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Laval Rocket Thread

How Laval does in the playoffs is utterly irrelevant to me.

I don't care about how an AHL team is doing when the players there have no future on the main team. If there was Barron, Guhle, Mailloux, Harris, etc, then I'd care. Those are the only players that this would matter to. Maybe Primeau & Ylonen make it, but I strongly doubt it. They had a prime opportunity this year to play regular minutes on the worst rosters in the league and couldn't stick.
 
GGpX said:
How Laval does in the playoffs is utterly irrelevant to me.

I don't care about how an AHL team is doing when the players there have no future on the main team. If there was Barron, Guhle, Mailloux, Harris, etc, then I'd care. Those are the only players that this would matter to. Maybe Primeau & Ylonen make it, but I strongly doubt it. They had a prime opportunity this year to play regular minutes on the worst rosters in the league and couldn't stick.
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Was Harris eligible to play in the AHL ?
 
GGpX said:
How Laval does in the playoffs is utterly irrelevant to me.

I don't care about how an AHL team is doing when the players there have no future on the main team. If there was Barron, Guhle, Mailloux, Harris, etc, then I'd care. Those are the only players that this would matter to. Maybe Primeau & Ylonen make it, but I strongly doubt it. They had a prime opportunity this year to play regular minutes on the worst rosters in the league and couldn't stick.
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I disagree. A losing culture is contagious, flip the dynamic. Let the new blood come into a winning situation.
 
Habsy said:
I disagree. A losing culture is contagious, flip the dynamic. Let the new blood come into a winning situation.
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There is some merit to this line of thinking. The 1985 Sherbrooke Canadiens won the Calder Cup and then the Habs won the Stanley Cup the following season. But they did that with 9 rookies in the line-up, guys who had won in Sherbrooke the year before. When I look down the Laval roster I don't see future NHLers, let alone future champions. What I do see are a lot of has-been's and never-will-be's who have found their level.

The only prospects we have that are worth getting excited about aren't playing in Laval this year. Guhle, Harris, Mailloux, Roy. None of them are playing for the Rocket. If a bunch of them get inserted into the Laval roster next season and the team wins playoff rounds, then I'll pay attention. But I'm with GGpX on this year's squad. I couldn't give two shits about how well Cederic Paquette or Alex Belzille are playing right now.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
There is some merit to this line of thinking. The 1985 Sherbrooke Canadiens won the Calder Cup and then the Habs won the Stanley Cup the following season. But they did that with 9 rookies in the line-up, guys who had won in Sherbrooke the year before. When I look down the Laval roster I don't see future NHLers, let alone future champions. What I do see are a lot of has-been's and never-will-be's who have found their level.

The only prospects we have that are worth getting excited about aren't playing in Laval this year. Guhle, Harris, Mailloux, Roy. None of them are playing for the Rocket. If a bunch of them get inserted into the Laval roster next season and the team wins playoff rounds, then I'll pay attention. But I'm with GGpX on this year's squad. I couldn't give two shits about how well Cederic Paquette or Alex Belzille are playing right now.
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Its all about prospect development and feeding the big club with plug in players

I cant believe how over the years we couldnt develop role players but had to overpay stiffs like Savard or Alzner

These are plugs you draft/develop then let them walk away .

I am ok with 1 year patch fillers you recycle every year to fill a few spots
 
Habsy said:
Culture is real.
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If a hockey team was made of yogurt maybe. You develop a winning culture by actually winning, not from talking about winning in the past.

I don't know if they still have it, but back in the Maple Leaf Gardens days the Leafs' dressing room had painted on the walls, in large capital letters, "Defeat does not rest lightly on their shoulders", which looks and sounds like an appeal to some sort of team culture. But the reality was that defeat rested just fine on their shoulders. It's been sat there for 55 years and shows no signs of taking off. So no matter what the sign says, the real culture is one of perpetual organizational failure.

Winning at the AHL level was important to the Habs' culture when it was 1985 and Patrick Roy, Stephane Richer, Brian Skrudland and Claude Lemieux (and a defenseman named Michel Therrien) were doing the winning for Sherbrooke. I doubt it means anything this year with so many NHL cast-off's and career scrubs filling out the roster. It may mean something next year if our actual prospects wind up playing there.
 
Culture is real, and matters... in a team that is actually going to be together.

The AHL team could, theoretically, have 5 returning players if management so chooses. Fairbrother, Ylonen, RHP, Norlinder, Hillis. Those are the only players on that roster that are contractually obligated to be back next season unless they get traded. Everyone else, without exception, doesn't have a contract.

You can build as great of a culture as you want, but AHL teams have incredible roster turnovers. It's very rare to have an Alex Belzile or a Xavier Ouellet that just sticks around with one AHL team. That great culture that's been built could be disassembled in one summer.

It's part of the reason why winning in the AHL has never been that much of a concern to me. The reason is simple: It's very rare that you have prospects who are the reason you win, it's almost always AHL veterans. I invite you to check out the leaders in points during the off season, and they're all AHLers who are never going to play regular minutes on a decent team in the NHL.

You know when I care about winning in the AHL? When Carey Price is in nets and running shit. When in the late 2000s, we had rosters that had legitimate NHL prospects like Subban, Weber, Fortier, O'Byrne, Wyman, Maxwell, White, etc and they were doing well.

But I don't care about results for Sami Niku, for Alex Belzile, for Kevin Roy, for Danick Martel and the rest of those AHLers. I simply don't.

My care in the AHL starts and ends with player development. Would I rather they win? Obviously, but when the reason they win is nearly exclusive to how good the AHL veterans are? Sorry, couldn't give a shit.
 
I would care about culture a lot more if the team had a lot of real prospects. This team, unfortunately, doesn't. And I don't think there's a single future NHLer on the current Laval Rockets except maybe Primeau.

Next year, with the influx of youth, I'll care about culture. This roster, however, not one iota.
 
6-1 win for the Rocket in game one against Rochester. 4 goals on 10 shots for Martel. Monster game. 31 saves for Primeau.
 
Allen / Primeau, trade Allen at the deadline and bring up whoever the #1 in Laval is to play with Primeau. Or pick a guy up on waivers, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
 
habs25th said:
It's as easy a job to take as possible. Montembault and Allen?

Might as well not sign Montembault and go with a 1A and 1B of Allen and Primeau. We're going for Bedard anyway.
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Sign Montembault….leave Primeau another year in AHL….
 
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