Tag: Trevor Timmins

Habs Heading In A Positive Direction

Published on by JD Lagrange3 Comments

It’s been a very tough stretch for the Montreal Canadiens since providing us all with high hopes when reaching the Stanley Cup finals. You can find the details of it in a recent article, but tiles have been falling one after another on this organisation and its fans for too long now. Joel Bouchard leaving, Shea Weber out for the season (possibly a career), Carey Price, Joel Edmundson and Paul Byron out long term… A brutal season on ice with countless injuries and just about the entire team on COVID protocol, the departure of Marc Bergevin, Scott Mellanby, Trevor Timmins and Paul Wilson… the Habs have reached new lows.

Positivity

Wow, I’ve just painted a pretty sombre picture up there, even for someone who loves and thrives on positivity! But wait… it’s not all bad. Actually, some bad has come with some very good as well.

Take the controversy surrounding the selection of Logan Mailloux, for example. Had the Canadiens not dared selecting him, causing this controversy, they would have never created the Respect and Consent Action Plan. This plan enables Groupe CH to act both internally and externally to raise awareness and educate its employees and the public about respect and consent and the serious consequences of sexual cyberviolence. This plan will also benefit from a $1 million seed investment fund set up by the company. I strongly encourage you to read the details on the link provided above. It’s an amazing initiative.

More positive… We know the stress the need for having a bilingual General Manager can put on the organisation, narrowing the pool of experienced candidates for the position. Geoff Molson thought outside the box by getting the best man available in Jeff Gorton, by putting him in change of Hockey Operations as a Vice-President. They are now in the process of hiring a bilingual GM who will be facing the media, responding to that need. The Habs aren’t the only NHL team with different people for Hockey Ops and GM. More than half the teams do it, as we showed in a previous article.

The hiring of Chantal Machabée as the new Montreal Canadiens’ VP of Communications has received an overwhelming amont of support from both the members of the media and the Habs’ fan base. Rarely have we seen an announcement from the team being so unanimously supported and that’s a huge positive in itself.

Injuries

Ben Chiarot

With the Canadiens going through this awfully painful season, they are guaranteed of missing the playoffs. That’s not a positive, you’ll say, and you’re right. However, this allows for Gorton and the Habs for a reset on the fly, by getting a good draft pick at the upcoming NHL Draft. It also puts the team as sellers at the trade deadline, making decisions easier to trade away pending UFAs like Ben Chiarot, who is said to be worth at least a first round pick. More veterans are likely to change address from now until the start of next season and we’ve recently put together a list together for you.

The injuries and players missing out of the line-up has allowed (and will continue to allow) for evaluating the status of the depth in the organisation. We knew that Nick Suzuki was going to be good and he’ll keep on getting better as time goes by. Alexander Romanov is playing like a top-4 defenseman now. We thought that Cole Caufield was ready to have an impact based on his play in the playoffs, but we now realize that he’s not there yet. We see that Ryan Poehling has taken some positive steps in the right direction and we see that Jesse Ylönen will be a NHL player in a not too distant future. Those are just a few examples.

Future

Then look at this prospect pool built by Bergevin and his right-hand man Trevor Timmins, particularly since the 2018 reset. No, I mean really LOOK AT IT! The link I’ve provided will show you the performances (up to date) of each and every Habs’ prospect. While it may not bring automatic success at the NHL level, many are dominant at their respective level. That’s a huge positive.

Now we’re talking! See, we’ve turned a very negative and frightening situation for the Habs into a positive experience. It wasn’t so bad now, was it? So while you’re at it, why not check out our short guide to what Habs’ fans New Years’ resolution should (or could) look like? I promise it won’t hurt.

More reading…

GM and Hockey Ops: Myth Of The Two-Headed Monster Debunked

Habs Veterans’ Likeliness To Be Traded

Gorton Assessment: Habs’ Depth Chart

New Year’s Resolutions for Habs’ Fans

Drafting and Player Development – The Differences

Published on by JD Lagrange4 Comments

Drafting… player development… Those are two hot topics under Trevor Timmins and Marc Bergevin’s time with the Montreal Canadiens, although one could push much further to see that drafting and player development have been an issue in Montreal for a long, long time. Is it one more than the other? Which one is it? Both?

