Should Habs Trade for Simon Gagne?

With the NHL trade deadline over a month away, the Habs are doing well thus far early in the NHL season but still have difficulty playing certain teams. They are obviously becoming too reliant on certain players to perform each night. Watching players like Brian Gionta who are sometimes invisible for the Habs certain nights and at his age seemingly at the end of his career, imagine if GM Marc Bergevin traded Gionta to the LA Kings for Simon Gagne? Gagne has put up decent numbers but struggled to fit in the LA Kings as well as Tampa Bay Lightning after his successful career in Philadelphia. His history of concussions might be of concern but he still has playmaking abilities and puts up decent numbers for a a guy relegated to limited ice time on the bottom lines.

Imagine putting him on the wing with Desharnais-Pacioretty how dangerous the Habs attack would be? His 6’1″ frame is much larger and stronger than Brian Gionta plus he is much more skilled. Putting him in such a position in the Habs lineup could reignite his offensive prowess of the past and make the Habs more dominant. After being a healthy scratch a few times this season I’m sure the LA Kings will take something for him and especially Brian Gionta. Gionta’s contract and salary does not make sense for a younger teams like the Habs and he definitely is not one of the better Captains in Habs history. Getting Simon Gagne could make a statement to French Canadian Habs fans that the tradition is still alive and the the once storied franchise is continuing it’s quest for the Stanley Cup.

Gagne’s contract is very light for the Habs and not a risk at all. Of course, Simon Gagne isn’t the cure to the problem as the Habs still need a couple more younger players to be more dominant (perhaps like Derrick Brassard), but such a trade could put the Habs over the top. After 20 years since the last Stanley Cup, the time is now for the Montreal Canadiens.

Is This Year of The Snake Going to be a Bad One?

They say that the year of the snake is good for people who have been working hard or persisting towards a goal but bad for those who have had it too easy for too long. Let’s look at some important events that occurred in past Year of the Snakes as follows:

February 13, 2011 – A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 400
September 11, 2001 – The 9/11 Attacks
October 2, 2001 – Swissair seeks for bankruptcy protection and grounds its entire fleet
November 10, 2001 – Heavy rains and mudslides in Algeria kill more than 900.
November 12, 2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, headed to the Dominican Republic, crashes in Queens minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board.
December 2, 2011 – Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at that time)
January 17, 2012 – The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo displaces an estimated 400,000 people
June 4, 1989 – The Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing
1989 – The start of the collapse of the junk bond crisis, the Fall of The Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Berlin Wall
October 17, 1989 – California Earthquake in San Francisco-Oakland
March 4, 1977 – Bucharest Earthquake kills 1,500
March 27, 1977 – A collision between KLM and Pan Am Boeing 747s at Tenerife, Canary Islands, kills 583 people (the deadliest accident in aviation history).
May 25, 1977 – Star Wars opens in cinemas and later becomes the historic highest grossing film for that time
1977 – First Personal Computers Tandy TRS-80 and Commodore PET are released as well as Atari 2600 video game unit
August 16, 1977 – Elvis Presley dies in his home in Graceland at age 42
March 7, 1965 – Bloody Sunday: Some 200 Alabama State Troopers clash with 525 civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. Numerous other civil rights race riots that year.
March 8, 1965 – America’s involvement in Vietnam War begins
May 29, 1965 – A mining accident in Dhanbad, India kills 274.
June 1, 1965 A coal mine explosion in Fukuoka, Japan kills 237.
September 9, 1965 – Hurricane Betsy roars ashore near New Orleans, Louisiana with winds of 145 mph (233 km/h), causing 76 deaths and $1.42 billion in damage.
April 13, 1953 – Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale in the United Kingdom.
June 30, 1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette is built at Flint, Michigan.
August 12, 1953 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake totally devastates most of the Ionian Sea islands in Greece’s worst natural disaster in centuries
December, 1953 – Hugh Hefner publishes the first issue of Playboy
1941 – Heavy WWII battles including attack on Pearl Harbour by Japanese
December 25, 1941 – WWII: The Battle of Hong Kong ends after 17 days with surrender of the British Crown colony to the Japanese.
September 3, 1929 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) peaks at 381.17, a height it would not reach again until November 1954.
October 24–October 29, 1929– Wall Street Crash of 1929 which lead to the Great Depression as wel as the rise of Hitler’s Nazis

Although there are a few positive things that occurred in the most recent previous year of the snakes, they are way outnumbered by negative events. Is this a sign of things to come as this 2013 year of the snake transpires?

Should Habs Trade Brian Gionta?

 

The Montreal Canadiens, decades from the team’s glory days are fading yet again in this early strike plagued NHL season. Watching their Captain Brian Gionta play over the past few seasons you start to wonder. Usually Team Captains either dominate offensively, defensively or make the big hits or fights to fire up his team. Gionta does neither. He is a very dimunitive forward who although has some dressing room leadership skills is not what the Montreal Canadiens needs right now. The Habs need a complete leader. Someone who steps up when the rest of the team is ailing. Is it time for GM Marc Bergevin of the Montreal Canadiens to trade their captain? The answer is definitely yes. But who could they trade him for? He would make a good fit on a younger team or one that is challenging for the Stanley Cup (something that the Montreal Canadiens are not). If the Canadiens truly want to rebuild they need some players that add to the team chemistry yet are distinguishable from the current roster of players. Simon Gagne, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Sean Couturier, Paul Stasny, Derick Brassard, Antoine Vermette are some names that come to play who can match the once legendary speed and style of the Montreal Canadiens. Much like his counterpart Scott Gomez, Gionta (at the cost of letting go Alex Tanguay by Bob Gainey) is showing that the New Jersey Devils dominance has always relied on the play of Martin Brodeur and the Montreal Canadiens are not a good fit for him. Time to move forward for Marc Bergevin.