does* work for the #Habs, and getting away from it is what hurts.

So I ran the numbers...
...and found something intriguing.

CAVEATS:

1. Very small sample size. 14 games, 8 wins, 4 losses, 2 OT losses.
2. Comparison can only involve even-strength times on ice. Special team usage in reg or OT by definition is not "rolling lines".
3. Game situations...
...will cloud the issues; a player may have a short TOI due to injury or illness, or a situation might lead to a player being on the ice longer than usual. These impacts would be mitigated in the stats if we had a lot more games to draw stats from.
4. Most importantly, all...
Read 8 tweets

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