Adrian Dater of the Denver Post reports that after a week of internal meetings, the Avalanche brass decided that if it doesn’t deal the No. 1 pick it will select one of the three top-rated forwards: Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin or Aleksander Barkov.

“If we do pick first, we’re leaning more toward one of those three forwards,” Joe Sakic, the Avalanche executive vice-president of hockey operations, told Dater.

“We feel those three forwards are just too good to pass up,” Sakic added.

In its mock draft, The Hockey News had the Avalanche taking Jones with the No. 1 pick, followed by MacKinnon going to Florida at No. 2, Drouin to Tampa Bay at No. 3 and Barkov to Nashville at No. 4. THN also had the Canadiens selecting goaltender Zach Fucale , a Montreal native, with the No. 25 pick.

“Carey Price needs an heir and local boy Fucale is the best available netminder this year,” THN wrote in its July edition.

In other news, Hockey Canada has announced it will hold press conferences Thursday morning in Montreal and Toronto to announce that a “major event” will be hosted by the cities. It is expected to be the world junior championship.

TSN’s Bob McKenzie tweeted that the cities will share the 2015 and 2017 junior championships with Montreal hosting the preliminary round and Toronto the medal round in 2015 and then the reverse will happen in 2017.

(Photo by Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

Avalanche to pass on Seth Jones to take forward, by Denver Post

Is there a future for Letang in Pittsburgh? TSN.ca

Gretzky believes Nordiques will return, montrealgazette.com

Being Chara is no big deal, by Bruce Arthur of Postmedia News

Strength in middle Boston’s blueprint for success, NHL.com

Time for Lightning to buy out Lecavalier? by Stu Cowan

Where will Luongo, Bernier end up? Sportsnet.ca

Remembering Bobby Orr’s most famous goal, by Stu Cowan

Hawks fan grows playoff lawn instead of beard, by Stu Cowan

Damphousse, 45, was acquitted as a result.

The prosecution re-evaluated all of its evidence and decided to withdraw the charges, Crown prosecutor Sylvie Dulude told the court.

Damphousse had pleaded not guilty in 2011 to six charges alleging he assaulted his estranged wife Allana Henderson at different times between Jan. 1, 2008 and March 29, 2011.

Henderson was also charged in April 2011 with assaulting Damphousse. She faces charges alleging she stole a briefcase from Damphousse as well as assault with a weapon while driving a vehicle. She also pleaded not guilty.

The two charges against Henderson are still pending.  (The two cases are separate.) A trial date for Henderson’s case was set on Tuesday for January 2015.

Damphousse, who appears as a panelist on the popular sports talk show L’antichambre on RDS, declined to speak to journalists following his acquittal after he left the Montreal court room.

Damphousse played 18 seasons in the NHL. He was drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round — 6th overall — of the 1986 NHL draft. Damphousse spent five seasons with the Leafs before being traded to the Edmonton Oilers where he played for one season. He was with the Habs for seven seasons starting in 1992-93 when he put up 97 points and was part of the Canadiens’ last Stanley Cup victory. His final season in the NHL was in 2003-04 with the San Jose Sharks.

Game 4 is Wednesday night in Boston (8 p.m., CBC, NBC, RDS).

After being awarded the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenceman, Subban celebrated with friends and family at a Chicago restaurant, sipping wine from the miniature replica of the trophy that he gets to keep.

 “I think everyone had a sip out of it, it was a pretty cool experience,” Subban told The Gazette’s Dave Stubbs.

P.K. Subban has won the James Norris Memorial Trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League’s top defenceman.

The Canadiens’ star defenceman, who turned 24 last month, beat out Kris Letang of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ryan Suter of the Minnesota Wild, the two other finalists for the award.

In his third season in the NHL, Subban tied with Letang for the league lead in points by a defenceman with 38. His seven power play goals were second only to teammate Andrei Markov who had a league-leading eight among defencemen.

Subban finished the regular season with a plus/minus differential of plus 12.

“This really is a team award,” Subban said on the CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada when the award was announced prior to Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final between the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins.

Subban thanked the Canadiens’ organization, fans and his teammates.

“It’s a great day for me. And I’m just happy to represent the organization.”

He also switched briefly into French to tell fans in Montreal he was excited for next year.

In a media conference call afterward, Subban said he didn’t think he would have achieved such a personal accomplishment at this point but by the same token “it’s all the more reason for me to continue to get better and to continue to be a leader and develop both as a player and as a person.”

“I just feel very privileged and honoured to have won it.  And a lot of this credit needs to go to my teammates,” he said.

“These types of awards you have to give a lot of credit to your teammates because at the end of the day those are the guys that are helping you and playing with you on the ice.

“And I owe them a lot, especially coming into the season late. My teammates were amazing for me and we’ve been  great all year.”

 Subban missed the Canadiens’ training camp in January and the start of the 48-game lockout shortened season when he hadn’t come to terms with the team on a new contract. The 6-foot, 216-pound defenceman agreed to a two-year $5.75 million deal in late January that will pay him $3.75 million next season.

It was often reported that Subban had sought a deal longer than the two years for which he signed. He almost surely can expect to get long term with his next contract.

Florida Panthers forward Jonathan Huberdeau won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league’s top rookie. Canadiens’ forward Brendan Gallagher and Brandon Saad of the Chicago Blackhawks were the other finalists for the award.

The Norris Trophy winner is chosen by a vote of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association.

Five other Canadien defencemen have won the Norris trophy since its inception in 1954: the late Doug Harvey and Tom Johnson as well as Larry Robinson, Jacques Laperrière and Chris Chelios. Harvey won the Norris seven times–six times as a Hab and once with the New York Rangers. Robinson was a two-time winner and Chelios won it three times–once with the Canadiens and twice with the Chicago Blackhawks.

You can listen to what Subban had to say on the conference call here:  AUDIO: Subban media teleconference

Crawford grew up in Châteauguay, on the South Shore of Montreal, and graduated from Howard S. Billings High School. Bryan Pitts, who has been a phys-ed teacher at Howard S. Billings for 22 years, including 18 as the hockey coach, thought Crawford had National Hockey League potential even at the high-school level.

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ Ray Shero won the award Friday, beating out Bergevin and Bob Murray of the Anaheim Ducks.

Other award winners announced Friday were:

Ottawa’s Paul MacLean won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year after leading the Senators to a 25-17-6 record.

The Chicago Blackhawks’ Jonathan Toews won the Selke Trophy as the best defensive forward.

The Tampa Bay Lightning’s Martin St. Louis won the Lady Byng Trophy as the league’s most sportsmanlike player.

The Detroit Red Wings’ Henrik Zetterberg won the NHL Foundation Player Award for community service.

The Boston Bruins’ Patrice Bergeron won the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for leadership and humanitarian contributions to the community.

Minnesota Wild goaltender Josh Harding, who has battled multiple sclerosis, won the Bill Masterton Memorial trophy for perseverance.

Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson won the Mark Messier Leadership Award.

Beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday during a live pregame TV special on CBC, the winners of the Hart, Calder, James Norris and Vezina trophies, along with the Ted Lindsay Award, will be revealed. The Canadiens’ Brendan Gallagher is a finalist for the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie, while teammate P.K. Subban is a finalist for the Norris Trophy as the best defenceman.

Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final between the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins starts at 8 p.m. Saturday.

NHL award winners and finalists, NHL.com

(Photo by Dario Ayala/The Gazette)

Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien coached the Canadiens from 2003-06, posting a 72-62-25 record in 159 regular-season games. One of Julien’s assistant coaches is Doug Jarvis, the former Canadiens player who was also a Habs associate coach for four seasons, starting in 2005.

The Chicago Blackhawks have Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman on their side as a senior advisor, hockey operations. Bowman posted a remarkable 419-110-105 record while coaching the Canadiens from 1971-79, winning five Stanley Cups during that span.

Bowman’s son, Stan, is the Blackhawks’ vice-president/general manager.

There’s another Montreal connection behind the Chicago bench. Blackhawks assistant coach Jamie Kompon is a former captain and coach of the McGill Redmen. Kompon is looking to win the Stanley Cup for the second straight year after working as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Kings last season.

Below is the column Red Fisher wrote in The Gazette after Julien was fired as Canadiens coach in January 2006.

(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Bruins, Blackhawks working for puck luck, by Bruce Arthur of Postmedia News

Bruins not concerned about triple-OT loss, by Cam Cole of Postmedia News

Blackhawks’ Shaw keeps going, all the time, montrealgazette.com

Bruins look to pick themselves up after loss, montrealgazette.com

Quenneville, Julien share Windsor connection, NHL.com

Gainey couldn’t wait

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JAN. 15, 2006

RED FISHER
THE GAZETTE

Come back with me to an early afternoon news conference on a sun-filled June 2, 2003. Bob Gainey, wearing a dark suit, shirt and snazzy tie, was there. On his left, Canadiens president Pierre Boivin. On his right, GM Andre Savard, the man Gainey was replacing barely three weeks after the end of the Canadiens’ regular season – a dismal, disappointing and, at times, desperate year.

“The great players and the great victories of the Montreal Canadiens of the past make up the rich history that we can all remember and enjoy and share,” Gainey said at the time. “But my presence here is not about the past. It’s about the present and it’s about the future.

“My goals are to bring my knowledge and experience and my determination to win in every area of the hockey department: in recruitment and development and coaching of the players. I have a full commitment to helping this club become a stronger and a better team and to better represent the city of Montreal.”

