EMOTIONAL RETURN FOR SUBBAN
Tears flow as the Bell Centre crowd greets Predators’ star with a standing ovation
After Thursday’s morning skate at the Bell Centre, Jason Aldean’s country music hit Tattoos on This Town was playing in the Nashville Predators locker-room. It was the perfect song for P.K. Subban’s return to Montreal.
Part of the lyrics go like this: “It sure left its mark on us, we sure left our mark on it/ We let the world know we were here with everything we did/ We laid a lot of memories down, like tattoos on this town.”
It has been eight months since Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin traded Subban to Nashville in exchange for Shea Weber, but the Montreal love affair with P.K. lives on.
It will probably never die: Just ask the kids, staff and parents at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, for which Subban remains committed to his $10-million pledge even though he no longer lives in the city.
The first “P.K.! P.K.!” chants started when Subban came out for the pre-game warm-up. Then, just before the national anthems, the Canadiens showed a lot of class with a video tribute to Subban that lasted almost two minutes and ended with the words: “Bon retour, P.K. — Welcome back, P.K.”
The roaring “P.K.! P.K.!” chants that followed lasted more than double the video time as tears streamed down Subban’s cheeks. It was the most emotional welcome-back moment at the Bell Centre since captain Saku Koivu’s return from cancer on April 9, 2002.
Elise Beliveau — the wife of late Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau — blew kisses to the teary-eyed Subban and just before the puck dropped Subban blew a kiss back at her.
There were certainly no tears shed in the Canadiens’ management suite and some Habs fans might have been booing, although they couldn’t be heard over the “P.K.! P.K.!” chants. Subban has always been a lightning rod on and off the ice with his larger-than-life personality, which is part of what drove him out of Montreal.
But whether you love P.K. or not, no player ever loved being a Montreal Canadien more than him or enjoyed the spotlight as much. He relished in it and showed up to play not only every game, but every shift. The bigger the game, the better he played, and his mistakes weren’t from lack of effort.
Subban was asked after the morning skate if he had butterflies.
“No, I don’t get butterflies,” he said.
It was classic P.K. — confident and a little cocky, and there’s nothing wrong with that when you can back it up. Subban, like most great athletes, almost always does.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before, so you just go into it with an open mind,” Subban said after the morning skate. “My focus is on just playing the game and trying to help the team win and, obviously, it’s going to be an emotional night for a lot of people. But that being said, I want to win, so that’s it.”
As for his Nashville teammates, Subban said: “They’ve been great. It’s got to be tough when you’re just coming in doing your job and there’s a lot of extra stuff going on. They’ve been fantastic … guys have taken it in stride. I had a couple of my teammates even come to the hospital with me … I’ve never had that happen. It’s pretty special to have Fish (Nashville captain Mike Fisher) and (Roman) Josi there yesterday with me. But they’ve been completely supportive and the whole organization has been. It’s been very easy for me.”
Subban also has a big supporter in Predators head coach Peter Laviolette.
“I think you always learn a little bit more about players once you coach them,” Laviolette said. “To me, I think he’s very coachable and very approachable with suggestions on how we want to do things and playing a style, or as we do with all players making suggestions in their game or corrections in their game. He’s a real coachable person. He’s got a smile on his face every day.
“Certainly he’s, for me, a guy that’s easy to deal with on a daily basis.”
The relationship Subban has with Elise Beliveau started when her husband was still alive and they used to sit together three rows behind the Canadiens bench at the Bell Centre.
“He really loved him,” Elise said in an interview last March. “I remember the first time when P.K. played here and I was looking at him and I said to Jean: ‘My God, look at that kid the way he’s playing hockey.’ He said: ‘You watch this boy. You’ll see. He’s going to be a very good hockey player.’ ”
Subban, unlike so many pro athletes today, doesn’t have any tattoos on his body, but he certainly left his tattoo on this town.
I was looking at him and I said to Jean: ‘My God, look at that kid the way he’s playing hockey.’ He said: ‘You watch this boy. You’ll see.’