The Habs........Rise To The Top

At the beginning of the 2007-08 NHL hockey season almost all NHL analyst and sports magazines and rankings had the Montreal Canadiens out of the playoffs. Their placements were between 15th spot in the conference all the way to 12th. Most people called them "an up and coming team for the future," others just called them too young to compete among the elite teams in the league. Almost all of them said in the next three years we will become a great team, but until then we were just average.

That was all the motivation the Habs needed. They found a first line in the Kovalev-Plekanec-A.Kostitsyn line and have solid goaltending with youngster Carey Price. Their defence tandem of Komisarek and Markov have helped out a ton, and in the words of Pierre Mcguire, Komisarek has been a "MONSTER". The addition of Roman Hamrlik at the beginning of the year had led to a steady defence with yet another youngster in Ryan O'Byrne helping the case.

One of the few minuses you can find are the fact that 2 of the players we acquired as free agents have not performed to their potential and are sitting in the press box as a waste of money. Tom Kostopoulos one of those wastes has showed some bright spots such as sticking up for his teammates, but he does not provide much (if any) scoring that is needed. Smolinski has not done a lot, and with hot forward Mikhail Grabovski coming in he wont get much playing time to prove anything. Do I really have to mention Brisebois?

Our coach, Guy Carbonneau, is in my opinion one of the most underrated coaches in the league. He is also a big reason to the success of this year. I think the fact that at the beginning of the year Carbonneau and Gainey sat down with their *STAR* Alexei Kovalev and had a chat about the upcoming season and I believe that is the thing that lit a spark under Kovalev's backside.

I believe that my team, the Montreal Canadiens, are a Stanley Cup Contender, but I also think "NEXT YEAR IS THE YEAR" of "THE CH".

Ovie's Best Friend