He was a man of his word in 2003-04 with a 93-point team – a team which upset the 104-point Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs before being swept by the Stanley Cup-winning Tampa Bay Lightning.

Now, fast forward to yesterday’s early afternoon press conference on a day when the heavens wept. Gainey was there, again wearing dark suit, shirt and a tie. At his side, Guy Carbonneau, also wearing a dark suit, a bright, white shirt and a tie.

Carbo was there because at 7:15 a.m., Gainey had telephoned coach Claude Julien to tell him that he (Gainey) would take over this slumping, desperate bunch (a laughable seven victories in the last 25 games) until the end of the season, and that Carbonneau would be behind the bench next season.

“When I talked to him, I got disappointment,” Gainey said. “I got regrets. I didn’t get shock.”

Shock, it’s imagined, was what most of you felt when you awoke to the news that Julien and assistant coach Rick Green, decent people whose contracts run through next season, were let go, but why should anybody be surprised? The soaring hope of the first six weeks of the season (12 victories in the first 16 games) had disappeared into the mists of mediocrity. The bleeding had to be stopped, and it was Gainey’s responsibility to do it.

The surprise is that it wasn’t done earlier.

Toe Blake was the best coach I’ve ever seen in any sport, Scott Bowman a close second – mostly because Blake was his mentor. Yes, they won 13 Stanley Cups between them, partly because they were blessed with a flood of the NHL’s most talented players, but the constant among this special pair was that they were able to get the best out of their best players.

Julien wasn’t getting it from his best players during the team’s free-fall since mid-November, and with the Canadiens embarking on a six-game road trip after games with San Jose last night and Dallas tomorrow, he had to go.

“Hockey is a team sport,” Gainey said yesterday. “You bring people from different groups together … you want them to be happy to play together. A number of our players haven’t played up to their potential … important players have underachieved for a long period of time and when that happens, the nerves, the anxiety and the frustration set in. I’m going to address those things to allow the players to be comfortable and relaxed.”

Two of the players Gainey mentioned were Sheldon Souray and Andrei Markov. Another was Jose Theodore for all the right reasons, one being that he wanted his No. 1 goaltender to face the San Jose Sharks last night instead of Cristobal Huet, who on Friday had been penciled in by Julien to make a third consecutive start.

“Call it a coach’s decision,” interim coach Gainey said with a small smile in reply to a question from a member of the media.

When Gainey was named to the GM job, he accepted it with his eyes wide open.

“Montreal provides me with a great challenge and a much different environment than the one I competed in for the last 10 years,” he said at the time. “It’s going to be different. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be testy. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be fun!”

It has been anything but fun this season – some of it self inflicted. Shipping Mathieu Garon to Los Angeles for Radek Bonk and Huet has been a disaster thus far. Hindsight tells us providing Theodore with a three-year deal worth $16.5 million U.S. is another, unless Jose can find his ‘A’ game again. This season, Gainey opted to sign off with several veterans to make room for fresh, young blood from the farm. Not a bad idea, really, but the returns have been meagre thus far.

Gainey has gone behind the bench until the end of the season for another good reason.

“There really was no reason to drop him (Carbonneau) into a pot of boiling water when we can drop him in and warm it up gently,” Gainey said. “Guy will grab on to where we are and where we’re going and what is needed quickly.”

It’s Gainey’s game to win or lose, and the good news is that there’s still one-half of the season left, as he put it, “to push back so that we’re moving up the standings by putting points on the board, rather than the other direction.”

Knowing Gainey as I do, I can promise his players this: it’s going to be different. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be testy. It’s going to be tough.

Is it going to be fun? All you have to do is win, chums.

In light of the triple overtime Blackhawks-Bruins match in Game 1 of the current Stanley Cup final, I’ve dug into my files to pull out a 1999 feature I wrote, reconstructing the longest-game in NHL history – a six-overtime contest played March 24-25, 1936 at the Montreal Forum between the Montreal Maroons and victorious Detroit Red Wings.

Mr. Caddell, the subject of my feature, has since passed away. But what a wonderful visit with him 14 years ago to relive the historic game.

–

On a Wing and a prayer:
Detroit rookie Mud Bruneteau won NHL’s longest game with a Forum goal in sixth overtime

Published June 19, 1999

- At twenty-five minutes past two this morning, a bushy-haired blonde veteran of hockey, Hector Kilrea, a sturdy, scarlet-clad form wearing the white emblem of Detroit Red Wings, went pounding tirelessly down the battle-scarred, deep-cut Forum ice, trying to pilot a puck that was bobbling crazily over the rough trail, almost out of control.

 It looked like another of the endless unfinished plays – when suddenly, in shot the slim form of a player, who through this long, weary tide of battle that ebbed and flowed had been almost unnoticed. He swung his stick at the bobbling puck, the little black disc straightened away, shot over the foot of Lorne Chabot, bit deeply into the twine of the Montreal Maroon cage.

 And so Modere Bruneteau, clerk in a Winnipeg grain office, leaped to fame as the player who ended the longest game on professional hockey record.

- Elmer Ferguson
Montreal Herald, Wednesday, March 25, 1936

DAVE STUBBS
The Gazette

They played a National Hockey League double-header eight weeks ago, and the Dallas Stars eliminated the Edmonton Oilers in their Western Conference quarter-final after 57 minutes and 34 seconds of overtime. A long, grueling night of playoff hockey, to be sure, yet only a pale pretender to the throne.

As this season lumbers along to its summertime end, Phil Caddell might even suggest that Joe Nieuwendyk, who scored the winner for Dallas, couldn’t have tied the skatelaces of Detroit’s Modere (Mud) Bruneteau, a hockey hero for the ages.

At the Forum on March 24 and into the wee hours of March 25, 1936, the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Maroons played a triple-header, nearly three full games, in the first match of their best-of-five semi-final playoff series.

Sixty-three years ago, Phil Caddell was still on his north-end bench seat at 2:25 a.m. – flat out and sound asleep, he admits – when Mud Bruneteau scored the game’s only goal, lashing the Red Wings’ 67th shot past Maroons goaler Lorne Chabot at 16:30 of the sixth overtime period. The teams had played 116 minutes, 30 seconds of extra time, 176:30 including 60 minutes of regulation, to decide the longest game in NHL history.

In the other crease, Detroit’s Normie Smith was numb, unbeaten by 90 Maroon shots. He hadn’t lost 12 pounds through perspiration, he merely had transferred the weight to his saturated peak-cap, long-johns and leather goal pads that were stuffed with soggy horsehair.

“You know, we figured it was going to go on all night,” says Caddell, who will turn 86 in a few weeks. “And our pact was, we weren’t leaving until it was over. Whether we were awake or not.”

- There was quite an array of clerics in boxes on the east side, among whom was Ven. Archdeacon Gower-Rees and the Very Rev. Dean Carlisle. They stayed through 100 minutes of overtime, and then called it a day, or rather a night. But they weren’t alone. Many others toiling on bankers’ hours had gone long ago.

- Baz O’Meara, Montreal Star

Until that night, the longest game on record had been played on April 3, 1933 in Toronto, going 104 minutes and 46 seconds into overtime. The Maple Leafs’ Ken (Cagey) Doraty finally scored to defeat Boston 1-0.

The NHL was an eight-team league in 1935-36, four clubs in both the Canadian and American divisions. The Canadiens, who late in the season had traded Lorne Chabot to the Maroons for three players, including a rookie winger named Toe Blake, were on the outside looking in as the playoffs began. They had finished in the Canadian cellar with 11 victories in 48 games.

The Maroons were the defending Stanley Cup champions, and in the opinion of Montreal’s English newspapers – The Gazette, the Star, and the best sports page in town, the Herald – they were a cinch to repeat. Their first post-season test would be the Red Wings, champions of the American Division.

The series opened at the Forum at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 24, before a crowd estimated at 9,000, a thousand less than capacity. With two friends, Val Traversy and Herbie Howe, Phil Caddell walked to the arena from National Breweries, where he worked as a junior clerk earning $40 a month.

“There were tickets galore. We just walked up and bought ‘em at a window on the sidewalk, and I’d be surprised if we spent more than 50 cents for our (unreserved) rush-end seats,” says Caddell, who was 22.

“We just went to see three periods of hockey. How could we possibly know we’d get nine?”

- The boys were so tired they were skating from memory and shooting by ear. The referees were so weary they could only blow feeble toots on their tin whistles. Here’s to Hec Kilrea, who started the play that sent the fans home for breakfast!

- Philip Morris Navy Cut cigarette ad, The Star

Phil (Pip) Caddell was born in Brantford, Ont., on July 7, 1913 and moved to Lachine as an infant when his father went off to war. One of four children, he was 7 when his family moved to Edinburgh, where he worshipped Scottish Olympic track star Eric Liddell, the central character of the film Chariots of Fire.

He was 14 when they returned to Lachine, and as a young caddie at a local golf course he often stood pop-eyed at the first tee, ogling hockey’s fabulous Cleghorn brothers, Odie and Sprague, and two living legends: Howie Morenz and Aurel Joliat.

“That’s the difference between hockey then and now,” Caddell says. “The players then lived in your neighbourhood year-round. You grew up around them, and they were part of you. Either you knew them, or you knew someone who knew them.”

