Monday, August 06, 2007

Habs fans have it all wrong on Brisebois

After a weekend without the internet, I come back to discover Patrice Brisebois is with the Canadiens again.

This is bad news. Very bad. And, in my opinion, most Habs fans are dead wrong, whether they agree with signing or not and especially in their (banished) memories of Breakwood.

First of all, as Robert pointed out on Eyesontheprize, Brisebois is no saint for coming to Montreal on $700,000 a year. No one else signed him, did they? This was probably his best, if not his only offer to continue playing hockey. He missed a lot of games last year, partly due to injury, but was also a healthy scratch on non-playoff Colorado. $700,000 nis nothing to sneeze at – I know PhDs who start on 5% that salary, so let's not be ridiculous as we lay on the praise for good ole Patrice. He's not stupid, that's for certain. he'd have to be to turn down this offer.

Second of all, Brisebois was never just another Traverse or Laflamme (terrible on D), he was awful, got paid lots and couldn't understand where the disconnect was. He always acted like he had earned the $4 million a year (the highest contract for any Hab ever at the time).

But on top of everything, what always disgusted me most about him was his attitude. I saw it after every goal. There was never any acknowledgement of his own mistakes – just flinging his arms in the air, sometimes as if to blame others (and the goalie) for not covering his mistakes up. Commiting errors is forgiveable, but not if you don't learn from them.

Ask any manager in any business. Someone who doesn't learn from errors is someone who won't be around long. This is Brisebois. He was always to vain to bother improving, or trying to do less, or taking some responsibility. This more than anything is why I am disappointed in his return.

On top of it all, it makes this offseason look like a total mishmash. How can we have faith in management and their plan, when they talk about going with our star prospects but bring in tired old veterans.

As I said before, Brisebois is not even a good role model. I would never want any of the young players, whether it be Cote, O'Byrne or Valentenko to take on any of his traits – not even his vastly overrated outlet (I thought it was intercepted) pass.

A very dark weekend for the Habs – even if many of the fans try to cast some very very optimistic light onto the whole mess.

Time for the ironic cheers again...

1 comment:

  1. I'm with you 100% on Brisebois!! A good 1st pass? I knew I couldn't be the only one noticing it got intercepted half the time! And I've said it on my blog too, there's no way I want this guy mentoring our prospects. Anyway, we won't see much from them this year because Breezer just took the last spot available...

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