Desharnais beat some big odds with Canadiens

David Desharnais has played his final game with the Canadiens.

During the first intermission of Tuesday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Canadiens announced Desharnais had been traded to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for defenceman Brandon Davidson.

Desharnais had been made a healthy scratch for the game.

The departure of Desharnais will have some Canadiens fans cheering, but the 5-foot-7, 171-pounder deserves a round of applause for the career he put together in Montreal after never being selected at the NHL Draft. In 435 regular-season games, Desharnais posted 250 points, including 79 goals.

The Canadiens invited Desharnais to their rookie camp in 2007 basically as a favour to Guy Carbonneau, who was head coach at the time and had been part of the Chicoutimi Saguenéens ownership group when Desharnais played with the junior team.

“He had a really, really good career — a great career, actually — in junior,” Carbonneau said during an interview in March 2013 after the Canadiens signed Desharnais to a four-year, US$14-million contract extension that ends this season. “I’m not going to go so far as to say that he had a chance to make the NHL, but we thought that he could be a good player in the American league, so I asked the organization just to bring him to our training camp or at least the rookie camp. They obliged and the rest is all David ... it’s all him.”

Desharnais ended up in Cincinnati for the 2007-08 season, posting 29-77-106 totals to lead the league in scoring as the Cyclones won the ECHL championship. Two seasons later, he made his Canadiens debut.

Former coach Michel Therrien always had a soft spot for Desharnais — a relationship that seemed at times to be like father-andson in minor hockey where the kid can do no wrong and always gets power-play time. But it had become obvious Desharnais’s ability to produce in a much faster NHL at age 30 was dwindling and Claude Julien replaced Therrien on Valentine’s Day. Desharnais had 4-6-10 totals in 31 games this season with only two points on the power play (both assists) while averaging 1:23 of ice time per game with the man advantage.

In Davidson, the Canadiens get a 25-year-old who has only played 91 career NHL games with 5-8-13 totals. ESPN’s Pierre LeBrun reported the Canadiens will retain 20 per cent of Desharnais’s salary-cap hit.