Before long he was going to McGill to watch college football, or riding the streetcar from his home to the Forum, where he’d queue to buy a ticket – always in the rush-end of the rink – to watch his beloved Maroons.

He didn’t play a lot of hockey himself.

“There was only one rink in upper Lachine,” he recalls, “and very seldom did it have decent ice.”

- Nearly three tons of snow was swept from the ice between periods. The surface remained hard, but eventually the puck refused to lie down and be good. Bert Newbury, Forum superintendent, made suggestions to Frank Calder, president of the NHL, that a little longer period of rest be given so that the ice might be flooded, but he stoutly refused all such offers of advice. Ten minutes rest was all the boys needed, according to the president.

- Al Parsley, The Herald

No one had expected the Maroons to win the Stanley Cup a year earlier, least of all the publicity director of National Breweries, the corporate parent of a number of ale and lager brands. One of its labels, Black Horse, was enormously popular as much for its stables as its beer; the brewery owned a number of mighty Percherons it would loan to rural Quebec horsemen for breeding.

Reginald Joseph (Hooley) Smith, the Maroons captain, coveted the valuable horses and apparently convinced the brewery to give him one should his club win the 1934-35 Cup. Ranked fourth in the regular season, the Maroons knocked off Chicago, New York and finally upset top-ranked Toronto in three straight games to win the title.

A young brewery office boy named Phil Caddell, in his first year on the job, was immediately dispatched to every beauty parlour on Ste. Catherine St. to buy all the black hair dye he could find. Caddell never knew for certain, but he assumed that the publicity director, perhaps in deep with his bosses for an offer he couldn’t deliver, was planning to give Hooley Smith a brown nag painted black.

But in The Gazette’s archives is a tiny news brief published in April, 1935, covering a ceremony attended by 2,000 fans at which Smith indeed was presented with the genuine article.

- Detroit goaler Smith played like a stallion. The highest total of shots that bounced off his sprightly, alert frame in a period was in the third, when he turned aside 15 smashing drives. In the third period of overtime, again in the fourth, as Maroons time and again rallied their forces to crash his citadel, he stopped 13 in each.

- Ferguson, The Herald

Normie Smith broke into the NHL with the Maroons in 1931, playing 20 games before he was accidentally crushed by then-teammate Howie Morenz in a goalmouth scramble and sidelined for the season. He languished in the minors for two years and took to wearing a peaked cap, which he found cut the glare from the overhead lights. In 1934, he was signed by Detroit manager and coach Jack Adams.

Not only did Smith shut out the Maroons over nearly nine periods of this incredible game, he blanked them again in Game 2 and wasn’t beaten until 12:02 of the first period of Game 3, giving him a shutout streak of 248:32, which remains an NHL record. The Wings swept the Maroons and then beat Toronto in the final to win their first of two consecutive Stanley Cups.

Smith’s 90 saves in one game (92, according to some reports) are listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

“We could not believe they kept coming out to play, and as Maroon fans we could not believe the stops the Detroit boy kept making,” says Caddell, sitting in an easy chair, chewing on a peppermint and warming to the memories.

Caddell’s war medals, and those of an uncle, are framed above his bed in the Lachine seniors home where he lives. He was widowed four years ago, and on a table at his bedside is a framed photograph of Elga Ramsey – Duckie, he called her – whom he married on March 23, 1945, two days after returning from battle. He has four children – Susan, Ian, Andrew and Graham – and 11 grandchildren.

Most of them love hockey, and all of them adore the tale about Hooley Smith, the nag and the black hair dye.

- Bucko McDonald, rugged steak-destroyer, almost wrecked the Maroon forward line with his crashing bodychecks. He flattened everyone but Chabot.

- Ferguson, The Herald

Wilfred Kennedy (Bucko) McDonald, a beefsteak-and-potatoes man of 205 pounds, earned his pay and more on this night. Renowned for his physical style, a Red Wings fan offered him $5 for every Maroon he leveled. Nine periods and 37 punishing bodychecks later, the fan happily forked over $185, enough to buy Bucko a few prime sirloins.

The Maroons’ Joe Lamb didn’t see action until the “second” game. He later told reporters, “After this, I’m going to have my steak at around 8 o’clock instead of 3 in the afternoon!”

At least a few fans chose shut-eye over sustenance. Published reports vary on how many spectators were left at the end, but Caddell, who finally was awakened by the cheers – “It was more a sigh of relief,” one columnist wrote – recalls having enough room to stretch out on his rush-end bench.

The girls working the refreshment booths on the promenade deck, who usually would close up shop by 10 p.m., were still serving cakes and coffee four hours later.

During intermissions, players were sipping tea and coffee laced with brandy, then lying on their backs with their legs up on benches to improve circulation. The two referees, Ag Smith and Bill Stewart (the latter the grandfather of current NHL official Paul Stewart), stopped taking their skates off, afraid they wouldn’t be able to lace up their boots over surely swollen feet.

Finally, at 2:25 a.m., a 21-year-old rookie from St. Boniface, Man., played the hero. The following morning, Maroons goaler Lorne Chabot presented right-winger Mud Bruneteau with the puck that ended the game.

“Gee whiz, gee whiz, that’s swell,” an overwhelmed Mud told reporters as he twirled the prize in his hands.

Only a few hours earlier, the last streetcar to Lachine having long since departed, Phil Caddell had hiked up to Val Traversy’s house in Westmount to nap on a parlour couch. He was back at work at 8:30 a.m.

- Bruneteau scored just about the time the milkman was starting to steam out on his morning rounds. The fans had steeled themselves for a fluke goal long before the tally came. The one that broke the contest was luck-tinged, but fans did not cavil at it. It came as a welcome relief.

- O’Meara, The Star

Mud Bruneteau, a Winnipeg grain-commissions clerk for Montreal-born Red Wings owner James Norris, died April 15, 1982. He is exclusively celebrated for the historic overtime goal he scored in his first-ever playoff game, which while understandable is also a disservice to his contribution to hockey.

Bruneteau played 11 seasons for Detroit, scoring 162 goals in 488 games. He went down to the Red Wings’ farm club in Omaha in 1946-47 and retired to coach the Knights in 1948-49, handpicked by Jack Adams to nurture the next generation of Wings. That season he became the first professional coach of Terry Sawchuk, one of the greatest goalies of all time.

A gifted, patient communicator, Bruneteau taught the young Sawchuk the finer points of the position, and Sawchuk, a future Hall of Famer, frequently credited his coach for his development.

Mud Bruneteau scored once more in the playoff season of 1935-36, and his name is engraved on the Stanley Cup three times.

But when the Red Wings and Montreal Maroons met for Game 2 that March 26, a tidy, quick 3-0 Detroit victory, there was at least one fan not on the Forum’s rush-end benches.

“Most probably,” Phil Caddell says, “I simply couldn’t afford the ticket.”

Below: Detroit hero Mud Bruneteau
Gazette files

Drewiske brings “experience and most importantly depth to our group of defenceman,” Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin said in a statement released by the team on Thursday morning.

Drewiske played nine games with the Canadiens this season after being acquired from the Los Angeles Kings on April 2  in exchange for a fifth-round pick at this month’s NHL draft. However, the 6-foot-2 Wisconsin native was a healthy scratch during the playoffs when the Canadiens’ were eliminated by the Ottawa Senators in the first round.

The deal is a one-way contract, which will pay Drewiske $625,000 a season.

When Bergevin met with the media in April after the trade deadline, he said a team can never have enough defenceman, especially if you’re going to make the playoffs.

“He’s a stay-at-home defenceman. He’s a decent size, he’s got a great stick, kills penalties, blocks shots” and can handle good ice time, Bergevin said at the time.

Drewiske had seven points in 29 games this past season with a plus/minus differential of plus 3.

(Photo by John Kenney/The Gazette)

Penguins sign Malkin to eight-year, $76-million contract extension, montrealgazette.com

NHL has new lease on life, by Cam Cole of Postmedia News

Hawks’ Shaw ends triple-overtime thriller, by Bruce Arthur of Postmedia News

Tortorella would keep things lively, but Canucks already have Melanson sideshow, by Tony Gallagher of Postmedia News

“I don’t want to see Boston win,” Gallagher told Elliott Pap of Postmedia News.

Gallagher, who works out with the Bruins’ Milan Lucic during the offseason, added that the reason he’d rather see the Chicago Blackhawks win the Cup has to do with the bitter Boston-Montreal rivalry.

“I mean, I’m happy for Lootch and I’m glad he’s doing well,” Gallagher said. “But I just don’t want to see Boston win.”

Gallagher said he wishes Lucic all the best in everything except winning another Cup.

Gallagher must have been happy after Game 1 of the Cup final, which ended early Thursday morning with the Blackhawks’ Andrew Shaw scoring on a double deflection at 12:08 of the third overtime period for a 4-3 win over the Bruins.

Game 2 of the Cup final is Saturday night in Chicago (8 p.m., CBC, RDS).

