Jodoin

Clément Jodoin remembers getting the call in the early spring, the year was 1997. For him, it was the culmination of a career choice that had started almost 15 years prior to that in Midget AA with Sainte-Hyacinthe and an Education degree from Concordia University.

‘’I don’t think there’s a position in hockey I haven’t occupied at one time or another, but I’ve been a teacher the entire time.’’

Alain Vigneault had been given the top spot on the Habs bench; he was 36 years old, had just come off coaching the Beauport Harfangs after a brief stint with the still newly minted Ottawa Senators.

And was about to replace one of the more controversial coaches in NHL history.

Mario Tremblay.

A man who’s resignation would see at different intervals, the departure of assistant coaches Steve Shutt, Jacques Laperriere, Benoit Allaire and Yvan Cournoyer, names Habs-lore would deeply associate with championships and dynasties.

‘’I almost died that year’’ says Jodoin.

And you’d assume that the deeply unfulfilled expectations of a period Habs fans now call the Dark Ages, where uninspiring rosters would see countless playoff exclusions. That alone you’d assume would have made any men associated with this team jump off the proverbial if not literal balcony.

‘’It was actually in Montreal mid January, boarding the bus I almost got cut in half by falling ice, got out-of-the-way at the last second.’’

‘’Those first few years it was clear that we only had two NHL prospects on the team, most training camps would have us look at Ribeiro and Hossa and how they had progressed. ‘’

‘’When Alain got fired at the time (November 2000), I was offered the job with the Citadelles, Michel Therrien was up in Montreal and they needed a replacement. I declined, I felt something else was in the cards for me, I stayed with the Canadiens. André Savard wanted me to follow some of the kids they had drafted and report directly to him.’’

It only took 18 months to find him back in the Assistant Coach seat in Montreal.

‘’Michel Therrien had replaced Alain and all of a sudden mid January 2003, Michel was gone, it happened pretty quickly, at 11PM Michel cleared out his office, at noon Claude was in.’’

The Habs prospect base was getting deeper and Clement thought he’d see a bigger role within the organization, unfortunately came September 2003. Bob Gainey, who had taken over from André Savard, decided to give Julien the opportunity to choose a new set of assistants.

That summer would also see the arrival of Pierre Gauthier as a pro scout and Doug Jarvis as the Habs AHL boss.

‘‘I got to do something I had never done before, coach in Europe. Dave King, Pierre Pagé and I headed out to the Deutschland Cup in Hannover to coach Team Canada there, a fantastic experience.‘’

The following year, Clément was back in the QMJHL coaching and managing the now defunct Lewiston MAINEiacs and assisting Craig Harsburg on Team Canada. He quickly made the MAINEiacs one of the better teams in the Q on a hockey and academic standpoint.

‘’The first thing I did was approach owner Marc Just at the time and ask for $50 000 immediately for the academic program, the check was here the next day. I would frequently show up during the classes, sit in the  back, I wanted to see how these kids work. If they disagreed with how things were run, they were welcome to go to any other team.’’

‘’My moto’s always been, on doit organiser les joueurs avant de se faire organiser. ‘’

When Claude Julien lost his job, once again mid January of 2006 his statement to the press started with a word of thanks to his assistants. The first name mentioned was Clément Jodoin.

In 2007 after two years in Lewiston that culminated in a Memorial Cup participation, Jodoin joined the Rimouski Océanic.

‘’30 years in coaching, and I still felt I had a lot to give, we had important players to develop in Rimouski like Michael Frolik, Jordan Caron and Patrice Cormier.‘’

A disappointing 2011 season with Rimouski made Jodoin decide a fourth year was out the cards, he’d be replaced by Serge Beausoleil.  At that time Océanic VP André Jolicoeur stated:

‘’Clément was an outstanding teacher, if I had a son in the league, I could not imagine a better coach. ‘’

Clément had other things on his mind; a different calling he felt couldn’t be fulfilled in junior.

‘’I knew I didn’t want to return to junior hockey, I was looking for a different experience, at the University or College level even Europe or the AHL. It was a risk but I was ready to give it a shot, being a hockey coach is a bit like being a gypsy.‘’

The rumors in the Q had him joining Fribourg in Switzerland after speculation that Bob Hartley had declined their offer. Hartley at the time had stated that before accepting the job with the Zürich Lions he had spoken well about the ex-Rimouski coach.

Clément was off to Slovakia for the World Hockey Championships with Team Canada, when the call came.

At 59, after almost 35 years behind a bench, Clément would replace newly promoted Randy Cunneyworth behind the Canadiens AHL bench.

‘’I didn’t expect to get a call from an NHL team, it was a surprise for me, but I was looking for a new challenge, something in a professional league. This was an amazing opportunity.‘’

One thing’s for sure, gone are the days when all the Habs had to develop were Marcel Hossa and Mike Ribeiro.

Jacques

It was that kind of week in the NHL.

Mike Keenan in Philly; Jean Perron in Montreal; and now, Jacques Martin in St Louis.

