Go Habs Go - Fan Forum

[Guest Low Roller]

Congratulations! The hardest part was admitting that you have a problem.

[dave-O]

Huet might be the second coming of Racicot.

[Guest Low Roller]

That's a little harsh! I don't think that anyone will match up to Red Light Racicot.

That being said, Carey Price is in nets against the Bluejackets tonight on jersey retirement night! In Bob I Trust!!

[Booche]

'Bo' Knows Hockey

No. 23 Will rise to rafters as Habs honour a natural leader

RED FISHER of the Gazette

One-time Canadiens physician Douglas Kinnear tells this story about Bob Gainey, whose No. 23 will be raised to the Bell Centre rafters tonight.

The Canadiens were facing the Quebec Nordiques in the 1983-84 playoffs, and during one of the games, Gainey tripped to the ice. A Nordiques player fell on him.

"He took this hit and immediately came off the ice holding his shoulder," Dr. Kinnear recalled. "He came into our dressing room. I took one look and it was obvious he had a dislocation. Now there's a difference between a dislocation and a separation. With a separation, it's just rest and the player gets better. With a dislocation, you put your foot in the armpit and you pull like hell. With luck, it goes back in.

"So here I was in Quebec City. 'Bo' is lying on the floor. I was lying beside him. And (Kinnear aide) Yvon Bélanger was there. The two of us are pulling ... and pulling ... and it didn't go back in.

"I said to Bélanger: 'Let's get him to the hospital, give him some Valium, relax all the muscles ... get it back in,' but let's try it once more.' So, back we go, ... I put my foot in his armpit - and it went back in." The team returned to Montreal after the game. Gainey was sent home with some painkillers. The next morning, Kinnear met with his patient at the Forum.

"Bo, you're out for the series," he told Gainey.

"He sorta looked at me ... the quiet voice he's got, eh?" Kinnear recalled. "He said: 'Well, what would happen if I played?' "It'll pop out again," Kinnear said.

"He said: 'Well ... you can put it back in again!' " Gainey played - and to this day Kinnear, who was with the Canadiens for more than three decades, puts him at the top of his list of players playing through pain.

"Ah! To play 48 hours after suffering a complete dislocation? Holy smoke! Amazing!" the doctor said.

How would Gainey, the general manager, describe Gainey, the player? "I was strong-willed," he said. "I was extremely difficult to play against. Determined to carry my part of the team's game to improve our chances to win the game. I enjoyed the harder parts of the games and the harder parts of the season." What he didn't say was that no player before him or since delivered those qualities game in, game out for the length of his 16 seasons with the team, which included 1,160 regular-season games - eight seasons as captain - and 182 playoff games, which brought home five Stanley Cups and the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1979. What Gainey also didn't say was that in 1978, his quality as a defensive player was responsible for the introduction of the Frank Selke J. Trophy.

He won the trophy the first four seasons.

"Bob could make a defensive play look spectacular," former linemate Steve Shutt said. "He was such a great skater. That was what made him; that was half of his game.

"When we were up a goal in the third period ... it was like ... Bob's line (including current Canadiens associate coach Doug Jarvis and Jimmy Roberts) was going out on every second shift. Bob led by example. He would be hurt and he never complained ... never complained." "He wasn't what you'd call a goal-scorer, but he scored important goals," Peter Mahovlich added. "You wouldn't see Bob Gainey scoring two goals in a 7-1 game." Glen Sather was only with the Canadiens for one season, but that, he said, was more than enough time to see what Gainey was all about.

"The impression that I got about Bob early was one that lasted throughout his career: hard-working, dedicated ... a serious, passionate hockey guy," Sather said. "The year I was there was the year Ken Dryden came back from his short retirement. The team was in a building process and Bob was a big part of that team.

"Every place he's been he's been building and developing," Sather added. "He's focused. There isn't very much that really steers him off what he's trying to do. Once he gets an idea, he's gonna carry it out. That's why he was such a great checker.

"People talk about his speed and his ability to check. I think it's because he had a single-minded intention to what he was going to get done when he played the game. That was to win the game, and part of his role was to check the best player on the other team. He did it like nobody else could.

“He could do it legally," Sather continued. "He wasn't a guy that had to hook or hold or interfere. He just outworked the guy and paid attention to what had to get done.

"It was his concentration that always got me." Said Gainey: "I enjoyed the physical contact of the game. There's lots of places for lots of good, rough physical play. I enjoyed it more when the game was important, like when you're playing head to head with one of your divisional rivals.

"We see that every night in the playoffs, when a game is close, one-goal games for 20 or 25 minutes and with both teams really dedicated to winning the game and carrying out all the right assignments and responsibilities. I would relish those kind of situations. You had to be sure that you were not only not going to be the team that would crack, but that you'd be part of what would make the other team crack." Gainey was never short of opponents. Bryan Trottier was one. So was Vancouver's Stan Smyl. Others on most nights were members of No. 1 lines.

"The first picture that comes into my mind is Lanny McDonald," Gainey said. "He was a gifted, powerful goal-scorer, but he also enjoyed the physical contact and would challenge the person who was playing against him in that way. He didn't try to go around when the opponent made it difficult for him. He went through.

