Graham Hughes
Our rudimentary understanding of the rules of statistics has left us with the comfortable, convenient and quite mistaken belief that two data points form a discernible trend.
As every self-respecting journo knows, you only need one event to expound on a trend, but just for rigour's sake, we're doubling that minimum standard.
Hey, we're in the value-added business here at French Immersion, as beady-eyed readers well know.
Glancing at our sophisticated Habs Playoff Race Watch Thingy™, we notice that the Canadiens remain statistical locks for a playoff spot, all they need is one measly point tonight against the Carolina Hurricanes - who are the Newman to their Seinfeld.
If they stumble, there's always the 29th-place team to look forward to on Saturday - and the Habs never lose to the Leafy types, right?
Nothing could possibly go wrong!
Giddy optimism aside, some worrying cracks are showing in that there edifice.
When the CH went all hacking and watery-eyed on a 2-0 lead against the Buffalo Sabres a couple of weeks back, players and coaches alike said "we've learned," and vowed the debacle wouldn't be repeated.
Same thing after losing to Carolina last week in a game where they opened the scoring and dominated for long stretches. Won't happen again, they said.
But lo, so it was against the New York Islanders that the Habs did indeed gag and gurgle on leads of 2-1 and 3-2 against one of the NHL's lowlier teams.
Perhaps we might blithely steal a riff from our friend Boone over at Habsinsideout.com, Tuesday was a most grievous violation of David Mamet's chilling invocation (as expressed by Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross) "Always be closing."
To stretch the analogy out beyond the point of usefulness, the Habs are locked in a competition much like the first-prize-is-a-Cadillac-second-is-a-set-of-steak-knives-and-third-is-you're-fired in Mamet's brilliant screenplay.
And they're starting to look more like Lemmon than Pacino.
This is down to the players, of course, but the Buffalo game and last night's gas job are also at least partly on Jacques Martin, who has revealed himself to be a surprisingly poor in-game coach - at least to the seasoned second-guessers here at FI.
We've had players say to us on the q.t. that the Habs' bench minders have a chronic problem with making adjustments - speaking out in public on such matters is verboten, of course - and some recent late-game personnel decisions have surely been head-scratchers.
We can think of the amply-deconstructed idea of having Sergei Kostitsyn out killing a crucial penalty late against Buffalo (or having his brother Andrei and Mike Cammalleri try to protect a last-minute lead with Ryan Miller pulled).
Martin's affection for Tom Pyatt is well-documented, and we're fans of the kid from Thunder Bay (or as Bill Goldthorpe, the inspiration for Ogie Ogilthorpe, called it: land of the tough guys).
But it's a little strange to cobble together a line of Plekanec, Gionta and Pyatt - who have never played together - to take a defensive zone faceoff (which, to be fair, Plekanec won) coming out of a t.v. timeout with two minutes left and a one-goal lead.
Perhaps Dominic Moore, the team's best faceoff guy and a crafty defensive player, may have been sent out. And what of Travis Moen or Mathieu Darche, two defensively responsible vets who could add a little size to the equation?
We're only sayin'.
It's always easy to criticize NHL coaches sitting behind the FI parapets - Jacques has 1,100 games of stick-time and we have, uh, zero - but the fact remains that until a certain impassive, cerebral Franco-Ontarian can figure out a way to show his troops how to close up shop, this bunch isn't going to scare anyone.
And to close on our customarily cheery note, here's another emerging trend: the Habs, all of a sudden, suck in the shootout, and have lost three in a row.
Just the sort of thing you look for as you march inexorably into the playoffs.