Ron Caron looked at the assembled group and sighed heavily before clearing his throat and starting the small scrum.

“Basically we’re trying to get a little bit out of our extreme defensive approach,” he said.

It had been a frustrating season for the Blues, yet one full of potential. Tony McKegney would know his only 40-goal season; a young Doug Gilmour would break the 30-goal barrier along with other youngster Mark Hunter.

Only five players on that team were over 30 years old, but the rebellion against Jacques Martin would come from his youngsters.

“Whoever takes over from Jacques,” said Caron, “will have the mandate to let the players be themselves individually.”

The problems were aplenty: Blues ownership wanted playoff success, Jacques Martin had only won a single of three series; a 66-71-23 record during the regular season; the younger offensive core had frequently requested a more free-flowing system.

“Admittedly we saw young players develop but the team wasn’t competitive.”

The next few lines from Caron would come as a curiosity in modern twenty-first century hockey. The Blues GM went on explaining that he wanted his team to display a more offensive brand of hockey, a brand as far as possible from the New Jersey Devils’ bump-and-grind defensive style.

“We want to provide the fans with a more entertaining brand of hockey,” he said. “A more aggressively offensive team.”

Probed on a replacement, Caron was quick to dismiss rumors that Jean Perron would replace Martin.

The players would not come out to defend their coach due to Ron Caron’s tight control of the locker room. However, the first major critic of Martin’s firing came from the man he had replaced, Detroit Red Wings coach Jacques Demers.

“They didn’t give him the time he needed,” Demers said. “I’m not one to criticize Caron or (team president) Jack Quinn, but I just don’t get it, he’s going to be one of the best coaches in the NHL one day.”

Martin would thank the team and quietly leave with the class he’s been associated with throughout his career; the Blackhawks immediately called him to assist their new fiery coach Mike Keenan.

The Blues would hire the newly retired Brian Sutter who went on to a .488 record in his first year. He coached the team during four seasons, never making it past the second round of the playoffs.

Martin moved on to NHL stints with the Blackhawks and Nordiques before landing the head coaching position in Ottawa.

Demers would say of Martin in 2011, almost 40 years after his first coaching position in the NHL, 35 after he said Martin would be one of the best in the NHL:

“He’s still the guy you want around your young and veteran players,” he said. “He’s got the feel and discipline on his teams of an old school NHL coach and he knows how to balance work and reward, he’s seen it all and the guys know it, they know they’ll never be outcoached.”

“They also know he’ll never sell them out especially in Montreal where the media has a tendency to make everything front page news, they trust him.”

Although Jacques Martin’s decisions are now front-page news, his first appearance in the news was a small blurb in the Reading Eagle on page 48. It read that a coach from Guelph called Jacques Martin had been hired as the Blues’ head coach to replace Jacques Demers who had left for a 5-year, $1M contract with the Red Wings after a contractual dispute with the St. Louis front office.

Interesting Facts:

At that time, the average NHL salary for a coach was $130,000. The Blues soon sued Demers; they claimed he had broken a contract that was supposed to run until 1989.

Demers’s salary with the Blues was $75,000 annually before he left for Detroit.

Jacques Martin’s current salary is rumored to be about $1.5M annually in Montreal, one of the best-paid coaches in the NHL. For comparison’s sake, his salary with the Blues when he was hired was around $50,000 a year.

Before 41, There was 40

The jersey sits framed in a bar on St-Jacques and if you’re not paying close attention, you could easily mistake it for Halak’s old number 41.

Except it’s not, give it a few more glances and it becomes quite apparent from the smaller Habs logo, CCM badges and bright red hue that this jersey isn’t number 41.

It’s number 40 and it used to belong to another Habs goalie, Les Kuntar.

At this point someone usually turns around and says “who the f*%k is Les Kuntar?”

It was New Year’s Eve, 1994 and it was Les Kuntar’s first NHL start after joining the team on December 23^rd. The 6’2” American goaltender – full name Leslie Stephen Kuntar – had been selected by the Canadiens out of High School 122^nd overall in the 1987 Draft.

“I was a Buffalo Sabres fan growing up,‘’ said the Elma NY native. “My family had season tickets, I still remember the feeling the day Mike Ramsay joined the team after the ‘Miracle on Ice’.”

A week before that (Dec 24^th, 1993), one day after his recall, Kuntar was skating on Memorial Auditorium ice in Buffalo coming in to relieve the shelled André Racicot. Not quite the start he had imagined to his NHL career, but back to December 31st 1993, his first career start.

The Habs were on a 3-5-2 run, still atop the Northeast division but the Sabres were closing in, only 6 points back, and Jacques Demers was looking for a way to wake his players up.

“So in comes Kuntar.”

