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Habs Season Thread: 2024-25 Regular Season

WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
You know your player development is bad when you see promising results from prospects and your first thought isn't "When will this kid make the big club?" but rather "How will the Habs destroy this kid?"
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Player development issues is one thing

The main one is scouting talent

Most of our picks dont even pan put anywhere when traded or gone

We miss out on too many talented players in late rounds as well

Drafting is not an exact science but this putrid record for too long is all on ownership

There is no cap and language issues on obtaining qualified staff , even average would of put us in a much better spot .
 
GEEMAN said:
Player development issues is one thing

The main one is scouting talent

Most of our picks dont even pan put anywhere when traded or gone

We miss out on too many talented players in late rounds as well

Drafting is not an exact science but this putrid record for too long is all on ownership

There is no cap and language issues on obtaining qualified staff , even average would of put us in a much better spot .
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This is where I always trap the apologists who whine about how free agents don't want to come to Montreal because of taxes, language, weather, etc. Their argument is that the Habs aren't purposely trying not to be elite but merely that outside circumstances are conspiring against them. Well then, how do they explain away the scouting and development side of the business? If the Habs really cared about being elite then they would ensure that they had the most scouts, the best paid scouts and the best rated scouts in the hockey world. There's no salary cap for them and this franchise has a limitless supply of cash. They can cry poor when it comes to being limited by a player salary cap but those restrictions don't apply to your scouts. If you're going cheap in that department then you are choosing to be cheap.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
This is where I always trap the apologists who whine about how free agents don't want to come to Montreal because of taxes, language, weather, etc. Their argument is that the Habs aren't purposely trying not to be elite but merely that outside circumstances are conspiring against them. Well then, how do they explain away the scouting and development side of the business? If the Habs really cared about being elite then they would ensure that they had the most scouts, the best paid scouts and the best rated scouts in the hockey world. There's no salary cap for them and this franchise has a limitless supply of cash. They can cry poor when it comes to being limited by a player salary cap but those restrictions don't apply to your scouts. If you're going cheap in that department then you are choosing to be cheap.
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Yup , plus once drafted and acclimated we dont have much issue retaining players

So how do you solve , " no one wants to come here to play cry "

Fix your scouting/draft/development team
 
GrandWazoo said:
We lost our way in developing players a long time ago, it's been really bad since Gainey and truly abysmal under Bergevin. Gallagher survived the process, Evans' slow and steady progression has been a welcome change and Caufield seems to be a unicorn but I'm still waiting to see how we're going to screw that one. That's about it. We even managed to mess up Romanov whose progression went backward as the season went on.
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It seems only those with drive and determination survive the system.
 
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Habsy said:
It seems only those with done and determination survive the system.
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Yes, they succeed in spite of the organization rather than because of it. Suzuki for example, is pretty much immunized from being afflicted by this organizational malaise because he was developed elsewhere and came to the Habs as a fully formed, NHL ready player. And Gallagher succeeded largely due to the soft bigotry of low expectations, since he was an undersized 5th round pick rather than a high profile first rounder. Nothing was expected of him so anything he produced was a bonus.
 
And Evans is just that way from what I've read. Drive and determination to overcome pure talent.
 
CH1 said:
Gallagher and Evans were late round picks that were allowed to develop at a pace unencumbered by the pressure and hype of “instant” hopefuls
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Yeah, if they just let him marinate in Laval for two seasons under Bouchard I think the outcome would have been far better.
 
GEEMAN said:
Player development issues is one thing

The main one is scouting talent

Most of our picks dont even pan put anywhere when traded or gone

We miss out on too many talented players in late rounds as well

Drafting is not an exact science but this putrid record for too long is all on ownership

There is no cap and language issues on obtaining qualified staff , even average would of put us in a much better spot .
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It's both, our scouting sucks but even when we do pick a good one, they seem to derail as soon as they reach the pro teams.

And I don't buy the "but they don't do anything elsewhere" argument, it's because they're already broken at that point. We wasted their critical years of development, most players won't recover from that. It didn't happen with McDonagh and Sergachev because they were developed properly somewhere else. Had we ruined them for 2-3 years then traded them they might never had the career they had.
 
GrandWazoo said:
It's both, our scouting sucks but even when we do pick a good one, they seem to derail as soon as they reach the pro teams.

And I don't buy the "but they don't do anything elsewhere" argument, it's because they're already broken at that point. We wasted their critical years of development, most players won't recover from that. It didn't happen with McDonagh and Sergachev because they were developed properly somewhere else. Had we ruined them for 2-3 years then traded them they might never had the career they had.
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Good post but I think we simply draft NHL busts , low IQ players , or NHL longshots
 
GEEMAN said:
Good post but I think we simply draft NHL busts , low IQ players , or NHL longshots
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There is some of that but isn't it a coincidence that 2 of the 3 first round picks that developed properly since 1993 were traded early and developed by another organization?

Even Pacioretty had to plead with the organization to let him develop in the minors.
Carolina flat out said that they think they can develop KK better than Montreal.
I vividly recall a Leafs scout/staff questioning how we were developing Poehling him in the minors, that he needed work on some aspects that we were not addressing.
Cooper also mentioned during the finals how Sergachev was a long development project and that he had many things to work on, yet he was able to do so with the confidence of the staff, quite a departure from the cold shoulder approach of the Habs.
 
GrandWazoo said:
There is some of that but isn't it a coincidence that 2 of the 3 first round picks that developed properly since 1993 were traded early and developed by another organization?

Even Pacioretty had to plead with the organization to let him develop in the minors.
Carolina flat out said that they think they can develop KK better than Montreal.
I vividly recall a Leafs scout/staff questioning how we were developing Poehling him in the minors, that he needed work on some aspects that we were not addressing.
Cooper also mentioned during the finals how Sergachev was a long development project and that he had many things to work on, yet he was able to do so with the confidence of the staff, quite a departure from the cold shoulder approach of the Habs.
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I keep thinking about Tinordi, who seemed to have earned a regular spot on the Habs blue line and then he made a mistake, got benched by Therrien and never played again. You do something like that to a young player and it can break them irreparably. The fact that Tinordi never did anything after that doesn't necessarily mean he was never any good. It could just mean that he was crushed and unable to recover from it. We will never know what might have happened had he played for a more enlightened organization that didn't rush prospects into the league in order to chase wild card playoff berths like some stupid expansion team.

The thing that gives me hope about Suzuki is how much Cooper praised him in the handshake line. I trust his opinion more than Bergevin's or Timmins'. Of course, there again, Suzuki was developed elsewhere so of course he's the real deal now. If you want to know what Suzuki might likely have turned into had the Habs drafted him, look no further than Kotkaniemi.
 
I think too much is being placed on the system and not the player. In the case of Tinordi, he just wasn't that good.
 
Habsy said:
I think too much is being placed on the system and not the player. In the case of Tinordi, he just wasn't that good.
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So why did we trade up to pick him....that's on the team, not the player. If Tinordi or KK are not 1st round picks, everyone is praising the scouting team for picking them
 
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