Plus/Minus returns from a monthlong hiatus

Sorry, readers. Somehow a month has passed since the last Plus/Minus. Blame Jeremy Lin, or the Hal Gill trade, or my inexplicably exhausting professional life. (I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I'm an international superspy. You're welcome.) How to even Plus or Minus a month's worth of things?

PLUS

+ It feels good to say that Max Pacioretty has a 30-goal season. He's playing to the potential we always knew he had, and he's showing an incredible amount of class. We couldn't be prouder of him.

+ to Blake Geoffrion, so bashful and yet so proud to be playing for the storied Montreal Canadiens. And scoring his first goal as a Hab!
+ Glad to have Markov back.

+ 3 High school hockey player Jack Jablonski is making incredible progress after a life-threatening injury. And another Plus to the hockey community for supporting him. And an extra big Plus to his team for winning the Minnesota state championship.

+ The Columbus Blue Jackets might just treat their fans better than any other team in the NHL. They have fun with social media and their "Get a Johnson nameplate for your Carter jersey" promotion was hysterical.

+ I'll never understand why, in 2012, we live in a world that needs to be reminded of things like gay rights, but I'll support any campaign that I need to in order to make this world a better place. The You Can Play project is basically perfect. It's honest, inspiring, perfectly executed, and not even a little bit fake or saccharine. It's everything that "Hockey Is For Everyone" should be. Take note, NHL.

+ Proof that things do get better: I loved the series over at Puck Buddys about a high school hockey player who made the brave decision to come out not only to his friends and teammates, but to his entire school. He - and his teammates - could just set the precedent for other gay teens to have the strength to do the same.

+ I guess "Linsanity" has died down a little, either because all of the puns have been made, or because people are expecting him to be even more superhuman than he's already been. That being said: JEREMY LIN! So good at basketball! Such a sweet guy! So nerdy!

+ I'm not cheating on hockey with basketball, I swear, it's just that NBA All Star weekend is one of my favourite sporting events of the entire year, and this year, jumping over people was the big trend at the slam dunk competition. One of those people was Diddy. So, yeah, it was pretty cool.
+ I don't know why I found it so funny that Lindsay Lohan played herself in a "Scared Straight" sketch on SNL, and used "Sidney Crosby" as an insult. But I laughed.

MINUS

- Someone needs to fix Jonathan Toews' concussion right now.

- Habs fans are never happy. They complain that so many players on this team are so terrible, and then are disappointed that almost nothing happened at the trade deadline. We can't be sellers if no one's buying.

- The "Canucks fans" who defaced the outside of Milan Lucic's church need to be found and punished. Or, if no one finds them, whatever, I'll just get on my high horse right now and tell them they're going to Hell.

- ugh, Los Angeles, why would you reunite Carter and Richards in a city with more excess than Philadelphia? Stop trying to be the Flyers. Just be yourself. It's all that you can do.

- When Sports Illustrated comes in the mail every week, I usually have to cross my fingers and hope that its pages will hold more than three sentences' worth of hockey coverage. It should come as no surprise that they foolishly think "puck bunnies" is a term used to describe all female hockey fans. What would they call male fans of women's tennis? Just wondering.

Other bloggers have written great pieces on the Sports Illustrated "puck bunny" mess. There might not be anything else left to say about it. But reading their pieces has made me want to write more often than just once a month.

Also, if you haven't heard the news, Czechtacular has started a side project called Seven Thousand Volts. Go to it!

It's always spiteful in Philadelphia

I forgot that those "What DIDN'T happen today?" days could happen in June.

So the Flyers take away Columbus' Jakub Voracek and give them Jeff Carter, who I don't like precisely because he's a Philadelphia Flyer. But he didn't make Team Canada without being good at hockey, so this might actually be good for the Jackets. Do I stick to my stubborn guns or swallow my pride? Is this how Columbus reacts to being pushed aside last season in favour of the more exciting LA Kings? It was like your favourite indie band selling out and putting a song on some superhero movie soundtrack, but the song isn't terrible, and you don't know what to think of them anymore.

Oh, but then Philadelphia wasn't finished messing with what could have been a fabulously productive day. No, why would they be? I'm going to look up the name of the Flyers' GM (I don't know it because I really couldn't care less about the guy) then find him on Facebook or something and give him a piece of my mind.

(Paul Holmgren, eh? Well, get ready for a strongly worded email, Paul.)

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of Mike Richards. He's my age but he looks and acts like he's someone's dad, and that is not to be taken as a compliment. (Not in this instance. But I know lots of great dads, including my own, who are much better people than Mike Richards.) I'm also confused whenever teams trade away their captains, unless they really don't want the guy as captain anymore for some terrible reason. (Maybe I'm just too loyal to captains.) But, whatever, even though the Flyers built Mike Richards and thus deserve him, they decided to put him up for trade. 

And, of course, to spite me, they go after the Los Angeles Kings, who I'm having a not-so-secret flirtation with. So, yeah, in some cruel twist of fate, we'll all get to see Mike Richards in a Kings jersey next year, and not in a "dump a bucket of pig's blood on him at the prom" kind of way. Remember when Richards went off about P.K. Subban and rookies and respect and stuff? The Kings are in the middle of a renaissance, aided in part by all these draft picks and prospects. He's either going to teach them something or turn into a whiny old man really fast.