(Photo by Alex Trautwig/Getty Images)

Bitter Montreal-Boston rivalry leaves Gallagher cheering for Blackhawks, Postmedia News

Blackhawks beat Bruins in triple OT, NHL.com

Blackhawks down Bruins in Game 1, montrealgazette.com

Game 1 photo gallery, montrealgazette.com

Melanson expresses interest in Habs job while calling out Price, by Vancouver Province

Lucic provides power for surging Bruins, montrealgazette.com

A Cup of cracked mirror images, by Bruce Arthur of Postmedia News

Bruins, Blackhawks in first Original Six Cup final since 1979, montrealgazette.com

Five major storylines to watch in Cup final, montrealgazette.com

Rask gives Bruins edge over Blackhawks in Cup final, montrealgazette.com

Esposito brothers split on how much Boston-Chicago final means, torontosun.com

Iconic Blackhawks photo gallery, si.com

Iconic Bruins photo gallery, si.com

Tweeted Kypreos: “Confirmed word out of Montreal and NY is #Canadian P.K Subban will be announced during Cup final as the winner of #NHL 2013 Norris trophy.”

Subban, who finished the season with 11-27-38 totals in 42 games to go along with a plus-12, would be the first Canadiens defenceman to win the Norris since Chris Chelios in 1989. Pittsburgh’s Kris Letang and Minnesota’s Ryan Suter are the other two Norris Trophy finalists.

Complete list of Norris Trophy winners.

Meanwhile, former Canadiens goalie coach Roland Melanson says goaltender Carey Price has gotten worse over the last few seasons because of bad coaching.

“Carey hasn’t stopped deteriorating since I left. He’s all over the place now,” Melanson, now the goaltending coach with the Vancouver Canucks, told L’Acadie Nouvelle, a French newspaper in New Brunswick.  ”At some point, there has to be some accountability in the school yard. The position requires a lot of work and Carey hasn’t been consistent. He let things slide in practice and it caught up to him during games.”

Melanson, who left Montreal in 2009, added that his replacement Pierre Groulx, who was recently fired as the Canadiens goaltending coach, allowed Price to develop bad habits.

“He wanted to be his friend,” Melanson said. “A goalie doesn’t want you to be his friend — he wants results. You’re not there to be his friend.”

Price went 2-6-0 in his last eight regular-season appearances, allowing 27 goals, and was pulled in back-to-back appearances. He finished the regular season with a 21-13-4 record with a 2.59 goals-against average and .905 save percentage. In the playoffs, Price was 1-2 with a 3.26 GAA and .894 save percentage. For his career, Price is 9-17 in the playoffs with a 2.90 GAA and .905 save percentage.

Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final between the Blackhawks and Boston Bruins is Wednesday night in Chicago (8 p.m., CBC, NBC, RDS). Game 2 is Saturday (8 p.m., CBC, RDS).

(Photo by Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

Price going downhill, former goalie coach says, montrealgazette.com

Lucic provides power for surging Bruins, montrealgazette.com

Five major storylines to watch in Stanley Cup final, montrealgazette.com

Five Bruins and Blackhawks players to watch in Cup final, montrealgazette.com

Bruins and Blackhawks are quite the penalty-killers, montrealgazette.com

Rask gives Bruins edge over Blackhawks in Cup final, montrealgazette.com

Krejci paces surging Bruins, montrealgazette.com

“This is my first Grand Prix so it’s pretty fun,” Prust, shown in photo above with girlfriend Morin (centre) and Anne-Marie Withenshaw at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Prix event. “She knows everybody, so I’m being introduced to everybody.”

Teammate Lars Eller also attended the event at the Ritz-Carlton.

Here is how Matt remembers the Canadiens’ 1993 Stanley Cup victory, won 20 years ago tonight. He was there.

—

Hi Dave,

First and foremost, thanks for your work.  Living in Nashville, I’d be much less involved with the Canadiens if I didn’t have your articles and your Twitter presence.  Your tweet this morning about the Habs’ last Cup win coming 20 years ago reminded me of a great story.

In the summer of 1993 I was a senior at the University of New Hampshire, one semester shy of graduating.  The fraternity I belonged to was almost all Bruins fans, save for myself and one other guy, who were diehard Habs fans.

We watched gleefully that summer as the Canadiens started to put away the Kings.  The morning of Game 5, my friend came to me and said, “Let’s go to Game 5 tonight and watch Montreal win the Cup.”  I took about two seconds to reply – absolutely.

Being students at UNH, the Montreal road trip was standard (this would be a good time to remind you of the difference in drinking ages).  We of course had no tickets, but being young and foolish, this did not deter us.  We each took out about $200 US from our bank accounts (a good amount of money back in the day) and by 10 am we were off to Montreal.

About 4 1/2 hours after leaving Durham, we made our way into the city, parked, and sought out to find a scalper.  It did not take long.  My friend Nick, who had a hockey player’s physique, handled the talking.  The scalper had only standing room only tickets in our price range, which he would sell to us for $100 US, total.

We couldn’t believe our luck!  We handed over the money, got the tickets, and celebrated knowing we were actually going to be in the building for Game 5!  We went to Peel Pub for a beer or two, and then headed to the Forum, where other Standing Room only fans were lined up.

While in line, we made small talk with other Habs fans.  Then, something terrible happened.  Someone saw our tickets, and the look on their face belied trouble.  They looked up slowly at us and said, “I’m sorry, but you bought tickets to Game 7”.

We were as angry as could be. Devastated. Here we were, maybe two hours from game time, and we had been duped into buying tickets for a game that was not likely to be played.  I wanted to cut our losses, head back to the bar.

Nick wanted to find the scalper and “demand” proper tickets (which I was pretty sure was not a good idea).  Someone else in line overheard us bemoaning the situation, and told us that we should try to go in, anyhow.  “There is a massive rush once they open the doors.  The ticket takers are pretty old and don’t pay much attention.  You could get in.  And if not, you haven’t lost anything, really.”

We decided to try. I’ll never forget the moment leading up to handing over our bogus tickets to the ticket taker.  My heart was pounding, and I was so nervous we would be denied.  It was truly a chaotic scene as people streamed in and screamed their heads off.

Within moments we were in front of the ticket taker. We handed our tickets over, he ripped them, and WE WERE IN.  I could not believe it – it worked!  We ran to the top level of the Forum, though I don’t think I could feel my legs.  We screamed with excitement.

After we got a spot, Nick held our place, and I went and called my parents back in New Hampshire – “Hey Dad, guess where I am?  The Montreal Forum!  I’m about to watch Game 5!”

The rest, as you know, is history.  There were so many other funny and scary things that happened on our adventure to Montreal.  But we won.  We won that Cup, and I was given the memory of a lifetime.

I’ve attached a picture of the “bad” ticket.  I still have it, of course.

The Canadiens won their 24th Cup with a 4-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings In Game 5 of the final on June 9, 1993 at the Forum.  

Below are the columns by Red Fisher and Michael Farber that were published in The Gazette following that game.

(Gazette file photo/AFP/Getty Images)

THAT WINNING HAB-IT

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 10, 1993

RED FISHER
THE GAZETTE

This infernally long season was over, and there was Kirk Muller, crying beautiful tears, and talking about what this Stanley Cup victory was all about.

“It’s not the name on the Cup,” he said after this 4-1 victory locked up the Stanley Cup final in five games against the Los Angeles Kings. “It’s not the ring.

“What it is,” he said, “is somewhere down the road … next week, next year … 20 years from now … somebody will look at you and tell you you’re a winner.

“It’s looking in the mirror and knowing you’re a winner,” said Muller, the winner.

It had nothing to do with the second-period goal he scored last night, which eventually proved to be the winner. It had everything to do with the leadership he showed from Game 1 in the regular season – up to and including last night.

Kirk is work. He’s don’t-give-an-inch stuff, but if you must, make sure it’s only an inch. It’s why he was talking through the tears.

“I was scared all through this last one,” he said. “I don’t think I started smiling until there were 10 seconds left and we were up by three.

“I didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles,” said Muller. “I didn’t want to think about it, because I didn’t know how much I had left. I didn’t know how much any of our guys had left.”

So now it was over and there were the Canadiens, Muller among them, hoisting the Stanley Cup toward the 23 banners hanging in places of honor above them.

After 84 regular-season games, the Cup had landed in Montreal in the Canadiens’ 20th playoff game – and is there anything better to celebrate – at least for a little while?

And there was what they had played for all these months: the Cup being handed to Guy Carbonneau and then to Denis Savard, who was kept out of the last four games with a broken foot. Then, it’s Mike Keane hoisting it, followed by Mathieu Schneider. Eric Desjardins … Brian Bellows … Patrick Roy!

Ah, Patrick: isn’t that where all of this starts?

Roy was what most of these 20 playoff games were all about – which is why he takes home the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs. He won his first in 1986, the last time the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup.

It’s Roy, and last night it also was Paul DiPietro, the game’s first star with two goals. It was Muller and Stephan Lebeau, who provided the Canadiens with a 3-1 lead after the first two periods against a plucky, but tiring Los Angeles team.

It was John LeClair, who assisted on the DiPietro and Lebeau goals – before and after Marty McSorley scored the only Kings goal early in the second period.

It was the Canadiens, as a team, which held the normally explosive Kings to 14 shots in the first two periods – only 19 in the game – none by Wayne Gretzky.

What it was, without question, was the Canadiens’ best game of the playoffs. It was domination from start to finish. It was the way winners have to play to win. It was why they won.

“You always wonder whether guys are ready to pay the price in games like these,” said Muller. “You wonder and then you’re afraid maybe a few of the guys won’t or can’t go higher and farther and that could be enough to hurt you.”

“All of us did it tonight,” said Muller. “It was there for us. We … all of us … reached out and didn’t let go.”

