Pacioretty has moved on from last season

Habs’ skipper ready for camp

Max Pacioretty sold his family home on the South Shore this summer and has moved into a new place downtown with his wife and three young sons.

That means the Canadiens captain will be facing a new challenge this season: traffic on the Champlain Bridge getting to and from the team’s Brossard practice rink.

“I haven’t been on it too much lately, so I can only comment as to how the traffic was I think last Thursday and it wasn’t too bad,” Pacioretty said. “So I’ll knock on wood and hope for the best.”

The last time we saw Pacioretty in a Canadiens jersey was in the locker-room at Madison Square Garden after the Canadiens had been eliminated in Game 6 of the first round of the playoffs by the New York Rangers. Pacioretty failed to score a goal in the series and was on the verge of tears, appearing to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.

When asked how long it took to get over the defeat, Pacioretty said: “I don’t know. You just live your life and I had a great summer. I got to spend a lot of time in Montreal, pretty much the whole summer. … I worked hard, had a lot of fun and now it’s time to get ready for camp.”

The Canadiens open training camp Thursday in Brossard when players report for their physicals. You might see Pacioretty on the Champlain Bridge.

The captain led the Canadiens with 35 goals last season, but couldn’t find the back of the net against the Rangers during the playoffs and didn’t get much help as the Canadiens scored only 11 goals in the six games.

“Max is a really important player on our team,” team owner Geoff Molson said Friday. “He’s the captain, he’s the leader. And to see him that disappointed after losing in the first round is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. It means he cares a lot and I know he does. He’ll come back stronger and better prepared this year.”

The 6-foot-2 Pacioretty looked super-fit and a few pounds lighter Friday after training all summer in Montreal. The weight of the world seems to have left his shoulders.

Pacioretty said he met and talked with more fans downtown this summer than he used to during his more sheltered life on the South Shore.

“I lived a little bit further away from the action before and sometimes you don’t get out of your house as much and you don’t get that interaction,” he said.

“People always ask me: ‘How do you play up there, deal with the pressure?’ But that pressure’s a privilege. To know that every single time I leave my house that someone’s going to come up to me and say something positive and people are going to approach me and support me. It’s not that I see it differently, it’s that it’s more magnified now and I see how much the fans love me and I can honestly say it’s a two-way road and I have a great relationship with the fans.”

We’ll see how his relationship goes with the bridge.