Dave King was coaching the Flames at the time and of course, he couldn’t help but smirk at the Canadiens starting goalie, I mean let’s face it…

Years later, commenting the famed Flames-Habs rivalry, Theo Fleury would bring up the New Year’s Eve game:

“The Les Kuntar Game,” he said. “Kinger (Dave King) was still coaching then. And we play the big New Year’s Eve Game against Montreal and they put somebody named Les Kuntar in the nets… and he beats us! I think we had, oh, 10 shots the whole game. I mean, afterwards the guy coulda (sic) stuck his underwear up on the pin and not even had to wash it! Anyway, Kinger storms into the room after we lose, livid, his eyes are bugging out of his head and he starts yelling ‘Les Kuntar! We just got beat by Les F*%king Kuntar! Who the hell is Les Kuntar anyway?’”

Fate would take Kuntar on a path that many would identify with career minor leaguers. He only played six NHL games, sharing the pine with André Racicot, Martin Brochu and Ron Tugnutt with the Habs in ’94.

Kuntar retired in ’97, two years after joining the Flyers’ farm system as a free agent; he still plays in Western New York with several retired players (Michael Peca, Rob Ray, Darryl Shannon, etc.)

He definitely had one of the best names in hockey.

For those who’ve never read the fantastic blurb (and inspiration for this article) on Joe Pelletier’s GHL’s, here is the link.

A Good Team : The 2002 Montreal Canadiens

Once upon a time (in 2002), the Canadiens were about to face the Pittsburgh Penguins led by a re-invigorated Mario Lemieux.

One of these teams was led by a cancer survivor, the other’s leader in the midst of the fight, but there was a hockey game to play that night and that was a whole other war.

“There has been no playoff hockey in this city for three springs; the Canadiens have celebrated a Stanley Cup victory in every decade since the Paleozoic era,” said Dave Molinari.

The year was 2002 and fresh out of a mediocre spiral that had begun in 1998-99, the Canadiens had started the season without Saku Koivu and a slew of injuries that would make that year one of the most unlikely ever for an NHL team.

When Penguins goaltending coach Gilles Meloche was questioned about the Canadiens, he was asked if he expected to see them at the start of the season fighting with the Rangers for the 7^th seed.

‘’Nope, not me,” he said. “And none of the experts.”

The unusualness of the 2002 team had largely been the work of a new coach Michel Therrien and a newly minted young GM André Savard who dared to trade longtime forwards Brian Savage, Benoit Brunet and Martin Rucinsky, faces that had been strongly associated to the post-‘93 building effort.

“Sometimes just by getting rid of players – it doesn’t matter who you get in return – you change your team’s attitude.”

The change in attitude benefitted the younger core led by Jose Theodore (who would go on and win the Hart and Vezina trophy) and the addition of Doug Gilmour would give the Canadiens the leadership and prestige that the dressing room never could muster up in past seasons. Rick Kehoe, the Penguins coach at the time would say the following about Gilmour prior to the game:

“He’s one of those type who brings out the best in other players,” he said. “When they lost Koivu, Gilmour kinda filled that role. Once he got into game shape, he started producing. When you see a guy like him – he’s not a big guy – play the way he does, it inspires the rest of the team.”

Montreal’s lineup was helped by Michel Therrien’s strong role mentality. The Canadiens had a well-defined lineup with Joe Juneau leading one of the best shutdown lines in the NHL that season coupled with Gilmour and Yanic Perrault’s more offensive minded lines. Yet, Meloche has no doubts why the Canadiens were in the race; it was all Theodore.

“I’ve never seen him play that well, I’ve watched him for the last ten years,” he said.

“In junior and throughout his young career,” Meloche would add, “he was always a good goalie but now, he’s got confidence, he sees the puck like it’s a basketball.”

The Canadiens would go on to knock off the first place Bruins that year after a courageous return from captain Saku Koivu with 3 games to play in April.

From the 2002 team only Andrei Markov remains today. When questioned about that year’s run in a local interview, Markov would look up and smile, and his short, yet clear answer gave out the key to the Habs success’ that year:

‘’Good team.”

A big thanks to the team from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette who helped me get the material for this article.

The NHL for Free

For several of us who’ve followed the NHL’s broadcasting rights saga, there was always a feel that when ESPN’s relationship with the NHL ended, the loss was tremendous and would hurt the NHL on several levels.

Exposure, relevance and of course, air-time on America’s must have sports channel are things that Versus or NBC could never match.

Greg Wyshynski’s excellent article on the subject quotes ESPN’s SportsCenter host Steve Levy:

“The people at VERSUS offered essentially more than twice what we did, and the NHL, and I believe this is shortsighted, took the money. And the League has made this mistake before over the years with that SportsChannel America. They got to make a few extra bucks, but nobody could see the games. It’s not as bad, but it’s somewhat similar. I’m constantly being told by players and the players’ association and the NHL that the guys are frustrated. Can’t get the games. Don’t know what channel it’s on. Can’t get it in the hotel when they’re on the road. They can’t watch their own sport. And in essence that’s driven a lot of people probably to ESPN because they can at least get the highlights and analysis. I think we’ve actually stepped up our hockey coverage since we haven’t had the sport.”

