Dennis Kane’s Excellent Montreal Canadiens Blog

Las Vegas is my kind of town. I like the lights, the action, the cleavage all over the place. In reality I’m just a guy from a small and isolated town a million miles away. But in my heart, I’m a member of Sinatra’s Rat Pack. Although I suppose Frank and Dino and Sammy and the others were more concerned about gorgeous dames and martinis than the Montreal Canadiens.

And with the rumblings in the last year or so about a possible NHL franchise being placed in Las Vegas, I decided to think this one out.  I’m not a fan of teams being in hot, palm tree-laden places, and I wasn’t sure if Las Vegas measured up. But if the NHL decides to go into another American city, I think Vegas is a good choice indeed. Maybe the best choice in the whole U.S of A.

As long as the arena is near the strip.

The strip is always packed by people from elsewhere, including, of course, thousands of Canadians, and Americans from cold states. Hundreds of thousand of us. It’s not like Nashville or Miami or Phoenix, with people just learning what a puck is. Vegas is made up of people like you and me.

The big shows here cost anywhere from 80 to 200 bucks usually, just like a hockey ticket. And people create incredible line ups to see Barry Manilow, Donny and Marie, and all the other acts I wouldn’t pay five bucks to see.

I don’t think there’d be a problem at all selling 20,000 tickets to a hockey game here. People are just itching to spend money, and do things they can’t do in Moose Jaw and Des Moines. 

But like I say, put the arena within walking distance of the strip. I think that’s crucial. Too far away and people will go see Donny and Marie instead.

I don’t want to go home. There’s too many palm trees to admire, too many hotels to explore, too many two dollar beers at O’Shea’s and Bills to drink.

Game notes:

Habs are at 4.5 to 1 odds to win the Cup. It was 5-1 the other day.

Regardless, I’ve got my ticket.

Habs and Flyers Saturday night. Which Canadiens team will show up, beauty or the beast?

Hockey items you could discuss with your friends after five or six beer:

The Philadelphia Flyers have sent Steve Downey down to their AHL affiliate, the Philadelphia Phantoms.

Players around the NHL now stand a much better chance of not having their skulls cracked. AHL players, however, are putting extra padding in their helmets and have told their wives to remarry if anything happens to them.

Steve Downey is Sean Avery on crystal meth.

Gary Bettman says everything’s rosy in the the league and so talk of a team in Canada is silly, especially the part about having two franchises in the Toronto area. Bettman may or may not have said this as he overlooked the three franchises around New York from his office window.

This is a guy who probably even makes French-Canadian oldtimers long for Clarence Campbell.

And why are teams like Atlanta, Florida, Nashville, Phoenix etc. so important to the little man, and placing a team in Canada isn’t?

There has to be a reason. I just don’t know what the reason is. Is he getting fat little Christmas bonuses from people?

Was the bully who picked on Bettman in school a transplanted Canadian?

Rumours contimue about Wild star Marian Gaborik being traded to Montreal. I’m assuming Gary Bettman is against this because if it makes the Habs even stronger and even more of a Cup contender, the Stanley Cup could end up in the dreaded backwaters of Canada, one of the commissioner’s worst nightmares.

And one of my worst nightmares is a major trade involving the Canadiens which disrupts the harmony and chemistry they’ve got going now.  If they landed Gaborik for future draft picks only, then great. But they’d need to clear out some salaries to make room for him, which means moving some existing players.

Is this a good idea?

Did the Boomer-Pocket commercial make you smile?

Bobby Clarke says Sean Avery is an idiot and someone should punch him out. Of course, when Clarke played, he was an angelic, gentlemanly fellow whom the whole hockey world loved. But aside from that, I completely agree with him.

This five-game break in the schedule for the Canadiens may or may not suck. Players can nurse their wounds and certain things can be worked out in practices, but geez, they’ve been on such a roll. And don’t forget about the poor wives who have to put up with them for this long. This isn’t normal for the little ladies.

Hope all this doesn’t affect the big game against Anaheim Saturday night.

Is it possible Gary Bettman told the schedule planners to give good Canadian teams big long days off to disrupt their play?