At least Brayden Schenn will be spared of potential rookie-bashing? Nope, there's no bright side to this.

To make matters worse, Wayne Simmonds is a Philadelphia Flyer. I love Simmonds. I don't love the Flyers. This does not compute. There have been rumours of Simmonds trades for a while now, and I was really hoping he'd stay put. Or maybe be traded to the Habs, because who doesn't want a fast, aggressive, threatening goal-scorer? Instead, he was taken away from a team that I love and sent to the Flyers. And I already know that he'll make a great Flyer, and I'll have to watch him be a great Flyer four times this year against my Habs.

It hurts.

So in one day, Philly poached two players Czechtacular loves and two players I love from the Western Conference. Nope. The Flyers aren't doing anything to make me like them.

Unless this whole Wayne Simmonds thing pans out.

Because it's mandatory I step in here

I have somewhat ridiculously long-term commitments to my favourites. One of my most long-standing is that with strawberries, eventually evolving into the combination of strawberries and chocolate. Try all they might, Chez Cora persists in the idea of getting me to order something else, but I'm a little--more like a LOT--difficult to shake.

Mark Recchi's been stuck with me since my hockey fandom started in 1998, despite sporting few jerseys since then that I would ever be seen dead wearing myself. Tomas Plekanec shares the same burden since his first (or second, if we're counting his draft day) public appearance in North America (Jamboree 2001).

He didn't even have a goatee then, to give you an idea. (Still the turtleneck though, so don't worry.)

Guy Boucher's a bit of a "new" one by my standards, running at four years now. I'll be the first one to admit that the ones that stick like the ones I've mentioned come with a little overprotectiveness and this is no less true even for the newbies. So here I go.

(credit, once again, to l'Express)

Every decision comes with two halves. No, it's not every day that a coach that's only been in the pro ranks for one year gets so much buzz and excitement, translating to offers from bona fide NHL teams. It's also not every day that said coach would decline the opportunity to move up.

But in all this rarity there's a little familiarity, from "weighing all the options" to "one step at a time." Individuals, and special ones such as Boucher, especially with his attention to detail and considerations of the whole picture, don't jump at just anything, no matter how good it looks. Remember, this is only June and the Bulldogs were just eliminated from the playoffs. Wrapping up that season is as new as most of the attention those accomplishments have brought him so far. The setting is very much the same as what it was last year, when the bubbly from the President's Cup hadn't even had time to go flat and in waltzed Julien BriseBois and the rest of the Hamilton crew.

I know what you're thinking: "That time he said yes. Did something go wrong?" Not necessarily. His demeanour approaching last year's offer and the one now have been the exact same--which is what the people who look at this latest turn of events with a puzzled eye may not necessarily understand. Personally, I was fully prepared to have to make another adjustment in him moving up again. But as much as his final word shocked many, I was thinking, "classic Boucher." If anyone knows how and why to say no, it's him.

As we will see July 1st, unrestricted free agents seldom say yes to the very first offer. Especially first-timers. Coachwise, it's hardly different. Boucher is very much a rookie himself--he would probably be the first to tell you--but he is certainly not unaware of the clamor and commotion surrounding him. All the vacancies, all the big city names popping up, all the upset fans in Montreal having barely made acquaintance to his name picking up a newspaper, seeing the quotes, hearing those of others and realizing how important it is to hang onto such a commodity. That's all well and good, and surely the Habs' and other organizations are not blind to this fact and not sitting quietly about it, but the final word is his and only his. Power like that isn't something to take lightly, and he is fully managing that situation. Columbus won't be the last, as we can already tell, heck, he might even just stay where he is. We've got a good while longer with this rollercoaster left to go.

Like you and I, Boucher is a family guy. In considering Hamilton, he also needed "a weekend." He said then, as he surely said recently, that if he saw anything that would hinder his family to adjust, he would stay put or look elsewhere. (Not that Columbus isn't kid and wife friendly, but moving to the States itself--I'd imagine--has to be somewhat of a significant deal after just having moved to Ontario the year before. Whether that's the case or not, that is a pretty focal part of his decision-making.) The more ambitious guys would find a way to make it work. But to Boucher, whose attitude is probably the most ambitious of all without even directly being so, finding the best surrounding conditions to undertake such a significant career move is as important a factor as the job conditions themselves.

Then there is timing. Boucher famously keeps his eye on the present, and firmly believes in each of his projects until he feels it's time for his involvement to end. Until he signs the dotted line, he stands by what he has going with the organization that retains him. Drummondville hadn't had a league championship to its name in its 27 years, but when the job with the Bulldogs wasn't set in stone yet, the mindset to get his players to repeat the 2008-09 performance was definitely one he had on his plate. So there is that speculation to consider as well. Perhaps he felt like his work with the Bulldogs wasn't done yet. Perhaps his plans extended farther than the third round of the Calder Cup. Perhaps he wanted to take those 30+ records and add to them. Perhaps he quite simply wasn't ready to move on just yet.