Versus felt for the average NHL observer more like the rebound girl, but heck, the deal was twice the money ESPN offered and let’s not even get started with the NBC contract (oh but wait, a 166% augmentation over the last one), a 10 year deal that made NBC’s Dick Ebersol look like a genius. $2 billion for 10 years, $200 million a year while the NBA scores a cool billion a year on ABC.

Of course, we all know and agree on the fact that the NBA and NHL are two completely different leagues and NBC wanted the NHL to effectively counteract collegiate sports on ABC.

Truth be told, the NHL was going to be on the short stick of any new deal.  Hockey’s popularity at the time when negotiations were up had dropped severely, teams had an unexciting brand of hockey, goalies were the NHL’s big stars and lack of offense was something that the American viewer found unappealing.

When you look at viewership numbers and of course, interest (a poll had come out at the time that bowling had better viewership numbers than hockey), the NHL had dropped to 11^th in the US, the coolest game in the world had undoubtedly lost its cool.

But the law of peaks and valleys inevitably rears its head in any endeavor. With the arrival of young and marketable superstars with names like Ovechkin, Crosby and Stamkos to name just a few, coupled to a new and entertaining brand of hockey, the NHL got the boost it needed to re-up it’s brand.

And the league’s corporate support has responded accordingly.

The NHL, despite some teams lacking the fan support they require to turn in a profit at the ticket booth, posted generous revenues and surmounted the financial difficulties analysts had said would hurt it.

But the lack of presence on consistent readily available programming in the US, especially for some Canadian teams, might still be an issue for the league per Tim Peeling, a US-based expert in broadcast advocacy.

“When you look at the NHL’s online apparel sales,” he said. “It’s always interesting to see how a fair amount of gear from Canadian teams ends up in the US.”

“Teams like the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers have a pretty incredible fan base and appeal to a large number of Canadian exiles and US born fans in America. The history and overall tradition of these teams is a passion that is passed on, but the numbers have been dwindling.”

Results from last year show that NHL.com did not have a single Canadian team on the top-10 jerseys or items sold.

“In Canada it’s easier for a lot of fans to obtain merchandise locally compared to the States where few stores carry NHL merchandise in stock,” said Peeling, “so these numbers although disappointing, don’t tell the whole story.”

“Inevitably Canadian teams will lose fans in the states, and that will affect turnouts at the ticket counter, some teams make it a special request to the NHL scheduling committee to have the Habs, Maple Leafs or Oilers play more games in their area because it sells out arenas, especially in Florida, they need those Canadian fans to make ends meet, it’s essential to their fan base.”

“When (Jeffrey) Vinik bought the Lightning, one of the main conditions was to ensure the NHL would schedule the Montreal Canadiens games at times when he could guarantee a maximum turnout locally, and the NHL did so accordingly.”

“The NHL’s redemption passes by the traditional appeal of several Canadian teams and nourishing those exiled or traditional fan bases whether they’re in New England or the South East.”

His solution:

‘’Simple, make Original Six games available for free online to the US market and enforce a regional restriction system similar to the one found on cable to encourage a local ticket drive,” he said. “If you can’t get ESPN interested in your product, make it so easily available that you don’t end up needing them.”

In the mean time, let’s pray for those Habs fans in Phoenix!

The Bust Chronicles : Robin Sadler

“I darn near fell out of my chair, it came as a complete shock,” said Robin Sadler upon hearing the news he had been the Canadiens’ first pick in 1975. “I kind of like the idea of playing in a Canadian city, even if I have to spend some time in the minors.”

Sadler had it all. As a defenseman with good size (6’2, 180 lbs), offensive flair galore had meant leading the Junior Edmonton Oil Kings and establishing a WHL rookie record with 32 goals and 61 assists.

In a time when Bobby Orr was the NHL’s prime phenom, the appeal for the Habs was easy to understand. However, times were changing quickly in the league and prospects weren’t getting the big bucks they were expecting from teams just a year after they were drafted.

His agent and controversial NHL figure Alan Eagleson was quoted saying:

“In the case of Sadler, the Canadiens are offering 35 to 40% less than they paid a year ago,” he said.

Selected 9^th overall in 1975 by the Canadiens, Sadler’s controversial foray into pro sports could have been one that led to Cup rings through any road he had chosen. Instead, training camp with the Canadiens had been a disaster. After one week and a $250,000 contract offer from the Canadiens, he walked away and expressed his desire to become a fireman.

“I found it wasn’t a game anymore, it’s a serious business, a lot more serious than I like to play,” said Sadler.

The Vancouver native returned home and wound up driving an Eaton truck for $250 a week.

However, Sadler’s assets meant he wouldn’t stay out of NHL or WHA training camps for long. Unfortunately, his post-Habs career started with Glen Sather (then GM of the Edmonton Oilers) calling him a thief.

Sadler had agreed in the fall of ’77 to a contract with the Oilers that would have paid him $100,000 over two years. After four days of training camp, he walked out telling the coaching staff he had lost the desire to play hockey; Sather was dumbfounded.

