Plus/Minus: Guys... Where are we?

I went on a short vacation last week. I spent five days in Florida, where seventeen degrees Celsius is considered unseasonably cold for January, two 23-ounce cans of Four Loko* will set you back a whopping five dollars, and people set up memorials (complete with paper signs) for a historic tree that burned down in a forest fire. I came back to a city where fans want their hockey team to lose and then are upset that they do, and where winter happens every year but drivers seem to forget that it exists. I'm still not sure which place is weirder. (Probably Florida, because they have lots of gators and gun stores.)


PLUS

+ Somehow, the Habs' open practice is always a bright spot in the season, regardless of who's there or how well the team is doing.
+ Saku Koivu scored a hat trick!
+ Former Hamilton Bulldog Ryan Russell scored his first NHL goal as a Columbus Blue Jacket. Congratulations?
+ My favourite thing about sports is sportsmanship. So it made me happy when Ray Lewis and Arian Foster signed and swapped their jerseys after a playoff game last week.
+ Rene Bourque scored his first goal as a Hab! Welcome to the jungle.
+ 30 Rock is back!
+ My interest in New Girl was starting to wane before the holiday hiatus, but last week's episode was great. I hope Lizzy Caplan's character sticks around for the rest of the season.
+ I may not agree with Tim Thomas' decision to skip his White House visit (after all, wouldn't a hard-working, beer-drinking proletarian goalie want to high-five Barack Obama and maybe sing a few bars?) but I like the way he handled it - so far, as discreetly as he could while still making the statement he wanted to make.

MINUS

No more.

- Okay but why would you put Scott Gomez in a shootout?
- The way the Cammalleri trade went down is an abomination. Yeah, I said it. Habs fans don't need any more drama, and we definitely don't like being the laughingstock of the NHL.
- I was supposed to go to the Habs-Capitals game last Wednesday. Considering that the Habs got shut out, and deserved to, I guess I'm not too beat up about missing it.
- Rest in peace, Joe Paterno. He did something wrong (which I will not defend), but he was also a successful coach whose players respected him and whose family will miss him, and for those reasons I absolutely will not be one of those heinous people who thinks it's funny that he died.

I don't know where my team is going, and I'm not sure I understand where they've been so far this season, but there's an Original Six matchup this week, and that's all that matters.

And, just because I put a Lost reference in the title of this post and didn't follow it up with anything, here's a smattering of Lost-related musings:

• Pierre Gauthier is the smoke monster. 
• What lies behind the shadow of the statue? Probably another confusing trade. 
• Kyle Wellwood ate too many Apollo bars.
• Andrei and Sergei = Jacob and the Man in Black? Discuss.
• Is Erik Cole like Montreal's Hurley?
• Do you think Jorge Garcia has ever been to Hurley's on Crescent?
• Half of "the numbers" are hanging from the rafters at the Bell Centre.
• You all, everybody.

*Do not drink Four Loko.

Plus/Minus: no self-portraits here

Judging by what's been popular on the Internet this week... My male readers (if I have any) are probably upset that I'm fully clothed as I write this, and that I wear my jerseys as the hockey gods intended, not hacked beyond recognition into a tiny censor bar of a dress. Um, sorry? Can I make a couple puns to make up for it?

PLUS

+ Erik Cole flew Louis Leblanc's parents to Anaheim so that they could attend their son's first NHL game. If that isn't a Plus, I don't know what is.
+ Josh Gorges didn't shave his mustache as soon as the clock struck midnight and the month of December started. He must have known that Movember is my favourite time of year.
+ Carey Price saved his team's ass against the LA Kings AND hammed it up in a hysterical All Star Game campaign video.
+ Now-former Carolina Hurricanes coach Paul Maurice left a note for Kirk Muller, wishing him the best of luck and complimenting the team. It takes a lot of class to do something like that.
+ Saku Koivu still has nothing but great things to say about his days as a Hab. I feel the same way.
+ Ryan Jones hat trick, or something. I guess it's because of the hair.

MINUS

It can't be because of the picture, why, no!

- Are we done talking about Paulina Gretzky? Apparently, if your dad is the greatest hockey player of all time, you can be a newsmaker just by tweeting a few cleave shots. (Seriously, a newsmaker.) It's almost like men are surprised that she's hot, because they didn't know that professional athletes always marry pretty girls, and thus their children have a good chance of being attractive. Also, is this really what happens every time some yellow-haired girl posts pictures of herself online because she's desperate for attention? ...On second thought, don't answer that.

