Another M to the M: Mark Mitera traded to Montreal for Mathieu Carle. MMMMMM
Montreal has traded Mathieu Carle to Anaheim for Mark Mitera:
http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=371793
Pierre Gauthier really loves his wolverines. How many M players is that now in the Montreal system? 6?
[Ed-M: Couldn't help it - I added some alliteration to the tile.]
with the Habs brass.
Unfortunately couldn't get the Alouettes to keep Renaldo Sagesse.
My initials are MM and I live in a town with the initials MM as well so I can relate to this.
If you ask Dean Lombardi, he'll say that's 6 too many. Then again Dean Lombardi is a tool.
is a chump.
Bennett ripped it up at the invitational camp here, impressed nearly everyone in a not-easy-to-impress town. Can skate all day this kid, and unafraid in camp. Apparently hung out a lot with Patches and Palushaj (who is looking like a real prospect in two years). Hope he does it on the ice for UM this season.
Pateryn was alright, steady. Will have a tough time cracking the roster but has the time to improve. He and Bennett together would make a nicely-balanced d-pairing for UM. Think they started together last year for a while.
Article here about them concluded, "After they win the NCAA national championship this year..."
when Red paired those two up last year. Bennett is quite fast and doesn't just join the rush, he leads it, a good chunk of the time. But that's OK, because you know Pateryn isn't going anywhere, so he'll be home to take care of anything that starts going the other way and he's solid enough defensively where, most of the time, he will take care of it. I thought it was a really nice blend and from the quotes in Montreal's article about them, they didn't seem to mind being togeher either. The one thing I think I wished for more from Bennett (and I could be wrong, it's been awhile since their last game) was that he had a better shot. I remember him being around the net a good porion of the time, but I don't remember ever seeing him unleash a bomb from, well, anywhere. It also felt to me lie Pateryn has improved quite a bit every year here, last year he was shut-down most of the time. If he can make another sort of jump into senior year, he'll be very, very good defensively. I think Bennett has a skill set to be an absolute star in college, if he develops.
Speaking of D-men (when was the last time you could talk more about Michigan's defense than forwards?) I'm excited to see what Moffie can do with another year. Legitimately, playing full time, I don't think 15 goals is beyond him, if he keeps improving. He does have something of a cannon and is offensie minded. I recall him being in and out of the doghouse for being caught up ice a number of times, but when he was in position, he was good defensively. Now that my dream pairing of Merrill/Burlon is impossible, I'm really hoping for a Merrill/Moffie pairing up top. Obviously Merrill is pretty good, but his offensive kind of disappeared in the second half. Langlais was offensive-minded but things really weren't falling for him his senior year. Maybe with Moffie, one might expect even more (or maybe consistent would be a better word) offense from Merrill and Merrill is a positioning guru, which might help Moffie out. The only thing is that with Moffie-Merrill and Bennett-Pateryn, you leave the third pair to be between Szuma/Clare/Chiasson/Serville, 3 freshman (2 walk-on) and a sophomore. And I know Red likes to pair freshman with upperclassman on defense. So my guess would be something more like, maybe:
Merrill-Moffie
Pateryn-Serville
Bennett-Clare
I'm not sure really which is second and which is third though, to be honest. But that gives some pretty decent balance, I think. Then maybe Bennett and Pateryn rejoin in the second half of the season, once Serville (and honestly, Clare too) have played a little more.
I wish it was hockey season, so we could see how wrong I'm going to be. Sorry for the slight thread hijack, I couldn't resist.