Former NHL head coach Guy Boucher, who remains the best hockey verbalization expert in my eyes, now has a column via 98.5 Sports. In his latest column, he detailed the situation in which the Montreal Canadiens found themselves.
We hear many things, including lack of commitment, lack of leadership or lack of work. Boucher goes further than that, of course. According to him, the Montreal Canadiens have an excessively difficult mourning to do.
"You're diminished, because it's so long and it's so hard (to get to the finals). You still think you're there. And if you didn't win it (the Stanley Cup) on top of that, you're still stuck on a whole lot of grief, because the chances of you getting back there are extremely slim. And you know it. You're missing out on the dream you've had since you were three, four, five years old. It's the accumulation of a lifetime of effort and emotion that gets you there. So the grief is huge. It's huge!" - Boucher
So the players are immersed in this mourning, in addition to the absences of Carey Price and Shea Weber, which are two other big mournings to be done as well. Having to go through one big mourning, then the players learn that two of their pillars will no longer be around for an indefinite time, most likely forever in the case of Weber.