- Los Angeles Kings: I love you, but get your asses off of my goalie.
- A three-game suspension for Max Pacioretty's hit on Kris Letang is a little harsh. I doubt every guy who hits another player in the same way is going to be suspended for three games.
- Everyone who gets mad at Andrei Markov for not being ready to come back yet, or who calls him a waste of money. Where's your loyalty?

We are now faced with our first mustache-less week. I'm not sure exactly how this is going to go. But so far, it looks like our Carey is just as awesome without his 'stache as he was with it.

Plus/Minus: about a team that's got more energy than I do

This Plus/Minus is a little bit late and a little bit low-fi, and you readers deserve much better than that, but LA happened, then Continental Airlines happened with their red-eye flights and insanely boring inflight movie that bored me nearly to the point of sleep (but not quite, unfortunately), then jetlag happened, then sleep-deprived 18-hour days including work and workouts happened, then daylight savings time happened, costing me more sleep, and now I'm quite sure I have a cold.
So be forewarned, there are no colours, and I haven't proofread. It's like improv! Unscripted! Like Twitter, only longer!
... Nope, there's no way to make it sound fun. Please don't hate me.


PLUS

I had no choice but to yoink this from Habs I/O, as it's just the cutest thing ever aside from kittens

+ 6: Habs winning = happy Montreal.

+ to the gentleman who coined "KilimanJaro": my favourite pun right now.

+ to the Bell Centre DJ's sense of humour: playing the Tragically Hip's "Courage" as injured Tomas Plekanec made his way off the ice during the Tampa game... somehow, the lyrics "It couldn't come at a worse time" seemed to fit pretty well.

+ Andrei Markov, in general.

+ For the next week or so, I say we call #31 "Big Haircut." I'm so happy I could cry.

+ Kathryn Bigelow has finally proven, once and for all, that ladies can play with the big boys. And that's what this blog is about: reminding people that girls kick ass. (Also, hockey.) So suck it, James Cameron. (I'm putting a minus within this plus for Alec Baldwin, who I'm a huge fan of, but if he really for some reason felt the need to congratulate Kathryn Bigelow by smacking her ass, he could've at least waited until the telecast ended.)

MINUS

- I usually hate people who whine after a player gets traded, but there aren't as many people lamenting Matt D'Agostini as there should be, so here's my two cents: I'm going to miss 36 because his trade (to the Blues, no less, one of the more forgettable teams in the league, no?) marks another step in the dissolution of a boys club that I happened to love. Dags, Kyle Chipchura, Greg Stewart, and Carey Price won the Calder Cup together and brought some much-needed rookie energy to the Habs last season and the year before. They were all good friends off the ice, and the fact that they're the same age as me made them seem relatable, I guess kind of like the way that francophones like seeing Habs that are quebecois pure laine. They were a little group that I could root for within my favourite team, and while I don't like it when teams are broken up into cliques that eventually lead to conflicts, it was kind of nice to have a little core of guys that I could relate to, that would've been at my elementary school if we were all born in the same city. But now that little group is gone, leaving only Carey. Don't get me wrong, both he and I love the players that are on the Habs' roster right now, but it's not quite the same as it used to be for me. (Not to mention that people complained about D'Agostini's productivity this season, somehow forgetting that he was gone for over a month and suffered a pretty serious concussion... everyone remembers that Andrei Kostitsyn wasn't so dynamite after his head injury last season, and everyone knows how he's doing now, a year later. So if D'Agostini happens to tear it up next season in St. Louis, I'll hate to say I told you so.)

- Did Maxim Lapierre really deserve a four-game suspension for his hit? It warranted punishment, definitely, but four games seems like an awful lot when compared to other nasty hits and their accompanying sanctions. Looking at you, Aaron Ward. And you, Mike Richards, who almost killed a dude (but I guess a lifetime of playing for the Flyers is punishment enough). Sure, Ovechkin got punished for a hit that turned out to be a lot more damaging than he meant to, but it's just further proof that

- To the wonderfully classy and intelligent gentlemen who showed up to the Oilers game in blackface and Afro wigs, with "Subbanator" written on their jerseys. Words cannot describe their stupidity, and I'm glad I'm not the only person who thinks they need to wear blackface a little more often so than passersby can throw eggs and other objects at them. (Props to Mike Boone for this gem: "Either bar those schmucks from the building or rename it the Jolson Centre.")

- What's with that suit jacket, Mike Cammalleri?

Where did the money go?

