FORE FOR A CAUSE
Montreal Canadiens centre David Desharnais chips his way out of a sand trap at the team’s charity golf tournament Tuesday at Laval-sur-le-Lac. The annual event raises money for the Montreal Canadiens Children’s Foundation.
No Excuses.
Two words that meant so much to Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin and coach Michel Therrien four years ago when they took over the club that they had them put up in big letters on a wall in the locker room.
That sign is gone after the club missed the playoffs last season — the same thing that happened the year before Bergevin and Therrien took over.
The Canadiens were full of excuses last season after Carey Price went down with a seasonending knee injury on Nov. 25 and the club simply fell apart. At his post-mortem news conference, Bergevin said: “I believe with a healthy Carey Price, we’re not sitting here today.”
They also might not have been sitting there if the GM hadn’t decided that rookie Mike Condon and Ben Scrivens — who wasn’t good enough for the Edmonton Oilers — were the answers to replace Price.
But there’s a new season and Bergevin, who basically sat back and watched last year while the Canadiens fell apart (OK, he did get John Scott), was a very busy man this summer making changes to his team and hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.
If Price — heaven forbid — gets injured again, Al Montoya is the new man with goalie pads. The 31-year-old, who was the No. 6 overall pick at the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, has made a career as a backup and had a 12-7-3 record last season with the Florida Panthers. There’s also Zach Fucale and Charlie Lindgren, who will battle for playing time with the AHL’s St. John’s IceCaps, and Condon is still around.
Seven players who were in the starting lineup when the Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-1 in last year’s season opener are gone: P.K. Subban, Tom Gilbert, Alexander Semin, Tomas Fleischmann, Devante Smith-Pelly, Dale Weise and Lars Eller. That’s more than a third of the team that got off to a franchise-record 9-0 start.
Also gone is the “No Excuses” sign in the locker room.
“You know what … four years ago, the team missed the playoffs and we wanted to make sure that we came in and didn’t have any excuses,” Therrien said before the team’s golf tournament Tuesday at Laval-sur-le-Lac. “We wanted to make the playoffs. When you get to the playoffs, anything can happen. I don’t want to go too far with this, but we want to keep it more inside … more private. We’re still going to have our traditional sign (“To you from failing hands we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high”) because we believe this is the foundation of the Montreal Canadiens, but if there’s going to be other things it’s going to be a little bit more private with our club.”
How about “Carey Don’t Get Hurt”?
“I’m not as close to exactly the motivation behind putting it up or taking it down,” owner Geoff Molson said about the “No Excuses” sign. “But it certainly is one of those things when it’s up in the dressing room and all the media can focus on it, it becomes a distraction. So I think the players want to keep their mission to themselves.”
It was a good decision to take the sign down because it had become a bit of a joke.
But Bergevin will have the last laugh if his off-season moves — including getting rid of P.K. Subban — turn this franchise around after an embarrassing year. The GM, who wasn’t at the golf tournament because he’s part of Team Canada’s management at the World Cup of Hockey, believes the new trio of Shea Weber, Andrew Shaw and Alexander Radulov will make fans forget about Subban.
Molson certainly hopes so.
We’re still going to have our traditional sign … but if there’s going to be other things it’s going to be a little bit more private with our club.
“We’ve got some veteran presence now,” the owner said. “We have a player who’s won a couple of Stanley Cups (Shaw), we have a player who’s an assistant captain of Team Canada (Weber), we’ve got a player who’s known for being a natural goal-scorer (Radulov) on our team, all of whom have had a lot of experience and bring more leadership into the dressing room. So I think you’re going to see a stronger team out there.
“I can’t wait to see a whole bunch of stuff,” Molson added. “But I think what’s going to be most impressive is the team working as a team with a lot of leadership in the dressing room and being able to overcome difficult situations a little easier than it was last year.”
Said Therrien: “There’s a lot of positives regarding our team. I saw a few players in the last two weeks that have been showing up in Brossard and everyone’s really excited.
“First thing, we added some new players and filled up a need. Marc Bergevin did a helluva job to bring, first of all, some character players.”
We’ll find out soon enough if character is enough to turn this team around. And when the missing “No Excuses” sign was mentioned to defenceman Nathan Beaulieu Tuesday, he let us in on a little secret.
“I saw it in our gym yesterday.”