“He said the pressure was too much for him, he wasn’t eating right.”

“The thing that bothers me most is his quitting so early,” Sather said. “He never gave it a chance.”

Sather’s incomprehension soon turned to rage when a few months later, Sadler signed a tryout with the Nova Scotia Voyageurs, the Habs’ AHL affiliate.

“We had agreed to terms with him and he even accepted a generous five figure signing sum,” he said. “Next thing I know come March 1978, he’s on a 5 game trial with Nova Scotia, we never got the money back.”

“I really think Robin is a quitter, even with the trouble we’re having now with injuries to our blue line, I wouldn’t have him back,” said Sather at the time.

Sadler‘s nine-game stint in the AHL was impressive. He collected six points in nine games, but soon after, left once again. He reappeared in Europe playing as a hired gun on the Dutch and Austrian National teams that managed to find some local lineage in Sadler’s family tree.

Some claim Sadler was prone to bouts of anxiety; the ‘70s and ‘80s NHL was a tough era to play in. Yet, who knows what his legacy could have been had he stuck it out as a member of the Oilers or Canadiens.

But as Alice Meynell would say:

“Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.”

The Malone/Campoli hit

We were sold on it because of the politics, inconsistencies and injustices that plagued Colin Campbell’s reign. The inconsistencies that caused several of the league’s top players and the media in general to question how decisions were taken and if the NHL really had a structured approach to dishing out suspensions.

Turns out, they did not. The NHL announced on Monday that Ryan Malone would not be suspended for his blatant hit to the head on Habs defenceman Chris Campoli.

As fans, we stood by watching blatant infractions that could easily have been sanctioned under the ‘attempts to injure’ rule go unpunished, we stood by watching scandalous revelations after scandalous revelations and repeat offenders walking away unscathed. Are we still counting the games Marc Savard, Sindey Crosby and company have missed out on? Or is that way too 2010 for us?

Those were the Colin Campbell days, so stop the count. I’m serious. Don’t waste your time. The days where the NHL’s head of discipline celebrates the cup on the ice with the winning team are over.

The days where Colin Campbell sent angry emails to the head of refereeing about not reserving preferential treatment to his son are over. The politics are over I tell you.

The NHL eventually got tired of people like me (and you for that matter) bringing up all these quite valid points last summer. Gone was Colin Campbell and in came Brendan Shanahan, a man who calls himself ”Head of player safety” and of course, off went the preseason, with 10 million suspensions (not the real number) and we were impressed!

Wow, no politics, no BS.

Martin Brodeur, who is no fool, brought it up first; criticizing the pace, saying we’d soon complain about inconsistencies and irregularities, and oh how we laughed.

Foot in mouth.

Even Bruins fans have made parallels between the Malone/Campoli vs Norton/Rome hit and Ryan Malone along with the entire Lightning staff were well on their way to plan the first 10 games without Malone. The hit was such a blatant charge, a straight line to a player who didn’t have the puck, head down. Yes look at it again, Campoli didn’t have the puck on his stick and Malone’s straight line charge to Campoli’s head crowned a night full of belligerent play from Malone.

The NHL head of player safety decided, instead, to blame Campoli for having his head down. Of course there’s no way the Habs defenceman could’ve had his head up given the fact his head was looking for the puck Teddy Purcell had just loosened up due to a stick check.

I spoke to a member of the Penguins coverage on the decision and his answer on the reasoning behind it stank of you know what. Politics.

”Make no mistake about it, if the Clarke MacArthur hit had never happened, Malone would have been suspended. Shanahan felt the heat on the MacArthur hit (it should have never been a suspension) and what he felt were players complaining about too many grey zones. This is a direct message to the players saying ‘I get it’, but unfortunately it was the wrong call and it ended up with players realizing they’d have to deal with disciplinary politics again.”

And that’s the wrong call.

Pierre Gauthier

From the HabsHq.com Archive

The man the Ottawa media used to call ”The Ghost” or ”Monsieur Monsieur” will not be publicly commenting on the Canadiens losing streak today.

Did you see it coming?

Actually, as we’ve come to expect, Pierre Gauthier conferences are as common as Vietnamese Javan Rhinos (and those have recently gone extinct). But then again do you expect Pierre Gauthier to really give you the 411 on what he’s doing and how he’ll do it?

”In this league you keep your cards close to your chest”, Gauthier said to the Canadian Press last week

The problem Gauthier is facing of course, could be summarized when the end result of the Canadiens encounter with the cantankerous Bruins, who’ve started the season in what the media has called ”A belligerent streak” and will arrive in to town this week to face a team who has to add Max Pacioretty to the long and winding list of infirmary occupants.

Win, and all is forgiven. Lose and this could be the official beginning of the end. Mr. Molson’s faith and patience could be seriously tried and the fans short fuse could take an explosive turn.

But don’t underestimate Gauthier.