Every time an NHL player is suspended, he doesn't receive any pay for that duration of time. Now that the Habs are down one guy because of Maxim Lapierre's four-game suspension, I thought I'd go for another round of sleuthing and find out more about these fines.

Per the NHL, Lapierre's salary, like every other fined player, goes to the Players' Emergency Assistance Fund.

What does this fund do, you ask? Well, I did some research, and found this message board thread to be most useful. Not all NHL players in history were as rich as some of the superstars we're watching right now, so retirement might be a little rough for them, especially if they live in the States and need any kind of medical care, so that's one pretty big thing that the Fund helps out with. Pretty useful, considering anyone who works as hard as a hockey player probably deserves to be looked out for.

Another mystery solved! (In case you didn't know already.)

What a day! (Midseason edition)

Every now and then, a huge piece of news breaks out in Hab-land. ("Hab-land" usually being about twenty minutes away from where I am, but on days like this it feels so far away.) And it's always on those big news days that I'm otherwise occupied.

So here's what happened:

This is kind of what the pressbox looked like last night... Matt's going to start feeling an awful lot taller if he gets scratched again

Georges Laraque (he who was signed for 1.5mil a season after he kicked some ass and almost won the Stanley Cup with the Penguins) was let go a week after he helped the Canadiens to their most recent win. It's not the best of breakups... both sides are quite bitter about it, and I don't think I can blame them. The timing of this is... strange at best. But I guess this whole ordeal proves that maybe, just maybe being a francophone hockey player doesn't always make you a saint in this town.

We love Monsieur et Madame Jean!

In other news (this time about someone who has the glory and deserves it more than anyone else in this town), forever captain and HIHW favourite Jean Béliveau suffered a stroke, but is said to be in stable condition. He's still in the hospital though, and we know he's not reading the blog but we're still sending thoughts and prayers for a speedy recovery.


Other smaller news tidbits: Sergei Kostitsyn practiced today, Carey Price did not (therapy stuff), Mike Cammalleri and Max Lapierre had a bit of a dustup, and Jacques Martin still stands by his decision to play Ryan O'Byrne as a forward.

Big news

Oh, but for those bursts of awesome where he'd get us some points

Guillaume Latendresse was traded. Whoa.

I honestly didn't think it would happen.
He now plays for the Minnesota Wild, and in exchange the Habs have acquired Benoit Pouliot, aka the guy who was drafted right before Carey Price. (So in all this hullaballoo, I'm kind of wondering what would have happened if the Habs hadn't drafted Goalie the WonderBoy. Life as I know it would not be the same.)

Gui was fast-tracked to superstardom even though common knowledge dictates that some extra training in Hamilton would have turned him into the goal-scoring machine that everyone said he would be. He's been underperforming lately, that's no shock to anyone.

Asked about it, Gui said he was disappointed to be leaving Montreal as a city but also seemed unimpressed with the organization lately. (When you've been playing with the team for over 200 games, and over the summer you get thrown to the side in favour of a bunch of new guys with paychecks fatter than your last meal at Burger King, you probably feel a little small, no matter how many points you have. In a way, I don't blame him.)
If we're being perfectly honest, Gui's performance would probably have gotten him traded earlier if he didn't have what I call "homeboy advantage": he's a fan favourite and his parents can drive to games.

Most saddened by this news? My overweight cat (no, seriously) and francophone journalists.

Has someone checked on Jacques Demers? My guess is that he's either:
a) needing serious psychological help
b) crying, eating chocolate, and listening to whatever the old French man equivalent of emo is
c) on a plane to Minnesota
d) learning the rest of this season's Canadiens roster and thanking his lucky stars that Gui was traded for another guy with a French name

In other news, whip out the hairbrushes, Sergei's back! #74 is a Canadien again, here to save us from the misery of having about a million injured forwards.
ETA: Georges Laraque's disciplinary hearing was this morning (over the phone), and he's suspended for five games. I hate to sound mean, but um, I think we're used to going five games without BGL by now. Sure, the timing sucks, but the team will survive. He's losing out on just shy of $39, 000 for those five games, which doesn't sound like a lot, but... I just did my finances. That's a lot of money for a guy who, before this suspension, caused more of a commotion off the ice this season than on it.

It looks like Gainey and Co. are continuing to tighten the rains and sending a message: shape up or ship out. And as much as it does kind of make me sad to see players go (come back, Steve Bégin!) ultimately the team is about a collective, not just one player. And that collective has to be at its best.