Bob Gainey spent $108 M on a complex Canadiens chemisty experiment.
MONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens officially became hockey’s most expensive Petri dish this summer, when Bob Gainey poured nearly $108 million experimental dollars into hockey’s most perplexing chemistry experiment.
It was one of the fastest rebuilding projects in hockey history, and begged the question: Why?
Why spend so much of your cap room so quickly? Why lock in a lineup — or $18 million of it for Scott Gomez, Mike Cammalleri and Brian Gionta — for so long, seemingly without patient architecture?
What was the rush, Bob, when everyone knows that good science takes time?
Well, the Canadiens played their 13th game of the season Friday night in Chicago, and the lab was quiet after a 3-2 loss to the Blackhawks.
They’re still learning how to play, this team. A good period here, a bad one there. With the Toronto Maple Leafs in town for the two Original Six franchises’ second Hockey Night in Canada meeting of the year, it's no coincidence that neither club has found its way yet this season.
The Canadiens opened their season with an overtime win at Toronto, but lost their best player — Andrei Markov — in the process, when he suffered lacerated tendons just below his left shin pad. He hasn’t played a minute since, and that could possibly be the most damaging injury to any one team in the league this season.
Markov is a player along the lines of Sergei Zubov, Sergei Gonchar, Nik Lidstrom, or Lubomir Visnovsky. There are varying degrees of greatness there, to be sure, but all of those defencemen are skilled enough to make the game easier for every other teammate on the ice with them.
They are glue guys who eat up minutes while successfully dealing with more than their share of the pressure-filled moments. Teammates off-load those responsibilities on the high-skilled defencemen, who deals with them successfully. Passes arrive on the tape. The puck leaves the zone. There is less fire drill time.
So it is without that calming element that Gainey’s experiment has become more complex.
His top defensive pairing now is Roman Hamrlik and Jaroslav Spacek — two good players, but not a top pairing on a strong blue-line. Hal Gill has been forced into more and harder minutes, and thus far in the season has looked more like the awkward Hal Gill we watched in Boston and Toronto, rather than the one who benefited — who knows how much? — by being surrounded by a Stanley Cup caliber roster in Pittsburgh.
The top line has been decent, with Gionta, Cammalleri and Gomez. But Gainey ran out of money before he could buy any more depth, and nobody from the homegrown group of Andrei Kostitsyn, Maxim Lapierre, Max Pacioretty and Matt D’Agostini has stepped up to help Tomas Plekanec in creating a second line.
In goal, Carey Price’s bounce-back year, after his Patrick Roy moment of a season ago, has not yet materialized. He took an .884 saves percentage and a 3.50 GAA into his start in Chicago, numbers that do not scream of impending glory.
As a whole, it leaves us with an image of Gainey in his lab, moving from test tube to test tube in search of an intended result. The better beaker, as it were, than what the 2009-10 season has concocted thus far.
Coach Jacques Martin moved the canine-like Kostitsyn all the way up to the No. 1 line Friday, not as a reward for fetching his newspaper and slippers, but to free Cammalleri to play on Plekanec’s wing. It worked to a small degree Friday, as the Habs had their share of scoring chances but didn't bury enough of them.
Even their heavyweight, Georges Laraque, has caused more friction than buoyancy. He has received more press for making ill-advised TV commercials than patrolling the wing this season. He has been a healthy scratch for several games, and has one lousy fight this season — in the team’s season opener — and been silent ever since.
Laraque, a French Canadien and one of the best enforcers in the game, represented one box that was easily ticked off in the making of a good hockey team. But even he has sent Gainey back to the drawing board, and may be bought out after this season if he does not embrace the role he was hired to perform.
In the end, even a Saturday night matchup against the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs is not easy money for these Habs.
Both teams lost 3-2 on Friday.
The good news? Someone gets a win Saturday night in Montreal.