@JackTen 161173 wrote:
Make Ryder play with who?
1- He played with just about every combination possible, and it didn’t click this year.
2- He knows he’s out at the end of the season. He has known this for months and has no drive. Some players, when they’re about to become free agents, go on fire. He went colder than my girlfriend.
I agree with nick about them not having the killer instinct. A lot of people here blame it on Europeans. I’m not racist in real life but in hockey I am. There certainly are some great europeans with heart, but not on this team. I don’t agree about the Canadians playing well. The ONLY game they significantly outplayed the opponent is the first game against Boston. They struggled in each of the other games. You know this is the case when Guy has to play with his lines. In fact he broke the only line that worked, Begin Smolinski Kostopoulos. You know you’re in trouble when your best line is “energy players” aka 4th liners.
Ryder scored 30 goals in back to back seasons playing with Ribeiro, now Ribeiro is gone and kicking ass in Dallas, Ribeiro is a creative set up man who skates good and has some champiness, Montreal don’t have a set up man as good as him, Ribeiro is leading the playoffs in assists this year.
I would put Ryder on a line with Koivu and Plekanec, that’s my number 1 line, the second line is Kovalev with Kostitsyn and Kostitsyn, the KKK line, 3rd line is Higgins, Kostopoulos, Begin, and Smolinski gets to play the ace “Guy Carbonneau” role, penalty killing and odd situations
That’s probably the best u can do with what u have
“Energy Players”, you’ll never win anything without them, especially Montreal, Bob Gainey, Mike McPhee, Mike Keane, Stephane Richer, Guy Carbonneau, John LeClair, Benoit Brunet, Kirk Muller, Brian Skrudland, Claude Lemieux, Mario Tremblay, Doug Jarvis, Doug Risebrough, Rejean Houle, etc, i’d put them all in the energy player category, Gainey, McPhee, Skrudland in particular is what this team needs, somebody to step up and be a physical leader
Looking over the lineup i would say only Kostopoulos and Higgins have the potential to be one of these players
And by putting together Koivu and Ryder i’m hoping for something similar to a Richer/Lemieux one two punch, they are very similar in many ways physically and in goal scoring ability, only Richer and Lemieux were tougher and meaner, and had more hustle, probably because they graduated from my old school of hardknocks
What i said about the lack of killer instinct is true, and the effects are showing now, it’s always those little things that make the difference between champ and also ran, if Montreal put Boston out in 5 games like they were supposed to, they would probably be winning this Philly series and in control, but instead they’re in a position where they have to adjust and regain confidence
I still think they can get past Philly with the right adjustments, it’s funny how they say Montreal owned Philly this year, anyone who knows Montreal knows that historically Philly has dominated Montreal like no other team, Patrick Roy vs Philly while playing for Montreal had like 4 wins in around 30 games, and Philly scored 6 goals or more in 10+ of those games, including the famous 9-2 and 7-0 wins that chased Roy out of town