The victory brings an end to a remarkable post-season which started with a six-game victory over the Quebec Nordiques, after the Canadiens had lost the first two games of the Adams semi-final.

Then came a four-game sweep in the Adams final over Buffalo – three in overtime.

The New York Islanders fell in five in the Wales Conference final, the same number the Canadiens needed to erase the Kings.

Twenty games, including a record 10 consecutive victories in overtime, after losing their first game of the playoffs in OT – and isn’t that reason enough for a party?

So the Canadiens partied on the ice, while nearly 18,000 fans rose to their feet and partied off it.

Players hugged and kissed each other, skating frantically from one to the other, and then they did it all again. Over and over again, because these things come once, and perhaps never again. Take it and enjoy it while you can … while it’s there.

The Canadiens got the only goal of the first period – but only barely.

In other words, there’s Roy … again … when he’s needed.

He was there less than a minute into the game for a stop on Tony Granato. He was there again on Luc Robitaille – who had three of the Kings’ seven shots – during a power-play situation.

“When Patrick Roy makes a promise,” said Keane, “he sticks to it. He isn’t an outspoken guy, he’s just a calm guy. When he speaks, the players listen. He said he was going to shut the door tonight and he did,” said Keane.

There were opportunities on both sides, but what the first period was about, mostly, was speed. Both teams gathered their legs beneath them and went for it – the Kings to stay alive and, of course, the Canadiens to put away the season.

This was a night when the best players from both teams came to play – starting with Roy and Kelly Hrudey. Yet it was DiPietro who scored the only goal with fewer than five minutes remaining shortly after Granato had returned from serving a tripping penalty.

The big play was made by LeClair, the hero of the previous two games in Los Angeles, where he had scored overtime goals in 4-3 and 3-2 victories. This time, his big contribution came when he used his size to crush defenceman Tim Watters with a bodycheck near the Los Angeles circle. From there, Gary Leeman slipped the puck to DiPietro, who was to score yet another in the third period.

That was one – and seconds later, Vincent Damphousse was in a delightful position to add another when he swept in alone on Hrudey. The Los Angeles goaltender stopped him. Or how about Guy Carbonneau hitting the post with a one-timer less than two minutes into the second period.

These things happen, right? What also almost always happens when one team fritters away opportunities is that the opposition puts one on the board on its first real chance. So there’s McSorley lofting a rising shot which somehow managed to elude Roy – but only after it struck one post, then the other, fell below the line and out.

In a perfect world, the playoffs’ most valuable player probably would have liked another crack at the McSorley shot. On the other hand, who’s complaining when it’s becoming increasingly clear, despite the fears and tears, that this series would not go beyond this night.

Not when Muller, who directed and choreographed the go-ahead goal a little more than a minute later.

It began in a fairly harmless manner, when Muller fed Damphousse behind the Los Angeles net. Second effort by Damphousse allowed him to elude two Kings behind the net, and now he’s dropping the puck to the lip of the crease where Muller, who started it all, snapped it beyond Hrudey.

This one, you should know, had speed and aggressiveness and unflinching work by both sides. It had soaring emotions – all of which Lebeau, Keane and LeClair delivered for the goal which provided the Canadiens with a 3-1 margin.

The day before, after the Canadiens’ arrival from Los Angeles with a 3-2 overtime victory in their satchels, Lebeau had been muttering unhappily about missing what would have been the winning goal in Game 4, with roughly two minutes remaining in regulation time.

“The post,” he grunted, “I hit the post. I had the open side, and I hit the post,” he said quietly.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow was last night, after Lebeau had spent a sleepless one.

“I could not sleep last night, and I could not sleep this afternoon. We didn’t want to go into overtime again. I think that’s why we played so hard. We knew that once we got the lead, we would have to keep on going at them, and that’s what we did.”

The Canadiens, as a team did it all.

No. 24.

The mighty weight of the Stanley Cup feels just great

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 10, 1993

MICHAEL FARBER
THE GAZETTE

Kirk Muller, a team player to the champagne-soaked end, turned in the bedlam of the Montreal dressing room to Mike Keane and passed on the prize.

“Heavy bugger,” Muller said under his breath.

You can sum up the Stanley Cup in almost any two words you choose.

Patrick Roy.

The best.

The Canadiens.

But in a moment when it was almost impossible to think let alone hear yourself think, Muller probably summarizied the Stanley Cup better than he dreamed.

Heavy bugger.

The Stanley Cup really is a heavy bugger, but not only in dead weight.

“I was so pumped up,” Lyle Odelein said, “I could have lifted the Cup to the sky.”

This is a trophy that that comes with the weight of 100 years of history, of dreams, of commitment, and in Montreal, of expectations. There is nothing in sport so ladened with purpose, so filled with emotions.

The Stanley Cup is not lightly carried, and surely it is never lightly won.

“The first time I saw the Stanley Cup was a Friday afternoon,” J.J. Daigneault said. “It was a Friday. The afternoon. I had skipped school. I went to Old Montreal. That’s where the Canadiens were massing for their parade.

“I went to cheer their captain, Serge Savard, and now he’s my boss. That day was great, but now I have experienced the same thing as he did. It feels better to touch it rather than look at it. But I know the other side, but I know how the people of Montreal feel.”

Change the Metro stop from Guy to Carbonneau.

Melrose Ave. in N.D.G. is going to be called Rue Demers from this day forward. The monarchy is back in good graces – long live the Roy.

The Canadiens won their first Stanley Cup since 1986 and their first on home ice since 1979 last night, beating the Los Angeles Kings, 4-1, to win the series four games to one. But the Canadiens 24th Stanley Cup is not theirs alone. The dream is shared.

The Cup made the rounds in a dressing room crammed with parents and brothers and cousins and a family so extended it spilled out into the Forum hallway.

The bottles of champagne were passed around as if it were a frat party, and Guy Carbonneau, Keane and Muller all drank directly from the bowl. The vintage was 1990, Kritter, Brut de Brut from France so no matter what anyone says, things European can actually get to experience the Cup.

On the other side of the Forum, Wayne Gretzky understood. He had done this four times, guzzled champagne and took a spin with the biggest prize. The Stanley Cup is a heavy bugger for him too, the weight of his lofty standards giving him pause to think even as Montreal paused to drink.

Amid the happiness, there were dark hints of the future.

“I said before the playoffs began that I want to go out on a high,” Gretzky said in a voice filled with resignation.

“I think I played as well as I can. The next few days I’ll talk to my wife. I’m not leaning toward (retirement), but I’ve fulfilled my obligation to Los Angeles. (Owner) Bruce McNall put a blank piece of paper in front of me and told me to fill it in. That’s not a problem and it’s not a case of wanting to go anywhere else. I just don’t want to go out before I’m pushed out.”

This game can be cruel, the sweet moments truly rare. So as Carbonneau stood with the Cup in the corner of the room, he yelled, “Please, please let us enjoy this.” He had won the Cup in 1986, and this was a seven-year itch that he needed to scratch. Like Gretzky, who knows when there will be another for Carbonneau.

“You try to take the moment and just hold on to it,” Odelein said. “You think about what you’re doing and you try to make sure you remember it. I’m from Saskatchewan, and I doubt there’s a kid out there tonight who wouldn’t have wanted to do what I did – skate with the Stanley Cup, do what great player like Greztky and (Jari) Kurri did so many times. Unbelievable. This year I earned the right to hold it.”

The Stanley Cup is a heavy bugger because it is a privilege as well as an ornament. A hockey player dares not touch the Stanley Cup; it is considered bad luck.

Stephan Lebeau remembers looking at the Cup in the Forum garage in 1989 when Calgary snitched it right from under the Canadiens’s noses, but he did not put his hands on it.

“You don’t touch what isn’t yours,” Lebeau said. “I didn’t want to touch it until we won it.”

There was exquisite goaltending again, of course, and Roy joined legends Bobby Orr, Bernie Parent, Gretzky and Mario Lemieux as a two-time winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the playoffs.

But there was also the opportunism on offence and the hounding forechecking and that had become standard for destiny’s darlings. These were no ghosts. They were shadows.

Even after Marty (The Stick) McSorley tied the score, 1-1, early in the second period, the Canadiens never seemed in trouble. Muller put the Canadiens ahead with the Cup-winning goal 1:11 later, and if there were poetic justice, it – like the pass – came from Vincent Damphousse who had taken up residence behind the net in Gretzky’s old haunt.

Not only did the Canadiens beat the Kings in this match, Damphousse outshone The Great One at his game.

This was a long, strange trip. Along the way coach Jacques Demers made a pilgrimage to St. Anne de Beaupre and Roy made a trip to the trainer’s room, playing after a bruised shoulder supposedly had knocked him out for good. They played overtime every other night and kept everyone up way past their bedtimes, and they asked for a stick measurement that will go down as one of the greatest moments of foresight and fortune in Canadiens history.

But the best trip was the last, and Carbonneau made sure Denis Savard, in civvies and in everybody’s thoughts, had the first crack at the Cup. Then it made the rounds until it ended up with John LeClair, who gave it a big wet kiss.

“I’m treating it as well as possible,” LeClair said. “This is the Cup.”

This morning, the Cup kisses Montreal back.

You can see it tomorrow. Montreal has its parade back.

Two more for Rocky VIII

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 10, 1993

RED FISHER
THE GAZETTE

Paul DiPietro, who had found the start of the season a sentence, now was talking in paragraphs.

