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Around The League - 2024-25 Regular Season

GrandWazoo said:
My point is that there was other players with size with more skills than MM. Unless the order from above was to get the biggest player available in the draft.
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pretty slim pickings tbh if you look at the forwards drafted during the next 10-15 slots
 
The reason players like McCarron will always have a place in the first round is everyone is looking for this generation's Milan Lucic / Tom Wilson.

You get one of those every 10 or so years, it seems.

The McCarron pick had virtually no chance of working out. If McCarron wasn't 6'6", he wasn't getting drafted. He had literally no redeeming qualities to his play. One of the most puzzling picks I ever saw.
 
GrandWazoo said:
It's all because of that. It also makes it harder to get proactive with the aging roster players when you have no replacements in your pipeline and you still try to be competitive. While I would have liked us to get some pieces in return of guys like Plekanec, Markov, and not commit long term to Price, we haven't lost that many players for nothing.

Gainey is the one who set us back for years by losing Koivu, Kovalev, Tanguay, Komisarek, Souray, Hamrlik, S.Kostitsyn, Ribeiro, Beauchemin, Robidas, Higgins, McDonagh for absolutely nothing.
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Bingo and thats our issue

We have a slim margin of error at the draft table

However capitalizing on a handful of players above would of made a huge difference

Sprinkle in a few years of drafting high due to suckage and we have more talent to work with

Thats what bothers me , we kept our vets and never came close to winning

We needed a Majuri type regime who makes bold decisions
 
GGpX said:
The reason players like McCarron will always have a place in the first round is everyone is looking for this generation's Milan Lucic / Tom Wilson.

You get one of those every 10 or so years, it seems.

The McCarron pick had virtually no chance of working out. If McCarron wasn't 6'6", he wasn't getting drafted. He had literally no redeeming qualities to his play. One of the most puzzling picks I ever saw.
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I think it also did not help that the Habs got absolutely bullied by the Hens in the playoffs that year (remember that embarrassing line brawl in Game 3 where all five Habs got their asses kicked not to mention Gryba steamrolling Eller in Game 1).

Basically, drafting McCarron was a knee jerk reaction to get durrr biggar! Kind of like how the Rags are going all out on grit because Wilson pimp slapped their players around this season
 
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Rocket Man74 said:
I think it also did not help that the Habs got absolutely bullied by the Hens in that playoffs that year (remember that embarrassing line brawl in Game 3 where all five Habs got their asses kicked not to mention Gryba steamrolling Eller in Game 1).

Basically, drafting McCarron was a knee jerk reaction to get durrr biggar! Kind of like how the Rags are going all out because Wilson pimp slapped their players around this season
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Just goes to show the juvenile mentality among NHL GM's. Embarrass their team just one time and they become your bitch for life. You can goad them into doing almost any dumb thing you want. The reason why the NHL has the reputation for being a copycat league is because most GM's have the mentality of a 15 year old.
 
Rocket Man74 said:
I think it also did not help that the Habs got absolutely bullied by the Hens in that playoffs that year (remember that embarrassing line brawl in Game 3 where all five Habs got their asses kicked not to mention Gryba steamrolling Eller in Game 1).

Basically, drafting McCarron was a knee jerk reaction to get durrr biggar! Kind of like how the Rags are going all out because Wilson pimp slapped their players around this season
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Yeah, there was a definite overreaction to that series, just look at the 2013 draft class after that one. Funny enough, the only players who made it were the ones that weren't the big grit guys (Reway's career got derailed after his sickness, otherwise I'm convinced he'd be in the NHL today). That was also the series that effectively ended Latendresse's NHL career. He got scratched after refusing to get into it during the scrubs and never saw the ice again after that.
 
Esposito played 13 games for the Habs in 68-69, going 5-4-4 (including 2 shutouts) backing up Rogie Vachon and Gump Worsley and was part of the 69 Cup winning team. He was picked up by Chicago in an intra-league draft, having been left unprotected. As compensation the Habs received $25K cash.
 
I remember Tony's time with the Habs. He came up at some point in the season when injuries struck, and played pretty well to carry us through a stretch. I remember too that he had trouble with long shots during his time with us but stopped the tough ones and won us some games.. It might have been a vision problem I believe, and I don't recall it mentioned much after in Chicago. But he did miss one famous long one after-Lemaire's goal in the deciding game 7 in 1971 that changed the game around and led to our Cup.

There are myths out there that Tony was let go because Dryden was in the wings but that wasn't really the case. Dryden was barely on the radar,still playing college hockey. We had Worsley, Vachon, and also Phil Myre in the system. We could only protect two goalies in the annual draft that was held in those days, and the Hawks grabbed Espo while we ended up getting a goalie named Jack Norris from them (he of the famed Phil Esposito trade) in what could be termed a trade (both unprotected in the draft). The next year we drafted a guy named Ray Martyniuk early in the first round (1970)-he was the big prospect for us, not Dryden. Both showed up for camp in 1970. Martyniuk never played an NHL game. Never did hear his story.......the media wasn't like it is today. I was always curious what happened-if he had issues or just wasn't that good..I followed everything Habs in those days of course-lived and breathed hockey, like a lot of 12-13 year olds.

Fact it though, we had two of the dominant goalies of the seventies in the system at roughly the same time, so the stories get crossed up..
 
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I read Phil Esposito's autobiography when I was in highschool and he had mentioned that they were playing in a game together when they were young & Tony had given up a really bad goal, sort of like the Lemaire one from center ice. Phil gave him hell afterwards and asked him if he was blind or something, only to find out later on that Tony's eyesight was so bad that it made him almost legally blind.

I don't know how true that is, but if he had the kind of career we had with that kind of eyesight, then great on him.
 
I remember he wore contacts.....don't recall the long shots plaguing him later in his career or generally with Chicago other than the noted exception, but I recall it clearly with us. I guess he adjusted somehow with something. But yes, quite remarkable.
 
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