Michel Therrien's new game strategy to include atonement, shame

Michel Therrien looks down on celebrations like these, as
it makes the other players feel bad for not scoring the goal.

If you watch a Michel Therrien interview, you'll notice he always looks pissed. He has no time for things like smiling, inflection in his voice, or generally enjoying life. It shows in his coaching strategy, as he puts forward a team first mindset, but questions are being raised when he announced that he's putting the kibosh on the famous triple low fives between PK Subban and Carey Price. Aside from the Pacioretty-Desharnais-Cole line, the triple low five after winning a game is the only constantly good thing I remember from last season. Here's two of the team's best players showing camaraderie in a relaxed, fun fashion. Fans ate it up, and it even got TV exposure from time to time. But now, Coach Buzzkill has to come along and say no, it's disrespectful. I'm sorry, what?

Apparently, this isn't the only reform that Therrien wants to introduce. He has quite the laundry list of changes he plans on implementing to sap the humanity and everything we enjoy about the team help improve team discipline and give it a more classy image. These are some of his plans:

• Take all "Get to Know Your Canadiens" videos off the team website, as the players show too much personality.
• Carey Price must wear only plain white masks, because wearing various designs is prideful, and pride is a sin.
• Self flagellation is to be introduced as a weekly team building exercise.
• The Bell Centre will no longer announce the three stars of the game, as individual contributions are disgraceful to the fans.
• The locker room motto, "to you from failing hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high" will now become, "THE TALLEST BLADE OF GRASS IS THE FIRST TO BE CUT BY THE LAWNMOWER."

Frankly, stuff like this is avoiding the real issues with the team. Stopping triple low fives won't do anything if the penalty kill gets scored on from three different Brandon Prust penalties; meanwhile, Ryan White is in a corner of the ice eating the contents of Ben Lovejoy's stomach. Hockey punch players aren't exactly known for their low PIMs. Get mad at those guys before you tell people like PK that he can't have fun on the ice. It doesn't help that you took all the incentive out of his paycheque.

Why root for Canada when when there are Canadiens on all the teams?

I've thought about for a while, and though it still causes bile in my throat to admit it, I'm not rooting for Canada in the world championship. I know, I know. I'm writing this while drinking my last Sleeman ever, and waiting for immigration services to deport me to Montana. But before they take the maple leaf tattoo off my ass with sandpaper, I should at least explain my reasoning.

First and foremost, if Canada wins the gold medal this year, people are going to think that Brent Sutter is a good coach. Assuming you actually watch hockey, you can easily figure out that ol' mumbles is as good at his job as he is handsome. Nobody liked him on the Red Deer Rebels, especially when he took that Memorial Cup winning team, and took them to consistently last in the division faster than you can say "Mike Milbury". The only times I ever see him coach a successful team these days is whenever he coaches Canada in international competition. This is about as brag worthy as me saying I won the Stanley Cup singlehandedly in NHL '12 on easy. Enough about coaches though. What about the players?

By my dumb homer philosophy, the way I support countries in international competition is based on this equation: 3Xhabs + Ystyle of uniform - (Aleafs + 2Bbruins). Higher values denote the countries I support. So let's look at Canada. Carey Price and PK Subban are out due to injury, so X = 0. If we take a look at their uniform, it looks like the 80s have come back to haunt us yet again. I'll give Canada's uniform a Y value of 0.5. Looking at the rest of the lineup, we have Dion Phaneuf and Luke Schenn, but thankfully, no Bruins. A + 2B becomes a managable 2. So if we do the math, the equation translates to 0 + .5 - (2 + 0) = -1.5

How would this score compare to say, Team USA?

Right off the bat, we have Max Pacioretty on the roster, so that's an X value of 3 for the Americans. But wait, their sweaters must be uglier than sin right? After all, they have the letters U, S, and A in succession! It's a travesty on the eyes, right? Well, I'm nonplussed. So I'm gonna say something like 0.4 for a Y value. Thankfully, there's only Joey Crabb from Toronto on the team. So the final equation comes out to 3 + 0.4 - 1, for a very respectable 2.4. In the interest of fairness, we should examine a neutral team to see how the numbers match up. So let's look at Team Latvia.





Latvia as far as I can tell, has only one NHLer from the Ottawa Senators. So we have a value of 0 for three variables. So what about their sweater?

Oh. Oh my god. That is beautiful! This jersey is clearly at a value of 100 and automatically makes Latvia my choice for gold. Go Latvia!

Now that the government agents have arrived, I hope that I can enjoy my new life in Riga. Until then, uz redzēšanos!

A look at McGuire's Montreal Monsters

"Sid, have you ever considered jumping over to the Habs as a favour to me?"

Anyone checking the news knows that Montreal has been fielding candidates for the new General Manager spot for the last few days. The list of candidates has looked pretty strong to be honest, with Julien Brisebois, Marc Bergevin, Francois Giguere, Doug Risebrough...wait that can't be right. Pierre McGuire? Seriously? Well, what I get from lots of people is he knows about all the key players in all the junior squads and college teams in North America, and he won't hesitate to remind us of this every time he appears on NBC in some fashion. Seriously, if you ever meet him, ask him for details on someone like Rocco Grimaldi, and he won't stop at the basic stats. No sir, he even knows where the kid played in atom league, his grade seven homeroom teacher, and the fact that his parents got him a Nintendo with Bible Adventures when he was three. It's uncanny! It's borderline autistic!

Should Pierre be hired on to run the team (into the ground if you're particularly pessimistic/not crazy), it should be easy to predict some of his significant moves from his time on TV. His fetish for large defensemen, and generally large players has been on display many times. If I wanted to be an ass about it (which I am), I'd describe his ideal team as "size first, skill optional, and will you marry me Sidney Crosby". While I could definitely be surprised by a few moves of his, we should be looking forward to a few certain people wearing the CH.