It was so much more than just a nice 4-1 win for the Habs over the Phoenix Coyotes. It was good, it was bad, it was ugly. And because of the bad and the ugly, big Georges Laraque saw more ice time than he probably expected.

Andre Kostitsyn was leveled in the second period by someone named Kurt Sauer, and lay on the ice in obvious bad shape for an uncomfortable length of time. But in the end, he refused a stretcher and skated off with the help of his teammates. It wasn’t a nice situation, and younger brother Sergei was surely the most unhappy and concerned person in the rink. So far there’s been no word on how Andrei is, at least that I’m aware of.

That was the bad and ugly part.

The good parts were many. Tom Kostopoulos tangled with the bigger Sauer because Tom Kostopoulos does this. He sticks up for his teammates. And that’s why I think he’s one of the most important guys on the team.

And Georges Laraque was sent on, on an almost regular basis after the Kostitsyn incident, and after Alex Kovalev took a stick in the face, and big Georges did was he was brought to the Canadiens to do. He showed these goons that if you mess around with the stars, you have to fight him.

And who wants to fight Georges Laraque?

Teams will learn this quickly, starting tonight. Screw around and meet Georges.

Oh, the good stuff doesn’t end here. There was a goal and two assists for an apparently rejuvenated Saku Koivu. Carey Price was once again great. Guillaume Latendresse continues his good play and had an assist.

And last, but not least, there’s Alex Tanguay. This guy was born to play for the Habs. He scored two goals, this after scoring the shootout winner against Boston on Wednesday. He looks happy. He plays a good two-way game with the accent on finesse. It’s hard to imagine that he was such an non-entity in Calgary.

And not only that, but Tanguay is what Daniel Briere could have been in Montreal. He’s fast becoming the toast of the town, a good Quebec boy who’s fit in in Montreal like we’d hoped he would. He’s going to be a huge name as the season goes on, and he’s got a big smile on his face.

Briere wanted no part of this special limelight and chose Philadelphia. But that’s good. Because we’ve got Tanguay now.

And one last thing about Tanguay that I found really funny. He said the other day that he had no idea of the history of the Montreal Canadiens, except what went on in the last ten or fifteen years or so.

I suppose many players nowadays have no idea about the great past of the Habs, but when I think about it, I shouldn’t be surprised. These guys are young. Tanguay was born in November, 1979, so even when the Habs won the Cup in 1986, he was only six years old. (Is my math right?)

And I think he paid more attention to the Quebec Nordiques when he was a kid.

GAME NOTES:

I’m still having a little trouble getting used to not seeing the two big CH’s at centre ice at the Bell Centre. The big 100’s painted there are fine, but the CH’s are being missed by me.

The other new addition to the club, Robert Lang, has also fit in really well and notched an unassisted goal tonight. Bob Gainey made some nice decisions by bringing in Lang, Tanguay, and Laraque.

NEXT UP:

The Florida Panthers are in town Monday. This is another team I would move to Canada if I was the Supreme Ruler.

Wayne Gretzky’s Phoenix Coyotes are at the Bell Centre Saturday night for a tilt with the Canadiens, and I mention Wayne Gretzky because other than him and Kyle Turris, there’s not a whole lot to say about the Coyotes.

Maybe I could say that the Coyotes were originally the Winnipeg Jets and maybe should be again. Or I could say that Kyle Turris has a good chance to be a big star in the NHL. Or I could say that hockey in the desert just doesn’t seem right. Or I could say that the official average attendance in Phoenix for a Coyotes’ game is about 14,000, but in reality it’s probably less than that. Or I could say that legendary Russian taskmaster Viktor Tikhonov’s grandson Viktor is on the Coyotes roster. Or I could say that both Shane Doan and Ed Jovanovski are good Canadian boys and it must be weird for them to be playing in such a non-hockey market.

Whatever. I could say anything. But as long as the Habs win, collect their two points, and no one gets injured, who cares what anyone says?

