A few thoughts on this game:

 Firstly I felt sorry for Bonk that he gave the puck away because this guy played great and more than made up for it bailing his team out of so many PKs!

 Markov was a work horse! Great game!! He did it all!

 CJ coached a great game! Not easy to do when there is no flow and so many special teams. Great call on Dags for the shoot out! Would like to of seen Ryder hit the net with his shot but not easy when you're going top shelve where mama hides the cookies!

 Barry is bang on with the penalty calls! If this is the new NHL and supposed to be better for fans then I'm blind! Way too many calls that it was a guess to why there was a penalty. As a fan I would rather not guess as it should be clear cut! Just a stick on stick, or a bump resulted in a penalty! Just terrible! I would rather see some missed calls and flow than border line calls. Ribs and Saks get two for hooking opponents stick! Ryder gets two for placing an arm on defencemen's shoulder without calling the dive with it! These are just examples of garbage calls!

 Theo's positional play was great! Not trying to do too much and the puck was hitting him! What are the chances he puts two solid games together?

 Great ending to this one! I'm surprised there wasn't a penalty in the shoot out!

JohnM wrote:

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Actually Theo needed to play today after the poor showing from the team on Saturday and he won this game for the Habs. As for Dagenais, he's one of the only ones who practiced the shootout last year during the lockout so he's a logical choice. Easy with the praise for CJ though Barry, he coached a good game but ATL is not a very good team and we barely beat them. As for And-o, Bonk was (-2) and almost the goat of the game. Other notes: we played with 4 defenceman tonight, check out the ice time of Bouillon, Markov, Dandy, Rivet. Sak also logged alot of ice time ~25 minutes. We must be really hurting to play these guys so much, I guess penalties played a role as well.-- Edited by JohnM at 22:26, 2005-11-22

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John- I disagree. There have been enough negatives about Julien in this forum the last couple weeks (especially after having the audacity to lose 2 in a row). One of the complaints people had here was the penalty kill. Obviously CJ worked on this and it showed. The Habs killed off 13 (yes count them..THIRTEEN) minor penalties last night. You say that Atlanta is not a very good team. Thirteen minors killed with the likes of Kovalchuck and Hossa makes Atlanta a very good team on this particular evening. As for Bonk, I expect that he made a mental mistake because he was tired. He did an awesome job killing off the penalty parade and I can imagine that it wore on him. He was more of a positive factor that Koivu on this night.

Uhmm I did watch the whole game so we will have to agree to disagree. I have been the first to criticisize Bonk in the past (as I have Julien). Bonk made a brutal giveaway but to me that should not overshadow his performance last night which I will objectively say, was his best in a Habs uniform. What you are saying is that even though Koivu is expected to score goals an did not last night, he contributed in many other ways. I agree. But if you are to make that point, then conversely it works for Bonk as well. Because Bonk had  abrain cramp and gave the puck away to cause a goal, do not let that overshadow that he did what he was supposed to do last night. Win faceoffs and kill penalties. (by the way is there ANYONE on this team who can consistently win a draw?!?? In this respect we really miss Pearreault).