The Montreal Canadiens are a proud franchise with a storied past, and I've yet to find a better chronicler of Habs History than Robert at Eyes on the Prize. His blog is chock-full of the stuff that makes hockey culture so fulfilling: history, minutiae, players stories, and, of course, the game itself. Do yourself a favor and check out Eyes on the Prize. In keeping with our opposing blogger interviews, here's four questions with Robert.
What would you say is the conventional wisdom on the Canadiens, and why is it right/ or wrong?
There's no one single conventional wisdom about the club at present...there's a half dozen. The most intelligent consensus would be that the team isn't playing terrible, that the number of new players makes gelling take a little longer, and that the snipers are snakebitten so far. They've lost a pair of games that they've dominated and the record looks worse than it really seems.
There's been so much change that anyone claiming to have a handle on a solution this early, especially in light of Andrei Markov's loss would be a grandstanding idiot. This team just has to keep working to minimize mistakes and things could / should turn around. The Habs at the very best though, might only be a .500 club without Markov.
What's been the most surpising thing about this years' Habs team, for better or for worse?
Most surpringly thing...now that's a knuckler of a question. Seven games in, nothing is familiar! For me, it would have to be how futile the PP has been.
Tonight's game is a meeting between two teams who are no strangers to goalie... um... issues. Wanna trade?
A goalie with a name that sounds like "Lettin' In" would have a short shelf life in Montreal. He's a great talent without much help in front of him...like Price. We'll hang onto to Carey. Too much upside to give up on so soon.
In perusing your blog, I can tell that you're really big on narrative, which I personally think is awesome. What are the compelling storylines for the Canadiens this year?
Habs compelling storylines? You wanna top 100? Everything about the Habs is a major deal 24/7 so that's hard to sort. I'd say for the most part, it's all about the new crew fitting in, but those tales are always tempered with who's hot and who's not, Price's play under the microscope, Sergei Kostitsyn being sent down, the lack of a captain. You name it, and it's an issue, if not now, then sooner or later!
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