Here, after all, was a guy who didn’t even start the season – because of an ongoing bout with mononucleosis.

Or, as he put it: “I’d wake up in the morning and my eyes would be closed.”

Now, though, here he was with his seventh and eighth goals after playing in 17 of the Canadiens’ 20 playoff games – and is there a better way to end a season?

“The leaders on this team are so great,” he was saying after last night’s 4-1 finale, “they make me a better player. They make everybody on this team better players.

“This is pretty great,” said Rocky VIII. “The season starts without me and I’m figuring that maybe I wouldn’t play at all. Now, here I am on a Stanley Cup winner. Me. Paul DiPietro. I’m still dreaming.”

DiPietro was a nightmare to the Kings.

He scored the Canadiens’ first and last goals. He had three of their 29 shots. He took a regular turn with Gilbert Dionne and Gary Leeman.

“I’ve got to say this,” said Rocky VIII, “I make a few mistakes, but (Jacques) Demers kept coming back with me. A lot of other coaches would have sat me down, but not Jacques. He goes with four lines and that’s what helped us win, I guess.”

Patrick Kane scored at 8:20 of the second overtime period Saturday night to give the Chicago Blackhawks a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings, winning the best-of-seven Western Conference final in five games. It was the third goal of the game for Kane.

The Blackhawks will face the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final, with Game 1 slated for Wednesday night in Chicago.

The last time two Original Six teams met in the Cup final was 1979, when the Canadien beat the New York Rangers in five games.

(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

First Original Six matchup since ’79, montrealgazette.com

Hawks eliminate Kings, NHL.com

Stanley Cup final schedule, NHL.com

Bruins have virtually same team that won Cup in 2011, montrealgazette.com

Sunday marks 20th anniversary of Habs’ last Cup win, by Stu Cowan

The Canadiens were one win away from their 24th Stanley Cup as they prepared for Game 5 of the final against Los Angeles Kings slated for June 9, 1993 at the Forum.

Below are the columns by Michael Farber and Red Fisher that were published in The Gazette  setting the stage for Game 5.

(Gazette file photo)

Did someone say ‘inevitable’?

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 9, 1993

MICHAEL FARBER
THE GAZETTE

The Canadiens got off their Air Canada charter and passed through customs and when asked whether he had anything to declare, Jacques Demers said, “We haven’t won anything yet. We have a lot of respect for the Los Angeles Kings. They battle you all the time. Any team with Wayne Gretzky -.”

Right.

The next time the Canadiens travel, it will be by float.

There has been an inevitability in this one-step-at-an-overtime march to the Stanley Cup. Montreal is on the brink, and there is an overwhelming sense of rightness about this spring of 1993. Hockey is our town, and the Cup has been our Cup since the first one went to the MAAA 100 years ago. Now it is also our year.

The only parades Kirk Muller ever has seen were Santa Claus fests down Princess St. in Kingston when he was a boy. Muller would show up at the end of the parade to beat the cold but still catch St. Nick, maybe the only time Muller hasn’t given it at least 60 minutes. The very mention of a parade gives Muller a nervous tic, but after stammering about, he acknowledged Montreal needs one more victory to win the Stanley Cup.

This is a major admission, but don’t quote him on it.

“You hear about the 100 years and the seven-year thing (the Canadiens have not gone more than seven years since the end of World War II without winning a Cup; the last – hint, hint – was 1986) and you have to wonder a little if it isn’t our year,” Muller said.

“Not that it’s over, by any means. But there is a certain tradition involved with Montreal, and we really want to continue that. Certainly after getting up 3-1 we wouldn’t like to be known as the team that wound up going the longest without winning it.

“Going this far, we’ve been good. And we’ve been lucky. We haven’t been really aware of the overtime streak. Maybe it’ll hit us later. We’ll look at clips and say, `Wow.’ You have to be lucky to win in overtime, but you have to be good or else you won’t get in position to win.”

Some numbers.

The Canadiens have won 15 of 19 playoff games, 12 of them by one goal.

The Canadiens have won the last 10 of their 11 overtime games.

Patrick Roy doesn’t have a shutout in the playoffs unless, of course, you count the 96:39 minutes of immaculate overtime he has played since Game 1 in Quebec. Roy, who has 58 saves, has kept his net empty for almost a game and two periods, critical minutes in which any goal would have meant a loss. You take those dribs and drabs of perfection any day. This is how thin the line is between disaster and near-parade: if Quebec hit the lottery in Game 3 overtime at the Forum, the Nordiques would have had a 3-0 lead and made Ste. Catherine St. safe for traffic all summer.

So it is with the Montreal magical mystery tour. Every night, an adventure. The They Shoot Up Goaltenders, Don’t They? Game 5 in Quebec when Roy miraculously returned from a bruised shoulder to win in overtime. Rocky III when Paul DiPietro finished off the Nordiques. Eric Desjardins’s Kitten Who Lost Its Mitten in the finale against Buffalo. Two overtime goals by Captain Carbo, who hadn’t scored against a goalie since Nov. 9. A too-many-men penalty – Montreal’s favorite – not being called against the Canadiens on Long Island. Marty McSorley and StickGate. John LeClair, the Beverly Hillbilly, with back-to-back overtime goals in Los Angeles. The OT streak in the Year of Living Dangerously, a mark Demers says will never be broken, although that discounts the overtime coming in Game 5 at the Forum tonight.

“Maybe there really is such a thing as fate, that we have to win the Cup this year,” Mike Keane said. “Personally I don’t believe that, but it’s starting to look that way.”

Things just keep breaking the Montreal way. Buffalo won its Stanley Cup when it beat the Bruins, and the Islanders won their Stanley Cup when they knocked off the two-time champion Penguins. In the soft afterglow of success, it is easy to suppose Montreal could have done its own heavy lifting against uninspired Pittsburgh, but it certainly was nice not having to test the theory.

“For me, I guess it was the Buffalo series,” Muller said. “Quebec was all intensity, and it was fantastic coming back to win four straight. But sweeping Buffalo after the way they had handled Boston, that convinced me we were legit. We knew we could play with anybody.”

“Looking back, I guess the third game against Quebec was the biggest one,” Carbonneau said. “In the second game in Quebec we hadn’t played the way we wanted to. We’d been shy in a sense. We got back to Montreal, and we knew we had a young team and not a big team, but we knew we had to put it all out there. That game proved something. And as the playoffs moved along, this team showed it could play any kind of game. I think we could have beaten Pittsburgh. All we had to do was keep doing what we are doing.”

Carbonneau remembers the 1986 parade, which lasted approximately four times longer than the 1993 overtimes. At first it was fun. Later it turned scary, a too-many-men-in the-street penalty.

“But I’m not talking about the parade,” Carbonneau said. “The only thing I worry about is the Kings. Whatever they need, we’re not going to give them.”

Demers was wrong, incidentally. The Canadiens have won something already – the unqualified admiration of a hockey town that sadly underestimated them.

There is also the not inconsiderable matter of three overtime games against the Kings.

In Los Angeles, there was a whiff of destiny in the air. OK, maybe it was just smog, but there is an aura about this team.

The Canadiens feel it, and as they breezed past the Canada Customs officers and into a crowd of maybe 150 that greeted them at Dorval, they knew they were home, if not home free.

There are still another 78 minutes and 16 seconds or whatever to be played tonight.

Only then can you use the P word.

That, as you recall, is one of the other customs around here.

Habs’ mobile defence takes puck, not body

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 9, 1993

RED FISHER
THE GAZETTE

What has it taken to get this Canadiens bunch to within one victory of its first Stanley Cup since 1986?

It starts with Patrick Roy, of course, who’s a certain winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy if the Canadiens win one more game.

It’s Kirk (Is Work) Muller, who’s skating with a slower step in this series with Los Angeles, but still is delivering every last droplet of what he has left.

It’s Benoit Brunet, who’s enjoying a splendid playoff, and Mike Keane, Long John LeClair, Vincent Damphousse and Brian Bellows. It’s an amalgam of many things, but listen to one-third (or more) of the Big Three, Serge Savard:

“The biggest reason we’ve been doing well up to now,” said the kindly ol’ general manager, “is that all the teams we played against under-estimated our defence. They didn’t realize how talented they are getting the puck out of our zone.

“When you look at a lineup with three or four guys over six feet and weighing more than 200 pounds,” says J.J. Daigneault, “it’s pretty intimidating. Teams don’t have that problem with us. They look at us – three or four guys who don’t weigh more than 180 pounds – and maybe they figure it’s gonna be easy. I don’t know …maybe they’re overconfident, or something.

“What they don’t realize,” said Daigneault, who’s enjoyed an exceptional post-season, “is that the game has changed a lot during the past few years. Forwards used to control the puck a lot more than they do today, because there wasn’t as much forechecking as there is today.

“So the bottom line today is that you need quick defencemen who have to be first on the puck. It’s great to be physical, and we can be physical, but you don’t need to do those things when you’re first on the puck.

“So far, at least, we’ve had some success because we’ve grown together, as a group. We’ve been able to control the game.

“At one time, a lot of people gave us a hard time because of our lack of physical play. What they didn’t understand and maybe still don’t is: why give a bodycheck when you’re in control of the puck?”

“Our strength,” he said, “is our mobility. It’s our capability of handling the puck well. We’re not dirty, but we can still give a bodycheck when it’s necessary.