My first encounter with Pierre McGuire’s man crush (a man he says he profoundly hates), the man Canadiens fans have surnamed ”The Goat” was in  the spring of 2010. Pierre Gauthier was a newly minted GM and you could not spend 5 minutes with this man without the overwhelming feeling you are speaking to one of the NHL’s most intriguing intellect. Gauthier is one of the rare general managers to actively monitor every single aspect of a team’s functioning; from personnel appointments, scouting all the way to the ice surface. He’s hands on, smart, well spoken and respected among other GMs.

The main critic of all his tenures though, is that he is often slow to react when his teams need help. A critic he’s dismissed as Gauthier firmly believes that a healthy team’s farm system should have all the answers, and per what we’ve seen so far with the call-ups of Blunden, Palushaj and Co, Gauthier is true to his doctrine.

Could Gauthier lose his job if his team fails to show up this week? I’ll say this about Pierre Gauthier, when he moves, he moves fast per a quote he gave in 1995.

”I’m one of these guys who thinks a lot, but it doesn’t mean a thing until it’s in my heart.”

”All of a sudden it clicks, and I make a decision”

24 hours.

Going back to a cold January day in 1995, 24 hours was all Gauthier needed.

He wiped out his coaching staff in Ottawa, traded 5 players, fired Dave Allison (along with assistant Pierre Mcguire) two months after he had replaced Rick Bowness. The Sens were firmly entrenched in last place in the east and at that moment, Gauthier dialled up the Colorado Avalanche to ask for the availability of assistant Jacques Martin.

Martin’s first quote would be ”It’s a team that needs leadership and direction, I was hired to provide that.”

It’ll take that and more for the Canadiens to survive the week ahead.

The day the Habs could've had Gretzky

In hockey history, you could argue that the Trinity is divided into three unequivocal things. First is Foster Hewitt’s call on the goal that ended the ’72 Summit Series, second is the Stanley Cup of course, and the third is the Great One, blessed be his holy name.

The man we’re talking about has touched two of these things, one he still has to this day, the other he let go to save the finances of a folding hockey team in Indianapolis.

The first time I came across Pat Stapleton, the man who owns what could arguably be part one of Canada’s Holy Grail, he was getting grilled on his decision to keep the Paul Henderson puck ‘til the Summit Series anniversary in 2012. “I was thinking my grandkids could shoot it into a snow-bank,” Stapleton said half-seriously to Joe Warmington,

Stapleton was on that Summit Series team, and has said he was the last person to touch the winning puck on Moscow ice, scooping it up before Team Canada left the ice.

“I was about to shoot it down the ice, but something came over me,” he said.

In modern NHL history, his career numbers and size would have reminded some of Brian Rafalski or Dan Boyle. Stapleton wasn’t a big defenseman at 5’8 but like both players, he made up for it with leadership extraordinaire, so much so, that he became the ‘player/coach’ combination on the Indianapolis Racers

“And… GM of sorts,” says Stapleton.

On November 3, 1973, the day Good Morning America premiered on ABC, the financially challenged Racers put Stapleton in charge of liquidating the team’s most valuable on-ice asset. The player was a young Canadian by the name of Wayne Gretzky that owner Nelson Skalbania had signed for $850,000 a year. ‘The Great One’, as he would later on be named.

Stephen Brunt would write in his book (Gretzky‘s Tears) that Stapleton had a vivid animosity towards Gretzky and disliked him almost instantly on arrival. The Racers asked for $1.7 million to buy Gretzky, the highest price ever for a player at that time. When the Winnipeg Jets got cold feet, Oilers owner Peter Pocklington would move in with a cash-in-hand deal that was irresistible for the Racers.

Edmonton signed Gretzky to a 21-year agreement that was rumored to pay Gretzky between $4 and $5 million for his entire career.

Stapleton didn’t get paid for his last year in Indianapolis and threatened to sue.

The Canadiens wouldn’t approach Stapleton at the time per UPI’s Mike Shalin.

“Sam Pollock had surprised everybody by retiring just before the start of the season, literally a week before the Gretzky deal fell into Pock’s lap,” he said. “The Canadiens had enough talent to fill two teams and didn’t flinch.”

Digging further into the subject it became clear that the newly minted Irving Grundman was slow to understand the shifting dynamics of the NHL and would lose Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman as well as a few players despite winning another Stanley Cup in 1979. A member of the ’79 Canadiens staff said the following:

“Irving had enough trouble finding toughness around Lafleur and the team was littered with salary disputes. Gretzky had done well with the Racers in the pre-season but his lack of size and the price tag were too much of a risk in his book to add to what he already had to contend with. Who could have guessed that 1978 Gretzky would turn into 1982 Gretzky at that time.”

Stapleton would say:

“A lot of teams refused to take the risk on Gretzky and the Habs were not alone.”

Predictably enough, the closest Gretzky would ever come to the North East division was in ’97, if you’re to believe Al Strachan’s book ‘Why the Leafs suck, and how they can be fixed’. Strachan revealed how in ’97, Cliff Fletcher offered Gretzky a contract that was turned down by then owner Steve Stavro.

