Double Good News

Yesterday Canada's national program coach, Marc Habschied was named an assistant to Boston. Now, a lot of people are saying Habscheid is a great coach, but I personally have little faith in him.

Rewind to 2004- Canada has won the two biggest international tournaments, the Olympics, and the World Cup, and to boot, they have back to back World Championship medals, and a Spengler Cup gold. The drout on Canada's World Jr. hopes won't end till 2005, but in the meantime, Hockey Canada announces Marc Habscheid as the national program coach, which means he'll be involved in men's international tournaments until his contract expires. This is based on his success in the AHL and WHL, coaching the Kelowna Rockets to a Memorial Cup victory in 2004 and being named CHL coach of the year in 2003. He also managed to coach Canada's Jr. team to a Silver medal in 2003, being at the helm during the infamous 'Fleury incident.' (Marc-Andre, not Theo).

Because of the NHL lockout, Canada's B squad was dispatched to the World Championships, Habschied again at the helm. Now, whether the team looked brutal because players were rusty, or because they were poorly coached, I dont know. All I know is that it would make sense to give such a large task to a more experienced coach, and I could give the same reasons Playfair gave; you don't know what you don't know, even if youre a great Jr. coach.

Between the talent of Thornton, Nash, and Broduer, Canada makes the final and loses. Silver medal again.

Fast forward to the Olympics, Habscheid is given assitant duties. I won't even say outloud what a debacle that whole tournament was.

Go to two Spengler cups, both of which Habscheid coached. No golds.

Now I'm not going as far as saying Habscheid lost us any of the tournaments, but when you coach Team Canada, anything less than Gold is failure. And Habscheid took what was at the time an international Juggernaut, and helmed it straight into an iceburg. He was a guy I'll remember for winning a bunch of silvers, or conversly, losing a bunch of golds. Good luck to Boston, happy day for Canada.

In other news, the Oilers signed Horcoff to $3.5/year for 3 years. Thats actually not a bad steal when you consider other players in his price range, and from the looks of Horcoff, he just keeps getting better. Started out as a 3rd liner at best, Horcoff has turned into a speedy first line centre that excells at defensive positioning and has a nice touch around the net.

In other news, Richard Zednick basically got traded for a bag of pucks. Kind of strange considering hes been a guy who consistently does better in the playoffs than the regular season. Wish Calgary would have picked him up instead of Freisen, thats for sure.