HABS AT CORE OF MOLSON’S HIGH HOPES
Hot start has fans excited and fuels confidence in team’s ownership
It’s been nearly six years since Geoff Molson and his ownership group took the reins of the Canadiens from American businessman George Gillett Jr.
Molson has had his good moments and bad; he’s had soaring hopes and dashed dreams.
But now, as the Canadiens bring a 4-0 record to their 2015-16 home opener Thursday against the New York Rangers, Molson sits in his seventh-floor Bell Centre office and considers his team’s figurative knock on the championship door, the loudest he’s heard as boss.
“And it gets amplified in the dressing room, I’m sure,” Molson said. “They’re driven athletes and the majority of them have been together a long time now. Let’s hope for the best. If we stay healthy, and if we make the playoffs, anything can happen.”
It was a very large corner turned on May 2, 2012, when Molson introduced Marc Bergevin as the Canadiens’ 17th general manager, the latter then bringing Michel Therrien in as his head coach a month later.
Riddled by injuries, the Habs bowed out of the playoffs the following spring in a five-game first round against Ottawa. They came within two wins the next season of going to the Stanley Cup final, then were two wins shy of the Eastern Conference final last season.
“Since the new regime has been in place, since I went out and hired Marc and he rebuilt the team from top to bottom, really, I’ve felt things have got progressively better,” Molson said. “You could argue that I feel better this year than I did last year.”
The variables are plentiful and the challenges enormous in the NHL. Each September, every club speaks of just getting to the playoffs.
“Anything can happen, that’s how much parity there is in the league,” Molson said. “Sometimes, it can be a couple lucky bounces that make the difference. Sometimes, you have an extremely skilled and healthy team. All these things come into play when you make the playoffs. If you go in healthy and on the rise a little bit, that’s the best you can hope for.”
A month ago, Molson stood at his team’s annual charity golf tournament and said a championship depended on a good start and a visit to the postseason.
The first half of the equation has been solved; only three times in their history have the Canadiens begun a season 4-0, and never have they opened at 5-0, the chance to do that Thursday night with a wild crowd in their corner against the Rangers.
“It’s what you want,” Molson said of the impressive start. “The fans get re-engaged. If we were 0-4, it would be a different story. It’s still early, we’ve had four good games and we keep learning. But the thing I like most about it for the most part is that it’s the same host of characters that are on the ice and they seem to be working together really well as a group.
“They respect each other, all four lines are rolling and the defence seems to be solid. The whole team seems to be working well, which is good.”
Molson has a multitude of balls in the air, also juggling the operation of the concert- and festival-promotion businesses of Evenko and Spectra.
And since June, he’s been board chairman of Molson Coors Brewing Company — a pulse-quickening responsibility during this time of global, multi-billion-dollar brewery mergers.
But Molson stresses that the Canadiens are his core business that will not be compromised in any way while he spreads himself through his corporate duties and charitable foundation work.
“Sometimes, timing is everything and I am extremely excited to be the chairman of the (Molson Coors) board in this exciting time,” he said. “It’s going to be a big challenge. It’s a little more work, but it’s not going to distract me from my regular job, which is to run this (Canadiens) organization. …
“This is a wonderful brand that’s respected all over the world, in Quebec especially,” he added of the hockey club. “It’s in the hearts of Quebecers and always will be. It always has to be the core.
“You can’t get distracted. All the fun stuff we’re having around it, marketing-wise and with Evenko and Spectra, is great and good for the community and for business. But at the end of the day you can never lose sight of the priority, which is the team and (producing) a winning organization.”
Molson takes special pride in the growth of his club, not just as players, but as young men who have matured and bonded as a group. And he admits that he hasn’t any sense of what a Stanley Cup, a 25th for this storied franchise, would mean in the grand scheme.
“If it happens, it will be one heck of a celebration,” Molson said. “From 1970, when I was born, to 1993, the team won eight Stanley Cups. The celebrations were great, we were all very proud, but it sort of happened on a relatively regular basis. Now here we are, not having seen one going on 23 years later.
“I would think,” he said, a smile spreading, “that a lot of people would come out of the woodwork to celebrate one now.”