“The point is: you’re gonna see less people in front of the net if you’re in control of the puck. Obviously, we’re not gonna do a flawless breakout every time, but the better we are at getting the puck out of our zone, the fewer players we’ll see hanging around in front of our net.”

Daigneault has been a force during the playoffs – in terms of leadership and in raising his game to another level.

The story is an old one, but general manager Savard generally is credited with pointing Daigneault in the right direction at a time when there were serious doubts that Daigneault was good enough for the NHL.

“I had the shortest stick on this hockey team,” said Daigneault. “I was used to playing with the short stick. Serge says to me: `Your stick is the biggest weapon you have. There’s no reason for it to be so small. It’s working against you.’

“I lengthened it three inches, so now my poke-checking is better. I’m taking pucks away from people.”

It seems that Daigneault spent most of the regular season getting used to the longer stick.

“I’m a lot more relaxed,” said Daigneault. “I remember when I was 19, I was shaking like a leaf before a game. That doesn’t help anybody. I keep telling Patrice that, and he’s getting the message.”

Patrice is Brisebois, the young defenceman who has grown and matured with the game this season. He’s Daigneault’s roommate on the road, his defence partner on the ice.

The firm of Daigneault and Brisebois was formed about halfway through the season. They’ve been partners for about one-half of the playoffs and, says Daigneault, Brisebois is getting better.

“The biggest reason he’s improving is that he’s playing with confidence,” said Daigneault.

Another reason could be that Brisebois has Daigneault for a partner.

LeClair is talk of St. Albans

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 9, 1993

MICHAEL FARBER
THE GAZETTE

These are three fascinating things you probably didn’t know about St. Albans, Vt. (pop, 10,000):

* The town 12 miles from the Canadian border was the site of the northernmost battle of the American Civil War.

* At 45 degrees, it is equidistant between the Equator and the North Pole.

* It has been mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world’s largest sundae, the world’s largest pancake and the world’s largest snowman.

“I think the only one left is the pancake,” John LeClair said.

The Canadiens’ streak of 10 straight overtime wins should make the Guinness book any day now and when it does, the name of John (By-a- Hair) LeClair will get prominent billing. LeClair has scored the last two overtime winners against the Los Angeles Kings, making him the most famous St. Albans native in history.

He is certainly bigger than boxing trainer Ollie Dunlap, although a while back, there was a female mayor – LeClair thinks her name was Smith – who was murdered and got an awful lot of ink.

There was a crowd down at the Sherwin-Williams store on Main St. (Robert LeClair, mgr.) yesterday to celebrate the two goals by the favorite son, who is sort of the maple syrup on the town’s record flapjack. LeClair is the only Vermont native ever to play in the National Hockey League, a former star at the University of Vermont 25 minutes down I-89 in Burlington. The sense of pride in a homeboy is as profound as anything in small-town Canada.

“St. Albans is a nice place,” said LeClair, who is a semester away from a degree in small business management. “Back in January, it made some list as one of the top 100 small towns in the United States.

“I’m quiet. Some people don’t think I talk enough, but I guess that stems from growing up in a small place. You get a little intimidated by the big cities. But mostly you keep quiet. You talk when you have something to say. Nobody just talks for the sake of talking.”

So LeClair is not exactly filibustering on the subject of his overtimes. They were self-explanatory. You saw it, write it. LeClair isn’t the most demonstrative of players. After winning Games 3 and 4, LeClair looked like he had played on a line with Bartles and Jaymes.

Of course, his restraint is highlighted by the mask of his face. He has dark circles under his eyes even when he isn’t flying back and forth to California, and an aquiline nose that highlights his jowls. Mike Keane calls him Marmaduke after the big cartoon dog, although Brian Bellows has dubbed him the more popular Hillbilly.

LeClair is non-commital.

“You can call me anything you want,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’ll answer to it.”

The one time he did get angry was in mid-season when coach Jacques Demers summoned him into his office and aired him out. Now Demers lavishly compares him to Pittsburgh’s Kevin Stevens but at that time, given LeClair’s size (6-foot-2, 205 pounds) and speed, the coach thought he was playing more like Connie Stevens. LeClair didn’t take the critique too well, but in the big picture of the season, he realizes Demers had pushed the proper button.

The coach had touched his pride.

Now he is the author of two memorable, if not exactly highlight-film, goals. Half his playoff total has come in overtime. There still is a certain raw edge to his offensive game, and that, too, comes from small-town Vermont. Like most American kids, his skills are not as refined as Canadians’.

LeClair is stronger than he is fierce and can do most of the things for Montreal that Mike McPhee once did. But sometimes his play drifts, and he has the hands of a laborer and not an artiste. Despite Mathieu Schneider’s flattering comparison to Eric Lindros, LeClair looks more like Joel Otto – another name that came up this week in the How-to-Measure-Long-John sweepstakes.

By-a-Hair LeClair is still one behind Sudden Death Hill (1939) and Rocket Richard (1951) for most overtime goals in a playoff year, but he already is taking a ribbing from his teammates. LeClair and Keane were locked in a gin-rummy showdown on the plane home, and Keane was hoping he could knock him off in regulation.

“Overtime against Johnny,” Keane said, “and I’m cooked.”

Diaz, along with friend and fellow Swiss native Damien Brunner of the Detroit Red Wings, visited the Sauber garage. 

The Canadiens and Los Angeles Kings met in Game 4 of the 1993 Stanley Cup final on June 7, 1993 with the Canadiens winning 3-2 in overtime on John LeClair’s goal, moving within one victory of their 24th Cup championship.

Below are the columns by Michael Farber and Red Fisher that were published in The Gazette following Game 4.

(Gazette file photo/Allen McInnis)

It’s gotta be magic!

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 8, 1993

RED FISHER
THE GAZETTE

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – It is one game away from what once was thought to be an impossible dream, so now Guy Carbonneau sits there, shaking his head.

“Unbelievable. I’m numb,” he said in the moments after this 3-2 overtime victory by the Canadiens, which gives them a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven series with the Los Angeles Kings.

“I don’t know what to think, whether to laugh, be serious or to be happy. Happy, I guess, because we’re leading the series 3-1 and we’re going home. Unbelievable, though.”

What was unbelievable, perhaps, was that for the second consecutive game, John LeClair scored the winner, this time 14:37 into the overtime.

Unbelievable, because for the first 25 minutes of this pivotal game, the Canadiens swept into a 2-0 lead on goals by Kirk Muller and Vincent Damphousse. They were in control. They set the tempo. They had two, but could have had four – and then the wheels almost fell off.

The air started to go out of the balloon a couple of seconds after a Canadiens giveaway – allowing Mike Donnelly to score. That’s when the Kings started taking over in what ended as a desperate second period when Marty McSorley tied the score with only five seconds remaining.

“I’m sitting here not really knowing what to say,” said Carbonneau, “but what I do know is that Patrick (Roy) came into the dressing room after the second period and said that was the last goal he was giving up.

“He kept his promise.”

So did LeClair, who had come into the room after the third period and boomed in his hillbilly twang:

“Let’s go guys. I’ve got lots left.”

Lots – even though many of his colleagues appeared to be tiring.

Enough to get the winner, which came after he pounced on a shot that had gone wide, shrugged off several restraining bodies beside Kelly Hrudey, who had fallen out of position, and tucked it beyond defenceman Darryl Sydor.

“What can you say about that guy,” said Carbonneau. “He’s finally learning how good he can be. He’s finally learning how to get things done with his size. He said he had lots left. We need guys that size to do the job for us – with their size.”

The Canadiens did it the hard way again – a remarkable 10th victory in 11 overtime games after losing the first one to the Quebec Nordiques. What they also did was go into the game as well- prepared as any team can be.

Twelve minutes into it, the Canadiens had an 8-3 margin in shots. A minute later, they had tested Hrudey four more times.

It’s called turning it on, but is there a prettier play than the one choreographed by Muller for the period’s only goal?

There he is, facing off in the circle to Hrudey’s right. Jari Kurri, who plays that position largely as an afterthought, faced him. The puck is dropped, Muller slips it through Kurri’s legs and, in one motion, lashes a shot beyond Hrudey.

The Canadiens could have had at least two more. Once, Carbonneau struck the post on a two-on-one with Ed Ronan. Brian Bellows was set up delightfully by Muller – and missed the pass. Carbonneau sweeps in on Hrudey, is stopped, and can’t get his stick to the short rebound.

Games have been won with the opportunities the Canadiens, as a team, frittered away. Or, more precisely, the chances they couldn’t bury because of Hrudey’s excellence.

Mathieu Schneider is caught laying on an elbow late in the period. Two minutes later, he’s out of the box and racing in on Hrudey. He’s stopped.

Bottom line: it may not be the best period the Canadiens have played in the playoffs, but it was up there with the best.

The Kings?

The best they had to offer among their six shots were two by Tomas Sandstrom, but Roy took both away – particularly the rebound.

Skating is what the Canadiens were all about. Team Whoosh! They dictated the pace, and for much of the period it was simply too much for the Kings.

“If we win this one,” Mike Keane had said earlier in the day, “we’re in a great position. If we don’t, it’s anybody’s ball game.”

Keane had that right.

Roy reigns as best player of the second season

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 8, 1993

MICHAEL FARBER
THE GAZETTE

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – This had become Hockey Morning in Canada a good 20 minutes earlier and there stood Patrick Roy. He had a mask, but he didn’t have a cigarette.