Perhaps, like me, he abides by some pretty strong commitment principles.

You and I can dispute all the perhapses until we turn purple in the face. But there certainly isn't and end to this story, nor will there be until all the spots in the NHL and AHL are accounted for. And even afterwards. So buckle up.

A note on the Bulldogs

Second post-mortem post in a row. Second series loss endured by PK Subban and Ben Maxwell in the last three days. I'd pile on the vodka except there's a little too much Motrin in my system at the moment.

The Hamilton Bulldogs had thrown more than double the shots on net than the Texas Stars could muster against them, but fell victim to four unanswered goals and missed the chance to repeat 2007's exploits against Hershey in the Calder Cup Finals, losing Game 7 by a score of 4-2.

For now we'll talk about the 31 franchise records that were made on the way to this loss and the 52-17-3-8 record that few expected with a rookie coach behind the bench, constant callups, injuries, and other threats to team chemistry. Much like its parent in the NHL, this team wasn't supposed to be where it was. By the looks of all the newcomers and the number of potential and eventual graduates, it was en route to maybe pushing the 40-win mark, and even that would have been deemed respectable. But they went above and beyond, bringing new faces and even newer prospects to the Conference Finals of the AHL, and each of these made their own mark on the franchise (which quite frankly is really all Guy Boucher asks for from his players). Two goaltenders with both the talent and the experience saved and stole games for the Bulldogs, the defense corps shattered offensive records while providing a mainstay on the blueline, while the "never make it"s and the "too short"s collaborated to burn out those red lights behind opposing goaltenders much like you'd see in that Vapor commercial.

I'll admit I had a selfish want in following this team's playoff run: getting the opportunity to follow two successive Guy Boucher league titles. But the Blue Jackets (among others) are already drooling and it's not because he didn't make it to the final dance. It's for all that stuff that happened way before that opportunity could have even been thought of. Much can be the same for every member of the Hamilton Bulldogs: each of them gets to come out of this a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and a lot more confident and hungry for the next time. Pretty attractive stuff.

Anyone else notice this?

In the midst of all of tonight's hockey excitement (Habs come back against Bruins! Caps and Rangers score a million goals! Kovalchuk traded to the Devils!) I can't help but think about some of yesterday's news.

The Columbus Blue Jackets decided to part ways with coach Ken Hitchcock. It all sounds just a little bit familiar.

Per an NHL.com article:

Hitchcock led the Blue Jackets to the first playoff berth in franchise history last spring...

A team whose entry into the playoffs both surprised and excited their fanbase, the likes of which hadn't been seen in a very long time (or in this case, ever)?

The defense, usually a trademark of Hitchcock-coaches teams, has struggled -- and 2008-09 Calder Trophy winner Steve Mason hasn't matched last season's performance in goal.

A sophomore goaltender who wasn't putting up the same numbers he had as a rookie, numbers which catapulted him into the spotlight and caused his elder, former #1 goalie to be traded away?

"It's terrible news," Nash, the Jackets' captain, told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's terrible news. It's terrible we couldn't play better and the coach had to be fired..."

No other solution but to fire the coach of a team whose season has been, to say the least, disappointing?

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds an awful lot like last season's Canadiens. We'll have to see how - and when - Columbus turns around. Will the team need to clean house? Or has our example proved that a new roster might not always make the huge difference you hope it will?

In any case, I know one thing: Columbus can't have Brian Gionta. Sorry.

Columbus Day ends on a high note

Habs 5 Blue Jackets 3

That must feel pretty good considering that Columbus smacked us the last time they were at the Bell Centre, and they're more successful now than they were then. (I'm not able to do this game justice, I'm telling you that now.)

What a game. And what a game to be at, and see Rick Nash look like a serious threat to Montreal early in the game and then continue to bring it as his team was losing. (To be perfectly honest, guys like Nash are the reason why guys like Guillaume Latendresse get traded.)

We saw a lot of our Habs playing their best tonight, proving that even with a million teammates out on injury, they've got what it takes to win games in regulation time. Glen Metropolit's goal, the third of the night, proved that. I reluctantly admit that Marc-André Bergeron scored two brilliant goals - his timing is excellent too, because the media needs a new golden boy. Mike Cammalleri, as usual, was awesome. Max Pacioretty continues to find himself this season. Paul Mara played a good game, and gets a plus from me for batting a puck away with his gloved hand. Ryan White got another assist... I'm still waiting for a goal; he's got it in him and I know that. (I loved last night's Hamilton Bulldogs line, despite a serious lack of ice time.)
Tomas Plekanec continues to be the man this season, even when he doesn't score, and Carey Price made some really impressive saves - sorry, ~czechtacular, I guess you've got competition for November's Molson Cup.

Who is that right in front of the bench? Why, I think it's another one of my favourite Hamilton Bulldogs, James Wyman, who was called up Tuesday at some point after I shut down my laptop. You'd think after the Latendresse trade I would learn my lesson and do my Internet stuff in the afternoon. But instead I got a pretty nice surprise.

Still looking for news on Tom Pyatt, who appeared to have been injured at the end of the game.