Honeymoon over

Bob Gainey's honeymoon as coach of the Canadiens came to an abrupt halt last night as his team lost its 5th straight road game in Calgary. It's not so much the fact that they did lose, but the way in which the loss played itself out that hurts. The Canadiens had 18 shots to the Flames' 30, and saved their best efforts for the final 5 minutes of the game, after Alex Kovalev snipped Calgary's lead to 1. This was a classic example of the slumping Canadiens that got ex-coach Claude Julien fired: certain players failed to show up for the game, and no one put in the requisite effort to win at the NHL level.

Mike Ribeiro, whom Bob Gainey did not call out in his introductory press conference as a player who needed to step up his game, played 11:34, including 3:06 on the power play, was a minus-1, and did not register a single shot. And this guy, making $1.18 million this season, is supposed to be the Habs' second-line centre? You can bet that Gainey will quickly get fed up with Ribeiro's complete lack of anything resembling a work ethic, and will ship him out to any takers. It's a shame Ribeiro is such a bum, because he's a Montrealer who loves playing for the Habs - a rarity in today's NHL - but I'd rather have no Montrealers on the team than one Mike Ribeiro. He's that much of a disruption.