He doesn’t smoke. The Kings do. This was Stanley Cup overtime, that extra special place where the Canadiens have lived for the past seven weeks, but it was Los Angeles that was owning the extra time, throwing everything at Roy.

The Kings looked fresh. The Canadiens were like a punch-drunk fighter, searching out the clinches, hanging on, doing everything they could to fend off Kings. This was Rocky in Wayne’s World, a tired team trying desperately not to get outclassed, and the only thing that was keeping the Canadiens alive was their goaltender.

“You know, I feel good in overtime,” Roy said later. “I felt perfect. I just had to make myself tough to beat. You just don’t want to give up a soft goal.

“My concentration came easy, especially in the third period and the overtime. I knew it would be a difference between 2-2 and 3-1.”

John LeClair made sure the Canadiens are one win away from the Stanley Cup when he scored a 16-incher at 14:37 of overtime. Long John was Short John again, and his two game-winners put end-to-end would still be a gimme. But Montreal surely would have been back at its beachfront hotel if it weren’t for Roy. He was Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden and Terry Sawchuck rolled into one.

The next person he becomes is Conn Smythe.

Roy has been the best player in the post-season just as he was in 1986 when, as a rookie, he led Montreal to its last Stanley Cup. He is one Wednesday from a not-so-instant replay but in the overtime period, he surely turned the clock back to 1986 when he survived about a 3,465 shot overtime against the New York Rangers. Roy was called to stop a mere 10 in almost a quarter of an hour against Los Angeles, but he was just as sharp.

When asked to compare the two, Roy said, “It’s tough to compare this to 1986. We played so few overtime games then, and now we have one almost every night. But I don’t live in the past. I only go on to the next game.”

Good idea. Why compare a Van Gogh to a Picasso.

A playoff masterpiece is a playoff masterpiece.

“Patrick Roy is the greatest goaltender in the world,” said Jacques Demers. “Kelly Hrudey (in the Kings nets) was great, battling, not giving an inch, but the Patrick Roy who came tonight was the Patrick Roy who is best in the game.”

Roy made a reflex save on Jari Kurri in the overtime, a remarkable reaction as Kurri batted the puck in midair off Roy’s glove. Of course, he couldn’t stop what he couldn’t see but then Roy didn’t have to. His goalpost did it for him.

Roy didn’t have a clue on Jimmy Carson’s shot from the faceoff in overtime. Carson was the bounciest player on the ice, Kings coach Barry Melrose having used him as sparingly as he uses the barber. That made Carson the most dangerous. He tried a cute play off a faceoff in the Montreal zone – Kirk Muller had scored on the same play in the first period when he took a faceoff through Jari Kurri’s legs and shot it past Hrudey – and Carson got some serious stick on it. Clang. Roy still talks to his posts, and once again the post talked back.

“I wasn’t thinking about overtime,” Roy said. “I don’t think our team was thinking about it either, not in a conscious way. But we know that when the score is tied and there are 10 minutes left in the third period, we’re not going to take many chances. If we have a good chance, we’re going to take it and go. But we’re willing to go into the overtime. We’re really positive about it.”

Why not. The streak of overtime victories has reached 10 and the legend grows faster than the record for Team Time and a Half because now we’re into exponents as well as opponents. The Canadiens now have won their past three games in overtime over the doubting Kings, the first final since Montreal-Toronto in 1951 to have a string of three overtime games. This was a little more lingering death than sudden death, but the Canadiens don’t ask how long, they ask how much.

LeClair scored on a botched two-on-one on a play that should have been well past your bed time. But you probably stayed up and so did Roy, challenging the Kings to beat him. They couldn’t when it counted.

This was no rout, but you better believe they are plotting a route on St. Catherine St. this morning.

Twilight zone; Canadiens’ mastery in overtime can’t be explained statistically

PUBLISHED IN THE GAZETTE ON JUNE 8, 1993

MICHAEL FARBER
THE GAZETTE

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – We take you now to the laboratory of Advanced Statistical Hockey Research, also known as Room 711 at the Westin LAX. This could be any lab in North America (except for the telltale crusts of the room service club sandwich on the table near the window), but here yesterday afternoon one of the most significant experiments in recent sporting history occurred.

Some background, professor.

We men of science could no longer buy the layman’s “ghosts” or a quark named “Patrick Roy” or “experience” or “patience” or the “long bench” (how long? 30 metres?) to explain an apparent statistical anomaly.

So we applied the empirical method.

The implements: one 25-cent piece (American, 1980), one bed (king- size, four pillows), one thumb (right).

The methodology: flip the coin and let it land on the bed.

The data: heads, heads, tails, heads, tails, tails …

For complete results, you will have to wait for the parade. But to summarize: after 100 flips of the coin, there were 52 tails and 48 heads. More significantly, the longest streaks by these evenly matched sides were seven (heads) and five (tails).

So heading into Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final last night, the only explanation for the Canadiens’ record streak of nine overtime wins was: beats the hell out of us.

The odds against nine straight overtime wins are 1 in 1,024, and you shouldn’t take the word of Advanced Statistical Hockey Research because we were once nearly fired by a shoe store for an inability to make change. No. Like other scientists, we welcomed verification.

“Now let me get this straight,” said Prof. Jan DeLeeuw, the director of the statistics program at UCLA. “Hockey has three periods each of 20 minutes, which actually takes much longer than 60 minutes to complete. And if there is a draw after 60 minutes, they play overtime?”

Right.

“Well, you must assume as you start overtime the chances of each team to win are equally good,” DeLeeuw said, “because that’s why you need overtime in the first place.”

Of course. Sometimes we scientists have lost sight of that fact because Roy has made every big save for the Canadiens for seven weeks and Montreal plays with a nice mixture of verve and composure in sudden death. Still, when the streak of overtimes started against Quebec in Game 3, the scientific community favored the Nordiques because 1) they had won the first game in OT and 2) if OT is a scoring lottery, Quebec seemed to have more balls in the drum.

“So if overtime is the equivalent of a fair coin toss,” continued DeLeeuw and then he went off on binomial distribution, which might be elementary to him but hasn’t been used as regularly in this lab as, say, Spectravision.

The prof came up with the probability of the streak as .00098, roughly one in a thousand.

Thanks, professor. You’re one in a million for taking time to help. Do you happen to know any of the Los Angeles Kings?

“One.”

The player wears .00099.

But to verify his figures, to guard against any Left Coast numerical bias, we checked with the math department at McGill University because for all we know, .00098 could be .00120 Canadian.

Prof. V. Seshadri, a Canadiens fan since 1962, obliged.

“Just a simple binomial formula,” Seshadri explained. Right. Simple to DeLeeuw. “You take 1/2 to the power of 10 …

“Ah, my calculator isn’t working.”

This is the Stanley Cup final, Professor. You’ve got to check out your equipment.

That’s what Marty McSorley, Ph.D. always says.

Now we know these findings are controversial. The ghost mob has its backers, and Dave Taylor of the Kings already is wondering.

“Our series really doesn’t apply a lot to what they’ve done in overtime,” he said. “We haven’t had good opportunities the other way to score. The Canadiens have just taken the puck into our zone and put it in the first time. Two first-minute goals. But it is crazy the way the whole thing worked out.”

The craziness continued., The Canadiens won 3-2 in overtime in Game 4 last night. The law of averages has been repealed.

“You know, I’ve been watching the games, and they have been thrilling,” Seshadri said. “The finals are different ballgames from what happens in the rest of the year. Both teams are evenly matched, and this is blood.

“Can you get me a ticket?”

Now we know these findings are controversial. The ghost mob has its backers, and Dave Taylor of the Kings already is questioning the methodology.

“Our series really doesn’t apply a lot to what they’ve done in overtime,” he said. “We haven’t had good opportunities the other way to score. The Canadiens have just taken the puck into our zone and put it in the first time. Two first-minute goals. But it is crazy the way the whole thing worked out.”

Maybe. But as they say around campus, nine heads are better than one.

In a press release, the club announced: “It will comprise every element of its predecessor, including the 100 greatest moments through the team’s first century, tributes to all 24 Stanley Cup-winning clubs and the 17 men whose jerseys have been retired by the organization, the four statues honouring Howie Morenz, Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, and Guy Lafleur, the team’s logo monument featuring all major award winners and every player through the first 100 years of the franchise, and the thousands of fan-personalized bricks.”

Moving the Centennial Plaza became necessary to make room for the Tour des Canadiens condominium project. 

“It has always been essential for us to honour our greatest legends and teams, coupled with the bricks personalized by fans as testament to their passion and attachment to the club, in an area accessible to the public at large for generations in a setting worthy of the iconic moments and history it celebrates,” Molson said in a statement.  “We are happy to unveil to you our vision for what will become the permanent home for Centennial Plaza, a place Montrealers and visitors to the city will be able to enjoy for decades to come.”

Molson also confirmed that due to the risk of damage inherent in the removal and storage of existing bricks, the club would absorb the cost of ordering an entirely new set of bricks complete with the original inscriptions made by fans.

(Photo by Marie-France Coallier/The Gazette)

A new home for Centennial Plaza, canadiens.com

Molson proud of Habs’ progress this season, by Pat Hickey

Habs take a look at draft prospects, by Pat Hickey

Canadians keen for a Stanley Cup, montrealgazette.com/sports

Why can’t Canada win the Stanley Cup, by New York Times