You see, like with anything else in the Habs’ fan base and media, it becomes an overblown narrative. The flavour of the month, if we can say. Not that there are no justifications to jump on that bandwagon. It just gets amplified in Montreal, where media scrutiny is like nowhere else, and the fan base thinks they know more than the average Joe… and aren’t afraid of making it known to whomever will listen. And they will if it fits a narrative.

First and foremost, we must understand that you cannot have one without the other. It’s impossible to trace a line where one starts and the other begins, aside from a timeline. Of course, drafting occurs when the team calls the prospect’s name from the draft table. Player development starts thereafter. But how can someone tell, if a player doesn’t pan out, if it was bad drafting or poor player development? That’s where you can’t draw that line.

Drafting

Marc Bergevin and Trevor Timmins

First, let’s look at what it’s not, in order to better understand what it is. If a player is the consensus pick when his name is called, it’s not good or poor drafting. Nail Yakupov was everyone’s choice at number one overall back in 2012. Every team would have picked him first. So it wasn’t bad drafting.

On the other end, selecting a player that no one saw this high in the draft, and he turns out to be an excellent pick, that is good drafting. Alexander Romanov is as an example of that. There are tons of other examples.

I’ll add one more… luck. Lucky at drafting is when you select Cayden Primeau in the 7th round, or Pavel Datsyuk or Henrik Zetterberg in later rounds. Luck because teams have passed on a player almost 200 times before a team called their name.

Player development

For many, they judge player development based solely on if the player makes it or not. While there is some truth to it, doing so is too often wrong. You see, scouts not only judge a draft prospect not only by comparing him to his peers in his draft year, as some fans thing. The role of scouts is to try to determine when a young player will peak, when he will reach his full potential. Further, they try to compare between leagues, even between countries.

For the most part, teams provide all of their prospects with the same opportunities, or at least the same access and information when it comes to player development. If they come to development camp, or rookie camp, teams give those young men a list of things to work on to get to the next step. Whether it’s done through the scouts or if teams have a player development group, those young players are being followed during the season as well, and are given things to work on even after being drafted. They all do.

So why do some succeed and others don’t? Some people won’t like to hear this but Marc Bergevin was right. Some of the responsibility falls on the player himself. He’s responsible for putting in the necessary work and follow the instructions given. As even if they do, they might never reach their full potential. But all those who do succeed have put in that effort and have done what was asked of them.

Anecdote

Allow me to share a bit of my life experience with you folks. I am reminded of my peewee coach in Sherbrooke, with whom I played recreational hockey later in life. Sitting in the dressing room sipping on a cold one after a rec game, he once told me that in 15 years coaching minor hockey, he can count on one hand the number of times he didn’t make it to the finals. He didn’t always finish in the top in regular season, but his team progressed throughout the year.

Curious, I asked him why he thinks that was. He said that at tryouts, he would not necessarily pick the best players, but the ones that were looking at him when he spoke, and applied what he was asking them to do. According to him, it made many parents furious when their “more talented son” was cut, but he stuck to his beliefs. Those players, he explained, are “coachable” and those are the ones who will keep on developing and progressing.

Even later in life, as I was coaching Rep hockey, I have witnessed that phenomena first hand myself too. Some players started well behind others at training camp, but ended up being better at the end of the season, or at least improved much more. Those who paid attention, listened and learned from others’ experience, those who didn’t think they knew it all at a young age, advanced much faster and further.

Conclusion

So you see, when someone claims that Timmins, Bergevin or whomever doesn’t know how to draft, or that they don’t know how to develop players, they’re not telling the truth. Or at least, not the entire truth. They’re too often speaking out of knowledge, or out of turn. Alex Galchenyuk listening to his father who was telling him not to listen to the coaches is not the fault of the organisation.

Of course some draft better than others and some invest more in player development. Some coaches are better at developing players too. It’s like anything else. But at that level, the difference is minimal. And that’s why teams try to get the extra edge.

That’s why the Canadiens held their own combines, even in Europe. And that’s why they hired Dr. David Scott, a sports psychologist, who has been involved in prospects interviews in recent years, asking the right questions. That’s why they have Sports Science and Performance department and that’s why they have Rob Ramage and Francis Bouillon helping with player development.

Drafting and player development contains more grey area than it does black or white. They are intertwined into a mix of information and of people involved… and that includes the players themselves. They control more than they sometimes think they do.

More reading…

The Much Needed Return of Key Players

Hockey Quebec – Letter To The Players

New Year’s Resolutions for Habs’ Fans