In this off season Gainey probably did not make all the moves that everyone would have wanted: no signings of a quality dman, no upgrade at center, but this team looks alot better than one year ago. Last year at this time the Habs first line was Zednik Koviu Kovalev. the second line was Dagenais Riberio Ryder. Gainey has replaced two of the teams top six forwards with Higgins and Samsanov replacing Dagenais and Zednik, a major improvement. Huet is the number one goalie, which at this time is a marked improvement over Theodore. The penalty killing by the time the playoffs rolled around was much improved, better puck pursuit, better shot blocking. 4 forwards knowing their roles in penalty killing. Substantial contributions from young players Komisarek, Plekanec,Higgins that was not on the radar screen at this time a year ago, and those players should only get better. From the allstar break on, the Habs had one of the top 4 records in the eastern conference. By year end even players that had poor performances in the first half had improved (i.e Bonk) and the Habs had one of the top 4 records in the second half of the season ion the east.

Gainey gets alot of heat for not making more substantial changes in personnel, but he has made moves to improve the team and has utilized existing personnel to get better work ethic and performances out of the team to a point where one year later this team seems to be on much better ground. Going into this season the Habs do not have salary cap issues the way Buffalo, NewJersey and others have in that they will probably have to trade away a substantial asset from their teams. not saying things could not be better, but at least this team seems to have marked improvement over the team from one year ago, at least i think so, is that not a fair assesment?