HW Recap: The well dries up

[Habsfan84]

The Habs, despite scoring a grand total of 5 goals this week managed to win 2 of their 3 games, keeping pace in the tight Eastern Conference. The Bulldogs weren't as offensively challenged themselves, and also wound up taking 2 of 3. The stat of the week looks at blocked shots, while the Final Thought talks about the effectiveness of shootouts. This, plus the weekly grades, in the Recap.

Player Grades

The ratings:
8.5 - 10: Player has exceeded expectations for the week, very strong contributions.
6.5 - 8: Player has met expectations for the week, play has helped or at worse, not hurt the lineup.
5 - 6: Player has performed below expectations for the week, play has at best not hurt the team, but likely has had a negative affect.
Under 4.5: Player has had a week to forget, questions should soon be arising about his future with the organization.

Goalies:

#39 - Cristobal Huet: 8.0 As glaring as his mistake in Atlanta was, at least he fought back and held the fort down afterwards, and he can hardly be faulted for Saturday's loss. (Season Average: 7.82)

Defence:

#8 - Mike Komisarek: 8.0 Still the only player who seems to stand up for his teammates, regardless of the circumstances. (Season Average: 7.53)

#79 - Andrei Markov: 7.5 Nothing wrong with his defensive play, but the 2nd highest scoring defenceman in the league was very quiet in the offensive end. (Season Average: 7.44)

#26 - Josh Gorges: 7.0 For the most part, very strong positional play, but with Brisebois chomping at the bit to return, he still looks like the odd man out. (Season Average: 6.89)

#32 - Mark Streit: 7.0 He may be happy playing defence again, but I know I'm not. Skating is his biggest asset, and he never uses it on defence. (Season Average: 7.00)

#51 - Francis Bouillon: 7.0 His play has slipped a bit lately, but still significantly better than in the early season. (Season Average: 6.93)

#44 - Roman Hamrlik: 7.0 Second straight sub-par week for the $22M defenceman, what happened to the strong defensive play? (Season Average: 7.34)

Forwards:

#14 - Tomas Plekanec: 8.0 The coming out party continues for the Czech centre, if it hasn't been said already, he has become the team's top centre. (Season Average: 7.59)

#27 - Alexei Kovalev: 8.0 He made the right call to take the empty netter himself, never leave things to chance, just ask Patrik Stefan. (Season Average: 7.69)

#46 - Andrei Kostitsyn: 8.0 Scored quite possibly Montreal's best goal of the season, he needs to drive to the net more often, good things generally happen when he does. (Season Average: 7.13)

#25 - Mathieu Dandenault: 7.0 I have no qualms with the effort, but the puck seems like a hot potato with him lately. (Season Average: 7.09)

#20 - Bryan Smolinski: 7.0 Him and Ryder seem to have a little bit of chemistry going, very impressed with his passing this week. (Season Average: 6.88)

#21 - Chris Higgins: 7.0 Being reunited with Koivu unfortunately didn't help him score any more, although the chances are still there. (Season Average: 7.72)

#73 - Michael Ryder: 7.0 The confidence still isn't all there, but at least he's starting to shoot the puck more often. (Season Average: 6.69)

#84 - Guillaume Latendresse: 7.0 If he scored half of the easy tap-in goals that he's missed so far, he'd be the team in goals. (Season Average: 6.69)

#11 - Saku Koivu: 7.0 His play isn't all that bad, but 4 games without a point makes it hard to realize that, even at the best of times. (Season Average: 7.31)

#40 - Maxim Lapierre: 6.5 Aside from the penalty kill, it was hard to even notice he was on the ice, although being moved to the 4th line explains that somewhat. (Season Average: 6.71)

#74 - Sergei Kostitsyn: 6.5 He has regressed since his first couple of weeks with the team, like Price and Chipchura recently, he's guessing a lot on the ice. (Season Average: 7.08)

#6 - Tom Kostopoulos: 6.5After being benched last week, I was hoping to see a little more from the de facto tough guy. (Season Average: 6.75)

Week's Average: 7.21
Season Average: 7.19

Final Thought

With the announcement recently about the All-Star Skills Competition going to a Slam Dunk style shootout competition, it made sit back and think, how overhyped and redundant has the shootout become already? And this is coming from someone who last year advocated a competition to this end just one year ago in a previous column. The shootout is so exciting that the league has decided to eliminate all restrictions for this "contest" in order for the fans to see some creativity. Evidently, all of the fancy moves are gone now after just two and a half seasons, so much so, that slapshots in the shootout are considered thinking outside the box. Consider this as well - the shootout in its current format, designed "for the fans," is also designed to be over so quickly that it almost defeats the purpose, other than to decide who wins, based on who has the best breakaway players. If ever there was a time for something like this, the Skills Competition is the perfect place, but I know I'll be most interested in some of the other ones - fastest skater and accuracy, elements that impact a game for the whole 60-65 minutes of any game, not just a hurry-it-up ending.