Bob About to Gainey Unemployment Benefits

Bob Gainey has appealed to Montreal Canadiens fans to stop booing the U.S. national anthem.

The Canadiens coach and general manager said fans who booed during Star-Spangled Banner ahead of Game 3 of their playoff series against the Boston Bruins should find other ways to voice their support. - CBC.ca

Personally, I feel that if you want to boo another country's anthem that you should go ahead and boo. Let everyone within earshot at the arena know what a boorish simpleton you are. If you're in Montreal you and your best buddies can create a concentrated mass of stupid loud enough to be heard on national TV broadcasts. Go get 'em guys!

At least the Habs' organization did the right thing to have Bob Gainey tell the crowd not to boo, surely everyone listens to Bob Gainey.

In the moments following Montreal’s loss to Boston Saturday – it’s second consecutive defeat against the Bruins in the Eastern Conference quarterfinal – Gainey was asked whether there was anything else the team could do. “Listen to the coach,” was his terse and succinct response. - Montreal Gazette

Ok, everyone here who has an NHL coaching job, an NHL general manager position, or both, please stand up. Uh, excuse me Mr. Gainey? Not so fast.

“We’ll try to give the players direction … not to take penalties … not to give the other team a chance to go on the power play. But it’s hard when the game’s on,” [Gainey] said. “They try to follow the word of their coaches and not take penalties, but it’s not always easy to do during the action on the ice, as we saw.”

Bob Gainey replaced Guy Carbonneau as coach of the Habs in a widely lauded move that placated scores of Canadiens fans. Gainey lost the locker room, but it's likely he never had it, but Carbonneau didn't have it either. Really this doesn't seem like the fault of the coach, but rather the GM. What? Gainey's the GM too? Oh that's not good.

On top of his terrible coaching decisions, here's what the Canadiens get to look forward to in the offseason:

UFAs (10):

Alex Tanguay, Saku Koivu, Alex Kovalev, Robert Lang, Tom Kostopolous, Francis Boullion, Mathieu Dandenault, Mike Komisarek, Mathieu Schneider, Patrice Brisebois.

RFAs (6):

Chris Higgins, Tomas Plekanec, Guillaume Latendresse, Matt D'Agostini, Kyle Chipchura, Greg Stewart

For a good laugh, here's who Montreal has under contract for certain next year:

Andrei Kostitsyn, Sergei Kostitsyn, Georges Laraque, Max Lapierre, Max Pacioretty, Glen Metropolit, Ben Maxwell, Andrei Markov, Roman Hamrlik, Josh Gorges, Ryan O'Byrne, Yannick Weber, Mathieu Carle, Carey Price, Jaroslav Halak

Hooooo boy. The cap is probably going down and if a few teams make offer sheets to Montreal the Habs could be in for a soul crushing offseason. You'd have to imagine they don't bring back some of the UFAs like Schneider or Brisebois, and that Kovalev is gone. However the Habs are still in bad shape. We've debated endlessly how losing Sundin as a UFA for nothing has been bad for the organization, imagine if the Habs lost Koivu, Kovalev and Tanguay in one year for nothing?

You'd think that Montreal would open up their piggy bank to ensure that doesn't happen but therein lies the rub. Montreal will have to either overpay or at least pay "fair market value" to retain its UFAs. The best part is, a lot of those guys are All Stars thanks to Montreal ballot stuffing, which should drive up their value. Success!

I'm not saying Montreal's season is over, that's tomorrow's post, but if Bob Gainey is GM of the Canadiens next season Montreal fans are getting exactly what they deserve. 7:00PM EDT puck drop at the Bell Centre tonight, let's hope Lucic's Crew finishes the job.