Carbonneau for Coach of the Year
Habs Coach Shoo in for Jack Adams Award
For all those hockey pundits that reference the sophomore slump - for all those players that unfortunately bear the cross of having personified the jinx firsthand - Montreal Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau is a welcome slap in the face.
On the eve of his team's latest victory, a 4-2 decision over the host Boston Bruins March 20th, Carbonneau's team has a 41-24-10 record, good enough for second in the National Hockey League's Eastern Conference, and all this in his second season as a head coach, with just seven games remaining in the Habs' regular season and a playoff berth all but clinched, no less. If not a slap, then a splash of cold water should be welcomed upon the head of the hockey world to effectively awaken it from a fantastic slumber. God knows, everybody must be dreaming if the Habs, a team most well-respected hockey experts had finishing out of the conference's top eight prior to the start of the season, is within reach of a number-one seed this close to the playoffs.
What is most surprising is the way in which the Habs are winning nowadays. Once considered one of many defensive stalwarts in the league, at least for the greater part of the last decade, the team now leads the league in goals scored. Their top-ranked power play has performed without the shot of the departed Sheldon Souray (who left apparently for the greener grass in Edmonton's hospital wards) and on the strength of the play of Alex Kovalev, who as recently as last year was a washed up veteran Carbonneau, or any coach for that matter, couldn't motivate to even show up to a Tony Robbins seminar. Now, Kovalev leads the league in power-play scoring and the Habs overall with a better-than point-per-game average.
Their defense corps is led by a reserved and soft spoken defenseman in Andrei Markov and a relative no-name in Mike Komisarek, who has still made enough of a name for himself to rank among the league leaders in blocked shots.
Their so-called undisputed number-one goaltender, Cristobal Huet, was traded away at the February 26 deadline. Still, since that point, the Habs, with the goaltending reins handed over to two goalies barely into their 20s, have gone 8-3-1 to help secure that ever-elusive playoff position.
So, for a group of overachievers such as this, how best to explain their success? Clearly coaching is just a small part of it, but a part of it nonetheless. No one can ever prove the degree to which Carbonneau has affected the team's chances of becoming sudden surprise contenders this year. By the same token, however, no one can deny he's had something to do with it. The Jack Adams Award, handed down to the league's best coach, will almost certainly be bestowed upon New Jersey's Brent Sutter (for turning an anemic, bare-bones team into a legitimate contender, centered around ageless superstar goalie Martin Brodeur), Detroit's Mike Babcock (for being able to once again pump out an uber-competitive squad in Hockeytown, USA), and the aforementioned Carbonneau.
Carbonneau and the Habs may not win the Stanley Cup, but, considering the fashion in which they've gotten to this point, disproving any hockey expert ignorant enough to write them off in September, they at least merit some applause. Because Detroit and New Jersey, one can argue, were predetermined favourites to finish near the top of the league, Sutter and Babcock should justifiably (willingly and proudly) take a backseat to Carbonneau for what he has accomplished this year. Any other result in the voting for the NHL awards come June, and it could be construed as nothing but an ill-deserved, this time, slap in the face.
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