WELCOME BACK
Dave Stubbs on another Saku Koivu homecoming.
“I want to keep this as lowprofile as possible.” Saku Koivu is many things, and a dreamer is one of them.
The enormously popular former Canadiens captain touched down in Montreal on the Anaheim Ducks’ charter Wednesday afternoon, planning to spend a quiet evening over an early dinner with friends.
On Thursday morning, Koivu will be swallowed whole by a media monster at the Ducks’ Bell Centre game-day skate, and then he’ll be embraced come evening by a full house at the arena when he faces the Canadiens.
It might, Koivu said, be the final time that he’ll play an NHL game in Montreal. Or, maybe not. It will be only the second time that Koivu, for a decade the inspirational leader of the Canadiens before he was cut adrift to sign with Anaheim in July 2009, has played here as an opponent.
It’s been nearly three years since he last played in Montreal, his homecoming an evening that gave you goosebumps from before its start to well past its finish.
“In a way, it’s a little easier to come back the second time,” the 38-year-old said, having just checked into the Ducks’ downtown hotel.
“It’s a little less hectic this time than the time before and that’s kind of the way I want to do it.
“There’s not as much hassle — well, not hassle, but the press conference and all the media attention the first time. I’m hoping I can kind of relax and enjoy the day a bit more than the last time, when I felt the butterflies even a few days before.”
Any fan of the Canadiens between 1995, when Koivu broke into the NHL with the Canadiens at age 21, through 2009, when the team’s crashing waves of free agency sucked him to California in their undertow, grew to admire if not love this feisty Finn.
It was in Montreal, as the face of good and poor Canadiens teams, that Koivu became a husband and a father.
It was here that for nine seasons (10, including the 2004-05 lockout), from Sept. 30, 1999, to his departure on July 1, 2009, that he captained the team for 563 games, the 27th captain in franchise history.
Drafted by the Canadiens at age 18, Koivu would play 792 regular-season games for the Habs, 846 including playoffs.
It was in Montreal over 16 years that Koivu healed his broken bones and torn joints and very publicly battled cancer and dealt with near blindness — his own, caused by an opponent’s high stick, and that of others, who were short-sighted with bigotry and ignorance.
And it was here that Koivu would put his victory over cancer to generous use, the foundation he created raising millions for the purchase of a PET/CT scan unit for the Montreal General Hospital to help cancer patients he will never know.
Montreal will forever hold a large part of Koivu’s heart. He married Hanna while he was a Canadien; daughter Ilona, nearly 9, and son Aatos, 7, were born during the couple’s time here.
It was with eagerness, damp palms and a quickened pulse that Koivu returned with Anaheim for a game on Jan. 22, 2011. He was quickly overwhelmed by a huge news conference that nearly brought him to tears, then consumed by a tumultuous welcome at the Bell Centre, including a ground-shaking ovation during the national anthems when his image filled the scoreboard.
“I expected the reaction would be good, but you still never know,” Koivu recalled. “I remember the press conference, how nervous and emotional I was. It really hit me that I was back in Montreal.
“The warm-up and the game — there were a few familiar faces in the stands, then the reaction I got from the fans, which really felt good and brought back a lot of good memories over the years that I experienced in Montreal.
“It was kind of nerve-racking in a positive way. I had a lot of butterflies, not knowing what to expect and how things were going to go.”
He recalls the opening faceoff, taking the draw against Canadiens centre Scott Gomez.
“(Gomez) said, ‘ You can have this, I’m going to let you win this one,’ ” Koivu said, laughing.
“I didn’t hear what he said. It was just as the referee was dropping the puck when I lifted my head to say, ‘What?’ And then Scott won the faceoff. It was a funny little incident.”
It wouldn’t be Koivu’s best game. He took three penalties, was in the box for two goals by Max Pacioretty, but earned an assist and was pleased with the Ducks’ 4-3 shootout win.
Koivu expressed mostly relief when it was over, the emotion of the experience almost suffocating.
“I’m hoping it won’t be as emotional this time so I can enjoy it and focus on hockey a bit more,” he said, perhaps even believing it. “But that was such a special night, the first one, and that we ended up winning made it a bit better and sweeter for me.”
Of course, every stop the Ducks make this season is an event, the brilliant Teemu Selanne playing his final season. It’s a farewell tour of the grandest kind, and Koivu is happy to slip even a little into his countryman’s long shadow.
On Thursday, Koivu will play his 1,069th regular-season game, a remarkable feat given the injuries and cancer crisis he’s endured and that he’s not exactly a robust forward, just 180 pounds on his 5-foot-10 frame.
“Close to 1,100 games, turning 39 in a month and still feeling fairly good,” he said, taking a personal inventory. “I’ve seen a lot of friends leave the game, all of the guys I started with pretty much retired.”
Koivu takes his career a year at a time now, no interest in signing anything beyond one season. He says his first consideration come summer is feeling well physically, “not having any pains every morning or tough injuries.”
He has a close circle of friends and advisers to whom he listens, “needing their honesty to tell me whether I’m still a factor in a game, that I can still produce for my team.”
He believed he met those criteria last summer, so in
“Close to 1,100 games, turning 39 and still feeling fairly good.” SAKU KOIVU
consultation with his wife, Koivu agreed to a one-year, $2.5-million Ducks contract with another $1 million in possible bonuses.
“I’ll play this year out, we’re still very early in the season, and then we’ll see how I am and where we go from there,” he said. “It’s very possible this is my last trip to Canada to play, but it’s very possible I’ll be back next year. I really, honestly don’t know.
“It won’t be training during the summer that will tell me. It will be more doing the hard 82-game season and playing at the level where you want to play, pushing yourself every night to do it.
“That will decide for me, when I don’t think I have that fire, or that I can compete at a certain level. “That will be my end.” Whenever that comes, Koivu doesn’t view his retirement unfolding in a Selannestyle farewell tour.
“With Teemu’s career, look at his numbers and the history of the game and you’ll see there’s not too many players who have done the things he’s done,” Koivu said. “So that’s obviously different. For me it would be more of a private, low-key thing.
“Maybe I wouldn’t even announce that it’s my last year. Maybe if I know it, and people close to me know, that’s the way I’m going to do it.
“The ideal situation for a professional athlete is to go out completely on your own terms. The ultimate is that you play until you want and then you walk away.”
Koivu could well play a fifth career Olympics, having won a silver and three bronze medals for Finland. The Olympic movement is dear to him, having just completed an eight-year term as a member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission.
“Twice (Torino 2006 and Vancouver 2010), I’ve played then come back to compete at a high level in the NHL,” he said. “If the Ducks are going to the playoffs, that’s when I must sit down and think in a selfish perspective to see what’s going to be better for me: to compete for my country, which would be awesome one more time, or have the rest to refocus and recuperate for the end of the NHL season.”
Koivu will have precious little time this trip to soak in what Montreal means to him, and vice-versa. The Ducks leave immediately after the game for Ottawa, where they will play Friday.
On Thursday, before or after the game, he hopes to meet with the Montreal General staff and doctors who played a role in his cancer recovery and worked with his foundation to purchase a medical unit that is helping to save lives every day.
“My first game back in Montreal was very very emotional,” Koivu said. “I expect this one to be emotional again, but I’m hoping I can kind of relax a bit more than last time.”
And then he laughed softly, probably hearing the absurdity in his words.
“I hope this will be the case, but it probably won’t be.”