OK, so none of the Habs have ever been French (I don't think) but if there was ever a time when the team should try to resurrect that image, it's now. The changes in the league's rules should be playing right into our hands, and seemed to be be doing so early in the year. We have a team with good speed. On D, Markov, Streit, Dandeanult, Rivet, Cube -- they're all good skaters and have shown that they can be nimble and quick. Up front, I can't think of a team that has better speed than ours -- Koivu, Zednik, Bulis, Higgins, Pleks, Perezhogin, Kostitsyn, Begin, and Kovalev (when he's inspired) are a formidable lineup when they're moving their feet. We should be able to skate circles around other teams, and at times, we have.

So what's the problem lately?

In my mind, it's poor decision making and bad passing -- which leads to doubt, inconsistency and loss of team speed on the ice. I was heartened to read that BG has been trying to impress upon his players the importance of always moving the puck forward as quickly as possible. The tried and true, fire-wagon style of head-manning the puck at every opportunity leads to scoring chances -- but only if the guys are passing well AND skating.

Instead, we have been slow to head-man the puck and have too often opted to pass the puck back and forth between defensemen as we attempt to work the puck out of our end. That gives the opposition time to cover our forwards, and bleeds our forwards of their forward momentum. This in turn clogs up the neutral zone, and means that even when our defensemen can manage to skate the puck to center ice and dump it in, our guys don't have the speed to get to the puck before the opposition does.

The team needs to work on breaking the puck out of our end fast and looking for those blueline to blueline passes (or tic-tac-toe plays) that send forwards in for odd-man scoring chances before the opponents know what hit them.

Last night vs. Calgary, the Flames got the lead and sat on it, playing a vintage early-90's trap. They were able to because we let them bottle us up in our own end too often and didn't hit their zone with speed. The last minute of the game was a good example. Even with an extra man on the ice, our defensemen resorted to passing it back and forth to each other and couldn't get the puck up ice.

I think we have the talent to give any team in the league a good game -- if we play OUR game. But it's got to start in our own end with solid breakouts followed by hitting their blueline with speed.

I don't care if our players are French, Dutch, Malaysian or from Mars -- the bottom line is that they've got to start flying like the Flying Frenchmen of old if they're going to win games.

Les Canadiens Sont La