What happened?

Many people consider the Montreal Canadiens dynasty of the 1970’s to be the greatest hockey team ever. The stats sort of agree. The curious thing about the team is that they lost several players that could have probably made the dynasty even more omnipotent and maybe led to 8-9 cups in the decade rather than the 6 won. Here are a few players that left the team. Marc Tardif played on one of the greatest junior teams of all time. The junior Canadians were sensational in the late sixties led by future NHLers Rejean Houle , Gilbert Perreault, Richard Martin, Jocelyn Guevremont, and Andre Dupont among others. Tardif was considered to be a future superstar when he joined the habs with his buddy Reggie Houle. Tardif won the cup with the habs in 1971 but was used sparingly on the talent laden club. In 1973, he won again with the habs and he scored 6 goals and 12 points in 14  playoff games outscoring Guy Lafleur who only had 8 points. The following year Tardif  joined the WHA.  I...

Ok I promised no more hockey blogs since the habs are out of it. However, the Don Cherry rant on Saturday got me to thinking of the habs draft preferences during the years and what we missed out on. Cherry railed against Brian Burke on Saturday for not having one player born in Ontario on the Leafs roster. So have the Habs management done better? We got David Desharnais, Mathieu Darche, and Louis Leblanc on the team and...well Rene Bourque sounds french and Blake Geoffrion has French roots. The issue for me has always been when selecting a player or a coach or a manager, the most talented should be drafted or chosen. The issue here is not only did we not draft the most talented but the most talented in most cases was a Quebec or francophone player. Some history to make my point. As already mentioned in another blog in 1977 we drafted Mark Napier in 10th spot overall. Who was drafted 15th overall none other than Mike Bossy probably the greatest sniper of all time in the NHL. Bossy w...

There was some celestial harmony when Danny Gallivan would say back to the point and Lapointe fires and scoreesssss. It seems that Guy Lapointe was always there. You see him in the grainy videos of the 71 stunning Cup win where the habs eliminated the Bruins and Hawks. He was there in the four straight cups in the late seventies. He was prominent in game 7 versus the bruins in 1979. Savard and Robinson that night had had better days. He was there in 1972 giving the Russian the choke sign in game 1 and playing a strong role in Canada's win in Russia. He was there in that famous game versus the Red Army on New Year's eve in 1975. He played with Jean Beliveau and JC Tremblay. He played with Guy Lafleur and Larry Robinson. Yes he was there and everyone expected Guy to have an error-free fast skating offensive game with a good hip check every once and awhile. If Guy Lapointe should be remembered for anything it was that he was consistently very good, game in game out almost ev...