Habs Fly Past Panthers.
By Frank Rekas
They (I dont’ know who they are, but they are usually right) say that the last game of a road trip has a better that 75% chance of being the worst game of the trip. Yesterday’s collapse of the previously undefeated Florida Panthers at the hands of the Uncle Jack coached Montreal Canadiens was proof.
I was able to watch some of this fiasco on my laptop and thankfully kept telling myself that the game doesn’t count in the standings, and if there was a game where the wheels needed to fall off, it should come in the preseason. We all know that it’s going to happen more than once during the regular season however and that’s the tough part. What the heck, it will probably happen sometime during the first three games of the year on the West coast trip.
Watching the French Canadien feed of RDS was interesting. Even though I couldn’t understand what the hell they were saying, it was still better than listening to the local Panther announcers. Anyway, here’s my take (bullet style) on a game that hopefully the Cats put behind them. Way behind:
* There were quite a few regulars in the lineup last night. Unfortunately someone forgot to tell them the new slogan for the year is “We Came To Play”. Problem is Montreal Came to Win!
* The Montreal faithful began their tradional singing of “‘Ole Ole” with about five minutes left. In the second period!
* Little Stevie scored a goal that meant absolutely nothing late in the third. How about when it counts eh?
* David Booth got the Panthers on the board first as he seems to be in regular season form.
* Though I don’t know what they hell they were saying, I kinda liked listening to the French version of the broadcast.
* Hard to believe I was watching a Uncle Jack coached team. These guys were flying and didn’t need to play defence. Why? The Panthers didn’t challenge them.
* Erik Gudbranson had a pretty decent game. His passes were crisp, and tape to tape. He was kinda victimized on a goal by Tomas Plekanec, but other than that, he’s making it tough to be sent back to juniors. GOOD!
* Tomas Vokoun looked ok, but Jacob Markstrom probably couldn’t have stopped a beach ball.
* Did I say how nice it was to listen to the French broadcast?
* Five unanswered goals by Montreal. Unacceptable even in the preseason.
* Goaltender Carey Price was solid in net for the Habs, cooling off the boo birds. For now.
* Tough to play a road game when you have the distraction of knowing that your coming home to sunshine, tennis, golf, and South Beach.
* I have to say, even though the Panthers lost, and there will be more of that during the season, it was great to watch a game and then be able to put up a post like this afterwards. Doing posts like this are the kind of things I really love about writing. It has truly been a long, long summer!
The Panthers will have today off and then host the Carolina Hurricanes Wednesday evening, then host the Tampa Bay Lightning Friday night, with a Town Hall meeting for season ticket holders beforehand. Yes, I will be there!
The following cuts were made yesterday: Goaltender Tyler Plante, forwards Triston Grant, Bill Thomas, Evgeny Dadonov, Scott Timmins, Mike Duco all went to Rochester. Forward Quinton Howden was returned to his junior team the Moose Jaw Warriors.
The roster is now down to 30 players and seven more need to be cut by Monday. For me there’s only one question:
Does Erik Gudbranson survive?
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