Friday, December 19, 2008

Good for Sundin

I'm going to be brief on this, but I think that Mats Sundin did the Canadiens a serious favour by not deciding to come to Montreal.

I'm not talking about last June, or even last August. I'm talking about right now, after the Christmas break, when the team - for better or for worse - is starting to take shape.

While he surely would have helped with the Habs horrid power play and their equally poor faceoff percentage, the arrival of not only Sundin's salary but also his larger-than-life presence would have been a major shake-up in the dressing room. His salary surely would have meant someone was leaving, and who knows what impact his personality would have had in the room.

Guy Carbonneau was pretty clear about his feelings on the matter Friday, saying he didn't think Sundin's drawn out melodrama was fair to the players who were rumoured to be leaving to make room for him under the cap.

Having said that, I believe Carbonneau and Bob Gainey are breathing a huge sigh of relief that Sundin is not heading to Broadway, where he was probably needed most. That team with Sundin, Scott Gomez and Chris Drury down the middle would have become a very difficult out in the playoffs, but that's something the Canadiens won't have to worry about with Sundin out west.

Personally, I'm with a lot of other people on this one that Sundin was a bit of a hypocrite with all his noble talk at the deadline last year about loyalty to the Leafs and not wanting to be a rental player because it cheapens the journey made within a team from training camp onward. I guess that journey is made a little less cheap when you're getting paid $1 million a month.

1 comment:

Sliver24 said...

I couldn't agree more with your assessment of Sundin's decision to sign in Vancouver. My favourite part of the affair is Sundin's statement that Vancouver was his first choice right from the beginning. What a joke!

The only thing I can't figure out is why he felt the need to come out with a statement that was a blatant lie. Vancouver fans don't care about that - all that matters to them is that he's there now. It makes him look like a liart to everyone else though.

As for his failure to sign here, the story I heard (I can't remember where but my may have been on Thursday's HNIC broadcast) what that when J.P. Barry contacted Bob Gainey a few weeks ago to ask him for a final offer, Gainey informed him that he had "decided to go in a different direction."

Awesome.