If it wasn’t for Carey Price, the Boston Bruins would’ve fought back from more than a 3-0 deficit. They almost overcame a bunch of Hab greats in the building, an anxious dropping-of-the-puck by Elmer Lach and Emile ‘Butch’ Bouchard that had me a little worried for Butch, a fired-up crowd, and the rest of us in TV land who only had eyes on the Canadiens.

And the Montreal Canadiens got no help at all from the supposedly state-of-the-art Bell Centre.

It began like a Disney movie. The interviews with Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur, the old players introduced - Henri Richard, Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe and many others, the vintage photos and films, the lavish praise from hockey analysts, and most importantly, three big goals in the first period by Alex Kovalev, Saku Koivu, and Maxim Lapierre.

It was a perfect script. Better start drawing up the parade route plans.

But then, disturbingly, the Canadiens adrenaline, for whatever reason, dried up half-way through, and little by little, only Price was there to keep it close. So much for the classic third-period team I talked about yesterday. Montreal proved that first-period hockey absolutely isn’t good enough.

Shamefully, it was a construction flaw that almost turned a great night into a complete disaster. An innocent shoot-in that hit an obvious seam in the boards that fooled Price, banged in by the Bruins’ Marc Savard, and with only 47 seconds to go, the game was tied.

It’s unacceptable for the boards to have this flaw. Montreal brass better have a good long talk with the maintenance foreman.

In the end, Alex Tanguay scored the shootout winner and the night was salvaged. But it’s not good. Montreal has to play a full sixty minutes. Thankfully it’s early in the season and they can learn a big lesson from this.

This is how the Canadiens almost lost the opening round series to Boston in last year’s playoff, by not keeping the pedal to the metal.

So there’s still some fine-tuning to be done.

But it’s two points. And for now, that’s good enough.

GAME NOTE:

Georges Laraque, in his first game in a Habs uniform, in the first two and a half minutes of the game, had a good scrap with Bruins’ Shawn Thornton. And although it was fairly even, Laraque made his presence felt, which I’m sure is what he wanted to do.

The crowd started to boo Guillaume Latendresse a little tonight. He has to pick it up a little.

Next up - The Phoenix Coyotes visit the Bell Centre Saturday. You can bet the boards will be fixed by then.

The Canadiens ended their pre-season games with a 3-0 loss to Jacques Lemaire’s quite boring Minnesota Wild. So the final tally for the Habs was six wins and three losses.

And if you think 6-3-0 is okay, you’re right. But it really doesn’t say much about the upcoming regular season. These games, of course, are all about seeing prospects, deciding on lines, and getting your act together before the going gets tough.

Don’t forget, the Vancouver Canucks now sit at six wins and no losses in pre-season play, and they’re not going to be hoisting the Stanley Cup any time soon.

Max Pacioretty and Kyle Chipchura didn’t dress, and although Pacioretty was impressive these last few weeks, he’s been sent down to Hamilton along with hard-shooting Yannick Weber. There’s just not a lot of empty spaces on the Habs roster right now.

Saku Koivu and the rest of the wounded regulars are back, except for Georges Laraque and Francis Bouillon.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I woke up after working a graveyard shift just in time for the second period to start in Stockholm between Ottawa and Pittsburgh. It was amazing. For about the first seven or eight minutes of play in this period, the building looked half-empty, with big chunks of seats sitting deserted.

Then finally, with almost half the period gone, everyone was back in their seats and it looked to be a sell-out. What if Sidney Crosby scored some kind of mind-blowing goal while all these people were still in the lobby eating their smelt sandwiches?

I guess in Sweden, fans aren’t in a big hurry to get to their seats and watch the game they paid about a hundred bucks for.

My son says it’s good to have NHL games played in Europe, if only so Europeans can see how real referees and linemen handle games. Officiating in Europe has been horrendous since Moses had peach fuzz. 

IN MORE NEWS:

Apparently, four American teams are on the bubble as money-losing franchises that could move - Atlanta, Phoenix, Nashville, and the Florida Panthers.

Why is the NHL so hesitant to bring a struggling team back to Canada?  Winnipeg in particular.

IN MORE AND MORE NEWS:

Remember the big picture of the Queen at one end of the rink in the old Winnipeg Arena?

For those of you too young to have seen it, here it is.