News for Monday, February 5th

Red Fisher says the Habs "simply stopped skating" yesterday, pinning that as the cause of the team's collapse from a 3-0 lead to a 5-3 defeat. Well, it was the Habs' third game in four days, so I wouldn't say they so much stopped skating as they started skating slower. They looked quite exhausted, if you ask me. If Fisher is a little hard on the Habs for their effort, he's right on when it comes to the moron Bell Centre fans who started singing that "olay, olay" song in the second period last night: that song is a jinx, and it sucks anyway. In any event, you don't start razzing another team about the game being done when more than half of the match is left to play! (Unless it's Boston.) Fisher is too kind in calling Scott Gomez the "best skater on the ice", because Gomez has done nothing but reveal himself for the overrated chihuahua on skates that he is this year, ever since signing that laughable deal with the Rangers. He and fellow new Ranger Chris Drury are two of the most over-compensated players of all time, in my humble opinion. Fisher concurs with Glen Sather when he calls out the refereeing, and I'd have to agree. Lately, every game I watch, it's like one ref is Forrest Gump and the other is his box of chocolates, except somehow I always know what I'm going to get.

Pat Hickey quotes the players, blaming themselves and doing the mea culpa thing. Well, Chris Higgins does, anyway; there's a guy who really takes a loss hard, right there. He agrees with Fisher that the Habs stopped skating. Hickey implicitly blames Saku Koivu, whose cheesy hooking penalty in the second was the beginning of the Ranger's comeback. Koivu does take too many of those stick calls, and seems surprised every time, but the Rangers didn't score all five goals on that power play, Pat. It was still 3-1 when Koivu got out, and the Habs couldn't hold the fort. Hickey suggests that Cristobal Huet - who has started twelve in a row - could use some back-up. He's allowed11 goals in his last three games. For my part, I'm with Coach Carbo, who blames the loss on ... the Rangers. They notched the game up when the depleted Habs began dragging their overworked feet late in the second. You can't win 'em all.