"We had two years where we had back-to-back playoff series against Toronto, in the 1970s, and I think throughout those two years, their team and our team were of the same calibre. I think that rather than me being able to participate in a way that would help us to win, it was more just staying steady, staying in the game, staying in the fight.

"Lanny McDonald ... I saw a lot of him. He saw a lot of me." One of my favourite stories involving Gainey happened after the Canadiens eliminated the Nordiques the year he dislocated his shoulder. Now, they were in the conference final against a heavily favoured New York Islanders dynasty aiming for a fifth consecutive Stanley Cup. The Canadiens surprised everyone by winning the first two games, but the Islanders won the next three.

The Canadiens were on Long Island for Game 6. After the team lunch, coach Jacques Lemaire stopped for a chat - and a request.

"Would you talk to Perry Turnbull for me?" he asked.

Turnbull had joined the Canadiens early that season in what was considered a blockbuster trade: Turnbull from St. Louis for Doug Wickenheiser, Gilbert Delorme and Greg Paslawski. Turnbull had scored 14 goals and notched eight assists in his 32 games with the Blues. The Habs needed offence, and Turnbull was their man. Alas, he slumped to six goals and seven assists in 40 games in Montreal. He was no better in the playoffs, with only one goal and two assists in the first two series. By then, Lemaire had seen enough. Turnbull was a healthy scratch for the first five games of the conference final.

"Gainey has a very bad shoulder," Lemaire explained. "I don't think he can play. I'm going to have to dress Turnbull. Somebody has to talk to him." "Seems to me you should be the guy talking to him," Lemaire was told.

"Sometimes, players will listen more to somebody who's been around a long time than he will to his coach," Lemaire said with a shrug.

I tracked down Turnbull at the hotel's newsstand.

"Perry, what's going on with you lately?" "What do you mean?" "Before you joined the Canadiens, you came into Montreal with St. Louis and scored two goals. You had two fights and won 'em both. Your team won the game 3-2. You were so far and away the best player on either team that night, it was no contest. Now, look at you; you haven't even been dressed for any of the games against the Islanders!" I thought my motivational speech was pretty good, until Turnbull snapped: "Geez, Red, I was crazy that night. It'll never happen again!" "I remember the story a little differently," Gainey said. "We had our usual morning skate. I really couldn't shoot the puck, but my legs were still fine and I said to Lemaire: 'I don't really think I should play. I don't think I can help you.' "I had dislocated my shoulder against the Nordiques. The Islanders were a good team. They weren't taking any prisoners," Gainey added. "They were going to play extremely straight up ... play hard. It might have been in Game 5 of the series I got hit by Trottier. I went into the boards in a way that I separated my shoulder. Our roster was pretty thin. We were getting depleted. We had won the first two games of the series, but now we were losing the series to them. They had flipped the momentum on us." Lemaire told Gainey: "We won't use you very much. If you can play, I think you should play. I think it would be good for the other players to have you in the lineup." Recalled Gainey: "We decided it was better to use a guy who can't play at his best than someone who won't play at his best.

"We got beaten. Not big ... 2-1 or 3-2." (It was 4-1.) Gainey always has been a private person who picks his friends carefully and always has made it a point to do the same with words when he's not completely comfortable with people he doesn't know well. Nobody I know is more in command of what he says. Nobody was more in control of what he wanted to do as a player and later as the coach/GM with the Minnesota North Stars, positions he held when the team relocated to Dallas, where he won a Stanley Cup in 1999. And nobody is more in control in his current position as executive vice-president/GM of the Canadiens.

"I can't separate myself from my history," Gainey said at the news conference announcing his signing in June 2003. "I was with some great teams in Montreal in the '70s and the '80s. Those of you with better memories will remember I was with some not-so-good teams in the '80s. But this is new. The city has changed since I left Montreal. The team has changed. I've changed. We're gonna have to get to know each other again.

"We're going to take the younger players and we're going to improve them and we're going to make them better. We're going to push the players to do the things that need to be done to be a good team. It's about tomorrow. It's not about the 1970s , the 1980s or the 1950s!" In his best-seller The Game, the best hockey book ever written, Ken Dryden explains Gainey better than anyone else.

"It is a great temptation to say too much about Bob Gainey," Dryden wrote. "It comes in part from a fear, guilt-edged in all of us, that Gainey, a 15-goal scorer in a league full of do-nothing 30-goal scorers, goes too often unrewarded. But mostly it is admiration.

"If there is such a thing as a 'player's player,' it would be Gainey. A phrase often heard and rarely explained, it is seldom applied to the best player of a sport, as Gainey is not, for performance is only a part of it. Instead, the phrase is for someone who has the personal and playing qualities that others wish they had, basic, unalterable qualities - dependability, discipline, hard work, courage - the roots of every team.

"To them, Gainey adds a timely, insistent passion, an enormous will to win, and a powerful, punishing playing style, secure and manly, without the strut of machismo.

