Montreal Canadiens

Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals visit the Bell Centre tonight for a highly anticipated game against the Montreal Canadiens, only a week removed from the Habs' 3-2 victory in Washington last Friday. Only a few months ago, rumors were circulating around the hockey world that the Habs would be playing this game at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, which could house up to 70,000 screaming Canadiens fans. Unfortunately, thanks to the Montreal Alouettes' option to use the "Big O" for their Eastern final game in the CFL (which they did, in last week's 56-18 shallacking of the BC Lions in front of 50,000 fans), the Canadiens' wouldn't have had time to build a regulation hock...

Monday afternoon the Montreal Canadiens traded disgruntled forward Guillaume Latendresse to the Minnesota Wild for another forward, Ottawa-native Benoit Pouliot. Pouliot, once a highly-touted prospect who was drafted 4th overall in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft (one rank before Carey Price), never blossomed under Jacques Lemaire in Minnesota. The situation did not change under new head-coach Todd Richards for Pouliot. Through 14 games, the 6′3” 200 lbs left winger has recored only two goals and two assists for four points. He also has 12 penalty minutes. Pouliot, currently sidelined by a hand injury, has not played since November 13th in Washington. He is still seven to ten days away befor...

Like most people in this city, I found out about the Guillaume Latendresse trade as I got home from work. Naturally, one of the first things I did was turn on RDS, the French version of TSN in Quebec, to hear more about the trade and reactions from the so-called ''experts''. To my dismay, I was brought to near-disgust with the first words that came out of anchor-woman Chantale Macabé's big fat horse mouth to open Sports 30, RDS's version of Sportscenter. ''Un autre Québecois quitte le Canadien.'' To save you the trip to Google Translate, in English, this means ''Another Quebecer leaves the Canadiens.''. I seriously couldn't believe my ears. Not even a complete hour after t...

Anyone who is a Habs fan (a sane one anyway) will tell you that Big Georges Laraque isn't a bad guy. He's always willing to talk to the media, he's a big joker amongst teammates, he has a huge heart when it comes to charity and he's arguably one of the most gentlemanly players in the league. Thing is, he wasn't signed to be a nice guy. He was signed to be a tough guy, that protects his teammates, aggravates the opposition and provides energy for the 5 to 8 minutes he's going to be on the ice. But in 43 games he's played (out of a possible 195 that he could have played) since he signed a 3 year, $4.5 million deal with the Canadiens in the summer of 2008, he's been almost everything exc...