The only taste the Canadiens would get of seeing what could have been of a Gretzky-Lafleur combination was in the 1981 Canada Cup. Gretzky set up Lafleur for a goal against Sweden from behind the net to a streaking Demon Blond, beating team Sweden phenom goalie Pelle Lindbergh.

Rumors swirled for years of a car accident involving both players during the tournament.

Lafleur’s career slowed down after ’81 while Gretzky’s soared.

Dream on of what could have been, Habs fans.

Palchak

From my HabsHQ.com Archive

Another piece of Habs mystique passed away last week in Eddie Palchak. Ed always had a story to tell and I had the privilege to meet him during the Montreal All-Star game a few years back and the stories were aplenty especially when it came to those Habs dynasties. I thought I’d share one with you guys today.

Claude Provost shares more than a few things with the man now wearing his old number 14, Tomas Plekanec. Palchak once told me he wouldn’t be amazed if both players finished their careers with similar numbers playing their entire careers in Montreal.

“Plekanec’s got more talent, but Provost played on better teams,” laughed Palchak.

“He was ahead of his time.”

Besides his and Plekanec’s brilliant two-way play, Provost is one of those forgotten Canadiens who always managed to find a way to shine on loaded teams. He retired in true modern NHLer fashion in 1970 after a 14-year career spent in a Canadiens jersey and 8 Stanley cups.

“No one could figure it out,” complained then-North Stars GM Bud Poile. “Every year he claims to be retiring but he’s back in camp in September, and I’m getting tired of this.”

Very few fans remember the man NHL historians had called the prototypical Selke-winning forward. Provost died young, at the age of 51 in Florida where he spent winters when not on the ice of Paul Sauvé arena training youth and old alike.

Despite his Plekanec-like size on the ice, Provost was serious when it came to conditioning and strength and arguably started the trend that shifted the norm from of beer-bellied NHLers to their now pro-athlete form.

“He had devoted his entire life to training, it was the most important thing of all to him,” said Jacques Lemaire.

Henri Richard has great memories of Provost as well: “He wasn’t really skilled but worked incredibly hard, he used to park himself in front of the net and eventually became a pretty good scorer,” the Pocket Rocket said. “We used to kid him that more goals went off his ass than his stick.”

A lot of people don’t know how Provost got the name ‘Cowboy Joe’ but that came courtesy of equipment manger Eddie Palchak.

“People talk about how bad the bow is in a guy like Datsyuk, but the bow in Provost’s legs used to dig into the ice surface so hard that I had to sharpen his skates after every period,” Palchak remembered.

“That’s why we started calling him Cowboy Joe.”

Marbles

In Montreal, the sporting business is big business, whether you’re filling up the stands at Percival Molson, the Bell Centre, Olympic Stadium or Stade Saputo. Montrealers have a love affair with sports that seems endless and amazing in its ability to polarize the population. 

  

“The trick is not to be a basketball team,” said a man Hamiltonians call ‘Mr. Hamilton’, which is curious, when you consider the fact a McGill phys-ed teacher, James Naismith, invented the sport. 

  

In Montreal, the Montreal Dragons of the ill-fated NBL are a team very few remember, or care to remember. The reasons are obvious; in the Stanley Cup winning year of 1993, nobody cared about an obscure basketball team playing at Verdun Arena or anywhere else. 

  

“Hamilton got NCAA Florida Gators star Cliff Lett who had played a bit in the NBA, there was hope the buzz would translate into more seats sold at Copps Colliseum but people didn’t care,” said a member of the Hamilton media at the time. 

  

“Looking back on it, Sam Katz’s money managed to get Sean Gay and Jared Miller who played for the Mavericks in that league so the level wasn’t that bad, but when ex-Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien decided to bolt, it was clear the game was up.” 

  

“Even local business man (first and last Canadian to ref in the NCAA & owner of Fox40 Whistles) Ron Foxcroft didn’t want anything to do with the Hamilton team.” 

  

I got a hold of Foxcroft and he had this to say. 

  

“We knew we could make money in Hamilton with basketball, but we had an incredibly good deal back in the days with Canwest, these games were broadcasted and we sold tickets, when Sam Katz approached me in ’93 to invest in the NBL. I knew Sam’s business acumen but I felt more comfortable investing in his Winnipeg team than the Hamilton team in it’s current state.” 

  

The Montreal team folded halfway through the season, starting a long tradition of failed ventures that included the Montreal Royal, Matrix and of course my favorite, the idiotically named Montreal Sasquatch which had as much in common with Quebecois mystique as a game of squash. 

  

For a brief moment though, the Dragons held a tad of relevance when Atlanta Hawks first round draft pick and Iowa legend, Roy Marble decided to grace NBL grounds. Marble had been controversially suspended his rookie year by league counsel and now NHL commissioner Gary Bettman when he failed a league-imposed random substance test. 

