HabsCast Hockey Blog

Uploaded on March 27, 2007 (flickr.com)
by Accensio.com

“Center, center, and center.” We all hear it and say it every year, “the Canadiens need a center.” The reason this year is that someone needs to come in to nudge Kovalev into playing up to his ability. While I completely agree with the need for some help up the middle, I’m going to be greedy and ask Mr. Gainey for some help on the blue line as well. Last Saturday’s game was quite a spectacle. The Habs weren’t expecting a hard fore-check from the Senators and once the Sens smelled blood they pounced on every puck that was coughed up by what is supposed to be a good defensive team. Montreal was never able to adjust in the game against the Senators.

While watching the Detroit match up, I was in awe of Lidstrom, as I’m sure everyone is and I watched how calm him and Chelios are in their own zone. Those guys are able to completely shut down a team. When I look at our blue line, I see Craig Rivet, Sheldon Souray, Mike Komisarek, and with out a doubt our best defensemen as well as Komi’s security blanket, Andrei Markov. I am a huge fan of all those guys and I would be really disappointed to see Rivet or Souray go. Rivet is the longest serving Hab and loves playing in Montreal but I’m sure everyone will agree is an average defenseman. When it comes to Souray, he has been absolutely amazing this year and has been one of our best players making our power play one of the best in the league. With that said, I believe we should trade him. Souray’s value has never been higher, yes he is a great offensive defensemen but he is still a liability on the blue line.

I look around the league and I see players like Blake, Chelios, Lidstrom, Rafalski and Bouwmeester, who is a plus 10 this year. I’m not suggesting for a minute that it is easy to get a defenseman like the one’s I have mentioned but I would like to see Gainey try to get some help. I would be willing to see Souray and his presence on the powerplay go to have a guy that can calm things down in our zone as well as someone that can be relied on to make the right play the majority of the time. Basically what I’m saying is that I want another Markov, calm, emotionless, reliable and a guy that can always make the first pass coming out of our zone. We see it time and time again, when Komi gets into a difficult situation or seems hesitant he passes it over to Markov. Komisarek’s game has been greatly helped by Markov to the point where if Markov where to go we would be losing Komisarek as well to a certain point. I believe that to have another great shut down defensemen like Markov on our team would be more beneficial than having the offense that Souray provides. Both would be great, but I’m not that greedy.