Does The Goat Know When To Hold 'Em?

Gauthier certainly didn't fold 'em when it came to getting the Habs (young) man at the draft, giving up two rolls of the dice for only one.

So how's about this Jarred Tinordi dude? Son of Mark. 18 years young and already a whopping six inches above six feet. Down in Fort Worth, they call that big.

Junior was rated as a late first rounder/early second rounder in most final pre-draft rankings, and went as high as 18 in one mock draft. So this was hardly a stretch for The Goat or, more precisely, his main drafting man Monsieur Timmons. Still, if any of the following names means something in a few years, lets just agree that they'll be lots 'o blog space devoted to it: Pysyk, Petrovic, Merrill, Faulk, Johns - and that's just among potential star backenders.

Let's face it, based on Habs history it's more likely Mr. One Hundred and Seventeenth Overall Morgan Ellis will have an impact at the NHL level. Just look at this house full of late rounders:


Only one (traitor) first rounder among them, and 3 drafted after at least 161 other kids. (I'll let you guys have fun figuring out all these guys. I know, I know - naming the King is gonna be tough.)

In the other hand, we have a fistful of first round jokers:

In case you need a refresher on these much-less-than-fab five, the big bust list reads like this: Bilodeau, Yemelin, Brown, Fischer and Wilke. Okay, Comrade Alexei was a third rounder, but how 'bout 1988's Eric Charron instead? No? 130 NHL games too impressive? Okay, how about this for up-my-sleeve: Robin Sadler, 1975. First round. Number None Nine overall. Exactly zero NHL games.

The Goat gave up 27 plus 57 for 22. I'm no Newton, but that sounds like bad math. But it's not about math, it is about what hand Habs fans have been dealt in Junior, and - especially those like this guy who largely just criticise other people's mistakes - the guys that the Habs could have had instead. (The 'Yotes got a hardly-needed project goalie and a smallish potential third round Swede centre - a description that has a real familiar ring to it. Seemingly unlikely nightmare scenarios for the Habs, but impossible is nothing - or maybe I'm a sucker for large-shoe-company propaganda.)

If Junior lives up to his height and isn't a goddam traitor in seven seasons or so, let me be the first to blog thusly:

Nice Job, Goat! Well done, Trevy TM!!

If Alex Petrovic plugs Pleks in the playoffs or Jon Merrill goes top shelf on TFS in a few years, consider this the first installment in a long series of paragraphs that all ought to go along the same lines:

You suck at drafting even worse than at trading or at life in general, you Goat. You should have fired that bum Timmins the second you got hired, you know when you canned those other talentless scouts. No, actually, YOU should be fired/never had been hired. Did I mention you suck, you Goat? I hate you as a person although I've never met you. YOU SUCK.

And the difference in those 1000 words (more or less) can be summed up by one brilliant GG11 picture: