Marc Pouliot signed with the Tampa Bay Lightning today. The latest in a series of clever moves by Steve Yzerman. Pouliot's new coach? Guy Boucher, who coached him in Rimouski. Wayne Fleming (hired today) also knows him from his Edmonton days (well, last season).
We talked about Pouliot a lot on this blog, most recently here. This is the 36th Pouliot post, tied with Sam Gagner for the most-often talked about player on the team since this blog drew new life after my delete-button error on the old one.
I'm a fan of Pouliot, wish him the best. He's 25 years old, the Oilers flushed him and now he's on his second (and possibly final) chance to make it in the big leagues. I'm betting he'll find a job and have a nice NHL career. If you don't know why, I encourage you to click "Pouliot" below. The case for MP is there. Make sure to read the comments, too. I'm not alone.
For old time's sake, the known injury history of Marc Pouliot:
- February 2003: Injured in Top Prospects game by a vicious and clean hit from Dion Phaneuf. Likely concussion.
- August 2003: Injured at the Canadian World Junior Camp in Calgary (it was a hip).
- November 2003: Injured in a QMJHL game (abdominal) and had to have surgery in summer 2004.
- 2003-04: Played several weeks with a broken wrist before shutting it down.
- April 2006: Mono.
- December 2008: Concussion.
- October 2009: Pubitis.
Poobitis.
ReplyDeleteJust listened to you LT on the 1260 podcast Oilers Lunch. I think they should have you on more often. Question: you mentioned you did radio in 80s...top 40...which song did you hate playing most but had to because manager made you ??
ReplyDeleteDoes Pouliot rip it up in Tampa?? Bite my tongue Jake.
I will always regret that MacT never threw Pouliot into the deep end to see if he could swim.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few guys like that with MacT. Sometimes I agreed with MacT and sometimes I didn't.
I don't feel Pouliot ever got that fair shot.
I think Tambellini didn't re-sign him because he wanted to go with a more physically rambunctious guy like Fraser, and I can't really fault him for that decision.
I think he will have a future as a role player in the NHL.
P.S. I like the way you weren't exactly playing the role of a guest "correctly" today, trying to probe Stauffer for information
Jake: I worked pretty much every format. Top 40, CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio), Talk, country, Adult Contemporary, rock, gold.
ReplyDeleteWorst song I ever played? Never Been to Me by Charlene. Horrible record.
Moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed them what I've got...
ReplyDeleteC'mon, LT, that is a wicked song if for no other than reason then being eminently mockable.
Dennis: If that stupid song ends up in my brain because you quoted part of the lyric there's going to be more hell than a little bit.
ReplyDelete:-)
Charlene made me think about my choice for worst.song.ever.
ReplyDeleteSeasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks.
Take that!
Pouliot is on a 2-way which gets the point across. I think he has to have a solid year this year to save his career.
Yzerman has had a wonderful summer in my estimation...
ReplyDeleteTravis wins!
ReplyDeleteI've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things that a woman ain't supposed to see....
ReplyDeleteI really don't mind Seasons In The Sun; at least I didn't before Travis posted:)
I think Travis is talking about Charlene or his parents were very troubled.
ReplyDeleteI just youtubed that never been to whatever song.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to share how bored I was by it (well, the part I listened to), but the I read Travis's comment.
Poor Travis.
Carrie Underwood - Undo It.
ReplyDelete.. my ears bleed.
Won't miss him at all. Had Nilsson like consistency / disappearances. That said, like any ex-Oiler, I wish him the best (except when playing us.. he won't need the good wishes given our luck with that).
ReplyDeleteToo inconsistent to be a top sixer, not gritty enough to be a bottom sixer. But I don't see why a fresh start in the East couldn't help restart his career though.
That said, like any ex-Oiler, I wish him the best
ReplyDeleteChris Pronger? Bryan Marchment? Jesse Boulerice?
Did D.O.A. do a punk version of Seasons in the Sun?
ReplyDeleteGuess in Tampa he can finally put that Top-6 forward dream to rest and focus on his best Guy Carbonneau impression. No way he supplants Lecavalier or Stamkos, not that it should even be written that he could.
ReplyDeleteNever was that big a fan of Pouliot, but then again, everyone has their favourite long-shots.
I'll just go back to my corner, pulling for Alex Plante to do what MP could not.
Heard you on the air today, LT.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. Hope to hear more of you.
Frankie Valley was hard to listen to. All that falsetto. Yeeesh.
Listen to you on the radio today, LT. You where great, and like how you took the opportunity to ask some questions . . . It was like listening to a reporter interview a 'reporter'.
ReplyDeleteOn to Pouliot: The worst part of this signing is that I cannot make Poo jokes anymore. Even when the Oilers flushed him, he kept fighting the swirl of the KHL and bob back to the surface in Tampa. There is not a bette place for Poo to end up, since the quality of the competition most nights will be significant less (in both skill and physicality).
Being an articling student makes me miss surfing the blogs for six hours a day :(
ReplyDeleteI u-tubed the song, hilarious. One of the comments below the entry I saw mentioned it being voted the worst song of all time (true or not don't know). That song is more syrupy than Quebec in springtime.
ReplyDeleteforgot about that song LT. i remember thinking how bad the 'seen things a woman' line was when i first heard it. horrible.
ReplyDeletethe new radicals - you get what you give. and pop-punk keeps getting worse and worse.
hope pouliot does well but every oiler better have more points than him. well, maybe not struds.
Lowetide:
ReplyDeleteJust listened to the Oilers Lunch podcast. Damn, you missed your calling, brother.
Would a weekly Lowetide podcast be a conflict of interest? I suspect so, and that's a shame.
Playing in the SouthLeast, it would not shock me if Pou was near 20 goals. It's a division that players can pad their stats in.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry it did not work out here and hope that he can finally find his game in Tampa Bay.
LT,
ReplyDeleteYou forgot the time the anvil fell out of the sky and landed on his head. Or when he dropped a dynamite stick disguised as a carrot and it bounced back up into his hands.
There are no bad songs. Only bad singers, song-writers or musicians.
Every song that's been mentioned so far would top anything on top 40 radio today for me.
ReplyDeleteI am not sorry one bit to see Pouliot gone.
ReplyDeletePretty sure Me first and the gimmie gimmies did a punk version of Seasons in the Sun.
ReplyDeleteme neither, D!
ReplyDeleteand Nirvana did a jam session version of Seasons In The Sun. it's on YouTube as well....it's pretty awful.
ReplyDeleteYou want an Epic Fail here he is, and everyone in the Oilers organization, from the GM who traded down from Parise to pick him, to the scouting staff who were fooled by him to the coaches who got so little out of him to the trainers who couldn't keep him off the DL to Pouliot himself for having maybe three good moments as an Oiler to the mostly blind Oiler blog commentators who kept "seeing him good" when he obviously wasn't and who somehow used mathematics to praise him even though he accumulated eight goals in his best season, can share in the blame.
ReplyDeleteGood riddance to a real Epic Fail.
Dug,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your take on Nirvana.
Bill Needle,
ReplyDeleteCouldn't have said it better myself. I hope this is turning the page for the organization.
It wouldn't cover his draft bet but let's say old 78 goes 15 goals and 30 points this year and basically puts up a 2011 season that his 2010 season suggested pro-rated.
ReplyDeleteNow, I guess that wouldn't be any good because he's in a poor division.
Dennis: If he does that, even in a poor division, he'd be filed under "useful and cheap player" that got away. It's my belief that the Oil are more likely to regret letting MAP walk than they are to ask themselves "just why the heck did we let Robbie Schremp go?"
ReplyDeleteThey let this guy walk yet kept Ryan O'Marra. JF Jacques gets another shot yet Fernando Pisani gets sent along. Those two moves are the ones that dull the shine of what's actually been a decent body of work this summer by Tamby 3.0
HB: Yep, it should be about what he's likely to make now instead of where he was picked but we'll see how it all turns out and who he plays with and how the new coach runs his bench matchup wise.
ReplyDelete#78's Oiler career can be summed up in two words:
ReplyDeleteBad timing.
His inability to elevate his game when opportunities arose/spots were available. Maybe a bit of the old catch-22, too - MacT wouldn't play him cuz he couldn't trust him, but Pouliot wasn't going to earn MacT's trust without playing a lot either.
And the injuries. None of them timely, but i will always wonder what a healthy non-mono-ed #78 could have offered during the run of 2006. He may have been completely over his head and spent most of it in the pressbox, he may have had a glorious moment or two like Brad Winchester, or... ?
Had he been healthy and had time to settle into a playoff role, he certainly wouldn't have been any less of an option than 7 minutes/game of Todd Harvey/George Laraque in the SCF.
Bad timing.
Good luck MAP.
Just checked out that song. Horrendously awful, it was. I put it on, and my wife looked annoyed, so I promised her that I'd only listen to one minute of it. She spent the whole time saying "I'm pretty sure it's been a minute." Ended up listening to 1:09 out of the 4:04, and it was a grim 1:09.
ReplyDeleteI can't come up with too many songs worse than that - "Seasons in the Sun" is better - but I'd nominate anything by Puddle of Mudd, particularly "Psycho". There's also some terrible pop-country song with an awful woman twangily wailing about a kid with tiny arms that can't hug, or some such nonsense, but I can't remember any more details, as my mind's blocked the trauma.
Dennis: No one is going to deny that the initial Pouliot selection was nothing short of a huge mistake.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the guy could have filled a role on this team. A lot of people were always going to look at him as a "failed first rounder", so I guess it's good for him getting a fresh start elsewhere.
He'll do well in Tampa, I think.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteIf Pouliot ever stays healthy he's going to help an NHL team win hockey games, I'm confident of that. He's just hard on the puck when he's healthy, the play doesn't die with him very much.
He's never healthy though, that's the rub. He's either hurt, recovering from injury, or playing well. But there has just been far too much of the first two and not enough of the latter in his time as an Oiler imo.
Maybe the guy has been unlucky with injury, maybe he's one of those guys that is made of glass. Time will tell.
Players do really take a spectacular kicking in their results in the first couple of weeks, even month, back from serious injury. Especially the underlying numbers, the scoring chance proxies. I just noticed that the other day when I was looking at the qualcomp and fenwick season splits.
The poster boy for the phenomenon is Brett Clark. He got absolutely killed playing weak opp when he was struggling with health early. By the end of the year he was logging tough ice time again, and managing to do much better by the fenwick, and presumably scoring chance, numbers. By that time lady luck had turned her back on the Avs though, so I think Clark remained a fan whipping boy.
Just a crazy-good signing by Yzerman. I can't believe Clark couldn't get a much better offer somewhere else. Madness. Gabe's advanced stats make Clark look awful, because that's for the season as a whole. His value distanced from injury was high, and he's been playing top pairing EV minutes for ages in COL, since he quietly beat out Rob Blake for the gig years ago.
I noticed that with Pouliot earlier because his scoring chance numbers this season were the suck and his underlying numbers were okay. It turns out that his underlying numbers were the suck during the games you recorded the scoring chances, so presumably the unrecorded games near the end of the year show Pouliot with another burst of good outchancing. I think it's a terrific bet for Yzerman, at the price.
Simon Gagne is the same story. He looks fairly mediocre on Gabe's stats for the season as a whole ... but in games distanced from injury he was terrific. He's one of the best wingers in the league imo, even though he isn't very flashy. It's incomprehensible to me that Tampa could get him so cheaply.
It's a strange niche that Yzerman is exploiting. Surely there are some reasons for this, must be something that he really felt affected him as a player. It's not something that I would have thought of intuitively. And hell, maybe all three of these guys are injured by Halloween.
They all look like great bets to me, got to give Yzerman credit for being outside the box, if nothing else. Hope it works for him.
Sorry for the long post, Lain.
ReplyDeleteGuess in Tampa he can finally put that Top-6 forward dream to rest and focus on his best Guy Carbonneau impression. No way he supplants Lecavalier or Stamkos, not that it should even be written that he could.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on where they want to play him. He may not have a chance at a top six center role but there is a winger spot on the second line that he can fight for. A steady third line role would be really good for him though.
Forget being another Carbonneau, Pouliot never was good enough to be the next Reasoner.
ReplyDelete"It depends on where they want to play him. He may not have a chance at a top six center role but there is a winger spot on the second line that he can fight for."
ReplyDeleteHuh?
Downie - Stamkos - St. Louis
Gagne - Lecavalier - Malone
I think he can challenge Downie for the spot.
ReplyDeleteMan, I can't believe how bad the Esks are. No coverage anywhere. It hurts my heart.
ReplyDeleteRibs: They're playing like they would like the coach to be fired later this evening.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is the Esks aren't good at talent procurement. Other CFL teams used to watch Edmonton's TC to see who was released on cutdown day.
Now the cuts just drive over to the casino and look for work. Horrible time in Eskimos history.
So true, LT. Procurement used to be their calling card. What happened? I've been saying it since he stepped down, but bring Hugh back!
ReplyDeleteIt seems like there's too many players who dont give a damn these days. That story about Eskies players going over to the other teams dressing room and hamming it up with them after a loss is dumbfounding.
Just embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteHahaha I know I'm late to the party but that song (the first one) sucks :-).
ReplyDeleteLowetide said...
ReplyDeleteThe fact is the Esks aren't good at talent procurement. Other CFL teams used to watch Edmonton's TC to see who was released on cutdown day.
I'm not sure I can watch this team while the garden gnome is a ranking member of the organization. The Maciocca years will go down in Eskie history as horrid and embarrassing.
Damn, rather nice post. Where can I get that subscription?
ReplyDeleteKate Pingtown
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