Canadien Moen and family are sticking around town, and staying with Carey Price.
SPOTLIGHT STORY: Travis Moen decided that even though hockey’s out for a while, his family should establish roots in Montreal
The last we spoke with Canadiens forward Travis Moen nearly three months ago, he was driving to his father-in-law’s home in Swift Current, Sask., to pick up his nine-page, fouryear, $7.4-million contract.
It seems that Moen’s homeoffice fax machine was on the fritz and he needed the contract sent elsewhere.
(Even in this age of email attachments, a hard copy still was coming to him by fax, for his signature.)
“It’s still not fixed,” the 30-year-old joked Thursday of the machine, chatting in a deserted media gallery overlooking the Habs’ equally empty Brossard training facility rink. “Maybe I have to buy a new one?”
Moen, an industrialstrength, meat-and-potatoes winger, quickly admits that the nuances of technology tend to escape him.
So then, what about the moody photo he messaged to a reporter this week, an artfully angled, softly lit image of himself sitting at goalie Carey Price’s dining-room table?
“That was my little guy playing with my phone,” Moen said with a sheepish grin of his son, Carter, who’s not yet 4.
Like many of his teammates, Moen is in town training as the NHL lockout lumbers through its first week. He arrived from his summer home of Swift Current — Swifty, he calls it — on Sept. 8, flying in with his wife, Amy, son Carter and daughter Blayke, 7 months.
Through three previous seasons in Montreal, Moen rented a home. Now, with a four-year contract reasonably fresh out of his father-in-law’s fax, the first four-year pact of his professional career, the family is looking to buy. And as they house-hunt, inching toward a purchase, the roof temporarily over their heads is that of netminder Price and his fiancée, Angela.
“Carey’s pretty laid back and my wife’s a pretty good cook, so it seems to be working out,” Moen said, laughing again. “He’s a great guy for allowing us to bunk in with him for a bit and he’s got two dogs that my little guy loves. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Like every NHL player cooling his heels, Moen is feeling out of sorts, his club’s training camp originally scheduled to open Friday with team medicals followed by the first on-ice session on Saturday. Of course, that’s not happening. Camps are suspended, every pre-season game through Sept. 30 cancelled.
Moen could have stayed home, this lockout clearly in the cards, but he saw greater value in joining his teammates to continue training and in getting his family installed in a new home.
“For me to be in Swifty, there aren’t too many people to skate with at the end of the summer,” he said, mentioning his annual ritual of heading to Kelowna, B.C., at summer’s end to skate for a couple weeks and visit Amy’s family.
“We just wanted to get settled” in Montreal, Moen said. “Moving around all the time is hard on the kids. It’s better to get them in a routine.”
Moen hasn’t played a game since Feb. 7, a concussion complicated by sinusitis sidelining him for 32 of the Canadiens’ final 34 games. Had he been healthy at the trade deadline, it’s possible, even likely, that he’d have been dealt to become an unrestricted free agent on someone else’s watch come July 1.
Instead, he was offered and signed his deal two days before he was eligible to test UFA waters.
“I love Montreal, I love playing here,” Moen said. “It’s a great market, the fans are great. I wouldn’t have signed if I didn’t think there was a chance to win here. I like the group here, that’s the big thing. That potential is the main reason we came back.”
The summer roster addition of frayed-edge forward Brandon Prust is most welcome, he noted, saying that Prust’s arrival and that of fire plug defenceman Francis Bouillon “definitely takes the pressure off just me and Whitey (Ryan White)” to defend the team’s smaller skill players.
Moen spoke upon arrival back in Montreal with new head coach Michel Therrien, “who likes physical guys and guys who battle hard,” he said. “I’m excited to play for him.”
This is the second lockout through which Moen has lived, emerging from his rookie NHL season as a Chicago Blackhawk into the doomed 2004-05 season.
It wasn’t a total loss; he gained valuable experience during a full season with Chicago’s American Hockey League affiliate in Norfolk, then was traded in July 2005 to Anaheim, with whom he went to the Western Confer- ence final in 2005-06, then won the Stanley Cup a year later.
“I was pretty young (22 in the lockout year) and I didn’t really understand everything that was going on,” Moen admitted. “But playing in minors was great for me, to keep getting better, even if it was disappointing not being in the NHL.”
Clearly, things are a lot different today. Moen keeps abreast of the labour situation, now stalled, through email and conference calls, and was in New York a week ago for NHLPA meetings on the eve of the lockout.
“All 700 players are in this together and we’re ready to try to get a fair deal done,” he said.
For now, Moen and his teammates in Montreal and elsewhere are working to maintain the good shape they honed for a training camp that has failed to arrive.
“It’s pretty tough — you train all summer to try to build yourself up to hit peak conditioning for camp and now we’re not sure when we’ll be back,” he said.
“We still train hard but you can’t burn yourself out, either. You take the odd day off to recuperate, trying to stay in good skating shape, and try to lose not too much muscle.”
And as that process continues, Moen sends a message to Canadiens fans, who are equally unhappy with the grim skies that hang over their beloved game.
“We appreciate their support and their being behind us,” he said. “Obviously, this is frustrating for everybody, but hopefully (fans) have patience with us. We hope we can get a deal done and get back playing and, hopefully, see you soon.”