"If I could be a forward," Dryden wrote, "I would want to be Bob Gainey." Tonight's sweater-retirement ceremony honouring Gainey begins at 6 p.m. Doors to the Bell Centre will open at 5 p.m. RDS and CJAD Radio-800 will have live coverage of the ceremony.

[Guest Low Roller]

I love this team!

[Booche]

Gainey in a uniform? Wicked.

Greatest sign ever:

Banzai Bob,

Greetings From Japan!

[Booche]

Is Emery in nets for the Habs tonight? Man alive, they have given up alot of gaols in the past few games.

[Booche]

It goes without saying that Leclaire was awesome tonight.

[ULTIMATE WARRIOR]

HABS ARE LOSERS!

[Kanada Kev]

Based on the standings, i'd say that's not the most insightful comment.

http://www.nhl.com/nhl/app?service=page&page=StandingsPage

Edited February 25, 2008 by Guest

[Davey Boy 2.0]

That game was amazing ! Malkin is the best player in the league. I would love to see him in a Habs team. The Pens can't afford both Crosby and Malkin so I guess that they will trade him.

Edited February 25, 2008 by Guest

[AD]

BROSSARD, Que.–Parts of a new practice arena for the Montreal Canadiens have collapsed just south of the city.

Two construction workers are being treated for shock but nobody has been injured.

The extent of the collapse is not immediately clear.

The facility is being built in Brossard.

[Guest Low Roller]

Somebody is getting sued...

[Guest Low Roller]

The last active player dating back to the Patrick Roy trade in now gone. All we have to show for Patrick Roy now is a 2nd round pick in 2009.

[Guest Low Roller]

Thanks Cristobal. You will always be Hu-est to me.

[Booche]

Take a look around the room boys, cause this is who you’re going to battle with.

[Guest Low Roller]

Hossa for Mikhail Grabovski, Matt D'Agostini, Mark Streit, and Ryan O'Byrne is the rumoured nixed deal by Gainey.

I'm surprised that Ryder isn't part of that package.

[Guest Low Roller]

Maybe that was the deal that Atlanta was going to go with before Pittsburgh gave up a whole lot more...?

[badams]

[color:red]Great Hab quotes from last night...

"We realize that this is our team now, so we may as well come together and get really tight," said Higgins "The organization has trust in us and faith in us to do the job this year, and now it's time to make that happen."

"I definitely wasn't expecting this to happen this year," Price said. "There was a little bit more (pressure), but I figured better now than ever. I think I'm as ready for it now as I'll ever be."

"Basically, it was going to take three players to get him," Carbonneau said. "So Bob made a statement by saying, `Yes, we could have gotten a good player, but I like our team better with you guys in the lineup.' I think the team got the message."

[color:red]Some notes I like...

The Canadiens improved to 7-3 on the season in games following two straight losses.

Higgins has now scored at least 20 goals in each of his three full seasons with the Habs. [color:red]I would not wanted to have lost Higgins to rent Hossa

[Guest Low Roller]

I'm always pimping the youth movement in the Habs organization (taking potshots from Booche along the way) because I love the depth that I'm seeing in this organization.

One guy I have not yet mentioned is Gainey's right hand man Julien Brisebois. He's currently the General Manager of the Bulldogs and Vice-President of Hockey Operations for the Habs... and he turned 30 in January. 30! We have a prodigy employed by the Habs, and he is being mentored by Bob Gainey... Jeeebus...

Here is his bio. (In brackets I put down his age for each position that he's held within the org):

Julien BriseBois, who turned 30 on January 24th, 2007, becomes the youngest current General Manager in the American Hockey League. The native of Greenfield Park, Quebec was named the Montreal Canadiens’ Vice President of Hockey Operations on July 24, 2006 (29). Originally joining the Canadiens organization on September 1st, 2001 as Director of Legal Affairs (23), BriseBois was promoted to Director of Hockey Operations and Legal Affairs in July 2003 (25). His duties include all aspects of contract preparation and negotiation, salary arbitration, player transactions, the interpretation of the National Hockey League’s Collective Bargaining Agreement and League Rules and assessing their impact on day-to-day operations.

Prior to joining the Canadiens organization, BriseBois was practicing at the law firm Heenan-Blaikie, where he represented several National Hockey League and Major League Baseball clubs in arbitration cases, and acted as an advisor in contract negotiations. He also participated in the production of legal documents for the QMJHL and in motor sports. BriseBois is a graduate of the Université de Montreal Faculty of Law and earned a Masters’ Degree in Business Administration at the John Molson School of Business. He is also a member of the Quebec Bar, the American Bar Association and the Sports Lawyers Association.

[badams]

Ladies and Gentlemen...

I give you, your Northeast Division leading, Second seed in the East Montreal Canadiens.

After our win against NJ tomorrow we will rule it all

[Guest Low Roller]

How long have we been waiting for this moment?? I just hope that the Habs can keep it up and not burn themselves out before the playoffs.

[dave-O]

Huet with a shutout in his first Washington start. Since when do the Capitals only allow 18 shots on net??

[Guest Low Roller]

Kolzig is apparently very upset that the Caps traded for another #1 goalie.

[Booche]

Not only are they first in our hearts boys.