Souray Injured

Fatherhab · Senior Member

Souray Injured

barry33 · Guru

Fatherhab wrote:

Taken From RDS: http://www.rds.ca/canadien/chroniques/213853.html

Sheldon was injured against the Leafs on Saturday nite and was not available due to this injury for the Truro game . Injury is to the shoulder- extent unknown. Will be examined later by Doctor. The injury also kept him out of the Tampa game and practice today. Carbo worried.

-- Edited by Fatherhab at 18:27, 2006-09-27

barry worried

Nil d · Guru

barry33 wrote:

Carbo worried.

barry worried

Nil d worried too. Here we go again..............

Fatherhab · Senior Member

Me worried as well, strange how this injury didn't come to light until late today. If it turns out that the injury is serious enough to keep Souray out for a prolonged period of time, does Gainey have to make a trade to shore up the defence?

Johab · Guru

bet you anything he keeps o bryne and cote...wait where is cote??? injured too?

AB Habman · Guru

Keep O'bryn and Benoit for now.

nietche · Veteran Member

Our defense was weak to begin with, and with Souray and the Cube injured, it will have to be considered perhaps the worst in the league.

Markov .. could be a top flight dman, but unproven. May or May not step up.

Rivet .... a mediocre dman, #4-6 on almost all other teams

Dandy .... past his prime, again a #5-6 on most other teams

Komi .... I've seen both Toronto games, and listended to the 2 bruins games on the radio, and all signs seem to point to his game having SLIPPED back. Not the same player he was at the end of last season. Even if we was the same.... he's years away from being a top 3 d-man

Streit ... in consistent, and really, he's a 7th dman...not really someone who can step into Souray's shoes.

Cote ... injured

Everyone else ... not NHL quality

So ... the habs are really trouble on D.

Bob G should package Perezoghin and another prospect for Rafalski, who's steady and reliable and can log alot of minutes.

-- Edited by nietche at 21:25, 2006-09-27

barry33 · Guru

AB Habman wrote:

Keep O'bryn and Benoit for now.

Things like this points to the fact that in a couple positions we are VERY thin. Those 2 positions being d and c. If a winger goes down we are all set. Bob is going to have to make a trade to add depth at center and defence. What if Koivu goes down? Ya I know..Higgins played center in college. I played defence in atom too.

ScottishHAB · Veteran Member

Surely by leaving it this late( and it now beginning to look desperate) a trade is going to cost us more? Will anybody want to trade a good Dman for any of our many prospects?

Fatherhab · Senior Member

ScottishHAB wrote:

Surely by leaving it this late( and it now beginning to look desperate) a trade is going to cost us more? Will anybody want to trade a good Dman for any of our many prospects?

Yup, and the problem is that there are not a whole lot of good Dmen available period. Rafalski might be available but at what price?

barry33 · Guru

Fatherhab wrote:

ScottishHAB wrote:

Surely by leaving it this late( and it now beginning to look desperate) a trade is going to cost us more? Will anybody want to trade a good Dman for any of our many prospects?

Yup, and the problem is that there are not a whole lot of good Dmen available period. Rafalski might be available but at what price?

To be fair, I think it is more a symptom of the salary cap system then it is a Bob Gainey mismanagement thing. You only have so much money to go around. Look at Toronto. They are going into the season pretty thin on defence due to injuries. Teams just cannot afford the depth that they used to. So much now will depend on player development. You need to draft well and develop these kids in a hurry.

plouf · Guru

nietche wrote:

Our defense was weak to begin with, and with Souray and the Cube injured, it will have to be considered perhaps the worst in the league.

Markov .. could be a top flight dman, but unproven. May or May not step up.

Rivet .... a mediocre dman, #4-6 on almost all other teams

Dandy .... past his prime, again a #5-6 on most other teams

Komi .... I've seen both Toronto games, and listended to the 2 bruins games on the radio, and all signs seem to point to his game having SLIPPED back. Not the same player he was at the end of last season. Even if we was the same.... he's years away from being a top 3 d-man

Streit ... in consistent, and really, he's a 7th dman...not really someone who can step into Souray's shoes.

Cote ... injured

Everyone else ... not NHL quality

So ... the habs are really trouble on D.

Bob G should package Perezoghin and another prospect for Rafalski, who's steady and reliable and can log alot of minutes.

-- Edited by nietche at 21:25, 2006-09-27

I don't agree that we are thin on defense overall (we have 7-8 guys), or a lousy team at that position (your evaluations strike me as a little bit doom and gloom - Streit, for example, looks like a good player this year).

I do agree that we have a bunch of injuries there all of a sudden and that might put us in a tough situation, but we still have 5 solid d-men. Let's not panic. We do need to pick up a 6th defenseman. I doubt O'Byrne or Benoit are ready, so here's hoping there's a team out there looking for a young winger prospect. I just hope we don't throw away a guy like Perezhogin for nothing.

Perezhogin is neither that similar to Petrov (he's a good deal grittier, and also more skilled), or Balej (he can skate a LOT better). And he's certainly more disciplined in his defensive and team play than either of those two at the same age. The only big question mark is mental. This guy is still very young.

Mad Habber · Member

I don't believe our defense is as poor as Nietche says either. I think everyone is a bit better than you make them out to be.

But if Souray is out long term, and Bouillon isn't coming back until December, then we will need some help. We now have Markov, still at #1, Rivet at #2, Komi at #3, and Dandy at #5. But Streit goes from #7 to #4, which I'm ok with. I don't know if he is ready. Give him a little bit of time and he may be. Top 4 minutes and he should be acclimatized to his role. The problem here is that Jancevski now becomes #6 with either O'Byrne or Benoit as #7.

Options:

1. Do nothing: Wait it out, ride it out and hope no one else gets injured and end up with Benoit on the ice for 15 minutes a game.

2. Trade for a veteran. Another Todd Simpson type. Play him as a 6-7th D. Then put him through waivers when his services are no longer required. A draft pick is all that would be required to acquire such a player.

3. Trade for a good young defensive prospect who is on the cusp of making it on a defensively deep team. Might cost us a Perez or something like that. But this would be a guy we could build with.

4. Wait until all the other teams finalize their lineups, and pick someone up on waiver. This D could be a good one or not so good either. But we could end up with a Beauchemin type player.

Personnally, I like option 4 and 3. The only problem with option 3 is the cost. If we were to trade a guy like Perez. I know he hasn't done much yet, but when he started the year with Koivu and Kovalev last year, he performed much better than Zednick. He played pretty good on the third line in the playoffs too. His first year in the AHL, he started off extremely slow, to become the Bulldog's best offensive player at the end of the season. But on the other hand, the return could be very good.

habgirl · Guru

Ya, well, see the Reverse thread. Can't believe it....we've now become more weak on D than we were.

Habgirl worried too.

plouf · Guru

I guess Gainey went with option 4. Problem is I don't think Traverse is Todd Simpson calibre. How's that for a vote of confidence?