  

Some say that the suspension infuriated Hawks owner and media mogul Ted Turner so bad that Gary Bettman’s once promising future in the NBA was now compromised. But in typical Ted Turner fashion, that didn’t seem to stop him from paying Bettman millions to bring the Atlanta Thrashers in town once the opportunity arose. 

  

To understand Ted Turner’s personality when it comes to investmenst, the Family Guy episode (Screwed the Pooch) where Ted Turner turns to Peter Griffin after losing a hand of poker and says: 

  

- You sold me out, I could use a man like you, how does a million a year sound? You disgust me. Get out of my face. 

  

It isn’t that far from the truth. 

  

Marble’s Wikipedia page and NBL stats give him rookie of the year credit with the Montreal Dragons, but seldom could I find a single reference to him ever playing a game in Montreal; not even ex-Dragon Dwight Walton seemed to have a clue. 

  

“Wow! Now that’s a name from the past. I don’t think he played in Montreal. At least not when I played for them.” 

  

Marble won the ’93 Rookie of the year award in the NBL in 1993, right before the league folded due to poor finances and an inability to gather any interest. 

  

When I got a hold of Marble, he mentioned the Saskatoon Slam and couldn’t for the life of him remember ever even being in Montreal but seemed to vaguely recollect the NBL in general. 

  

Ted Turner couldn’t be reached to comment (which I thought was a tad unrealistic to begin with) as I wanted some feedback on his decision to get an NHL franchise in Atlanta and the Roy Marble story, but Foxcroft, who currently works for the NBA, gave me incredible insight on the ’93 NBL and the more I spoke to him, the more I started realizing, had Bettman stayed in the NBA, I doubt the NHL would have ever expanded to Atlanta, but Turner hadn’t forgotten that Bettman stood up to him when it came time to suspend the highly touted Marble. 

  

“Don’t forget how big a TV market Atlanta was in the NBA, those late 80s teams were among the best ever,” said Foxcroft. 

  

A year and a half later, NBA commissioner David Stern granted two expansion franchises to the NBA in Canada, one in Toronto and the other in Vancouver. 

  

“Tit for tat,” ESPN said at the time, but it got me thinking, if it wasn’t for the Roy Marble suspension would there ever have been hockey in Atlanta or basketball in Toronto? Think about it. 

  

Like a Winnipeg journalist put it when I ran the article past him: “If I’m reading this correctly, had Roy Marble not done coke in the late ‘80s, we wouldn’t have had a team to move to Winnipeg, we wouldn’t have hockey in Winnipeg?” 

  

To put a long story short, pretty much. 

 

Naming Winnipeg

In 1992, The San Jose Sharks were a team fresh off the expansion line the NHL had decided to draw through the Sunnier side of America and ... well Ottawa.

One of the first challenges the teams had were marketing new names, new brands and of course, a sense of cachet that only successful market penetration can bring

The San Jose Sharks were a success

Marketing head Matt Levine 

"They were selling in the non-hockey markets, the Topekas, Austins and Bakersfields of the world, as well as the major markets,"

‘’ In a single year we had over 100 million in revenue from merchandising alone, Teams were contacting us to copy the Youth Street Hockey Program, the format of our season tickets too, the only team that had been more succesful that year was the Chicago Bulls ‘’

‘’ And we didn’t have a Michael Jordan ‘’

So what makes a succesful franchise launch ? Is it anticipation, is it the amount of coolness your branding emanates, the way it reaches across generations of hockey fans who either root for another team or can’t wait to root for yours ?

Part of the answer is also looking at branding flops, teams like the Ottawa Senators had to abandon their original ‘’ Peace Tower ‘’ Logo plan due to mitigated fan response. 

‘’ Hideous, Ugly, Juvenile ‘’ were headlines when the Ottawa Sun revealed the logo.

The Centurion logo was quickly introduced but thousands of fans found themselves with the ‘’ rejected ‘’ logo and reacted angrily at the teams marketing direction.

Within a few years of their debut, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Ottawa Senators were already in dire financial straits, Merchandise sales were lagging and the early 90’s recession had made the teams unable to gear up for serious on-ice results.

Worst than that, both teams were lagging in expansion fee payments to the NHL

It took Tampa Bay almost twenty years to right the ship thanks to a Stanley Cup win, an influx of franchise talent and Strong ownership while the Senators developed great teams over the last decade thanks to billionaire Eugene Melnyk’s involvement with the team.

‘’ We learned as a team, you sometimes make mistakes off the mark, but eventually with the on-ice results fans take pride in what Jersey they wear out on the street or in the arena ‘’ said an ex-Sens player.

‘’ They take pride in the Team’s name ‘’

Getting back to modern days and Winnipeg in particular, the fact half the city is already geared up in Jets merchandise could mean marketing revenue might be slow due to existing propagation 

One thing’s for sure, no matter what Winnipeg’s team ends up being named, the fact the NHL is back in the Peg is what matters most.

But millions could be made or lost on getting the ‘’ it ‘’ factor right.