A New Day

   

     For years, whenever a new player joined the Montreal Canadiens, you could predict the quotes before he ever uttered them. "Great history," he'd say. "Original Six," he'd enthuse. "Legendary players," "passionate fans," "beautiful city," he'd repeat. 

    To be fair to those newcomers, though, there wasn't a whole lot else they could say. 

    With a couple of season's exceptions, the Habs have generally been a mediocre-to-bad team since their last Stanley Cup win in 1993. The winters are long and cold. Media attention is rabid, especially when things aren't going well. Quebec has the highest tax burden in Canada and some players who've never lived in the province are scared of French (and those who actually speak French are scared of the press.) All these factors have played into the reluctance of players to willingly come to Montreal. 

    Management tried for a long time to paper over the factors influencing player's choices rather than giving them a real reason to sign with the Canadiens. The torch, number retirements and special celebration nights, instead of adding to the team's rich history, allowed the franchise to wallow in the past. Not many high-end free agents or desirable trade targets were willing to sign or waive no-movement clauses to go there just for a history lesson.

      

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    The great American tennis player Arthur Ashe once said, "Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome." Those are wise words from a legend who knew of what he spoke.

    The Canadiens have yet to win a Stanley Cup in their current incarnation, but the doing...so far...has been exceptionally fun to watch. More importantly, as players around the league follow this young team's journey, they want to be a part of it.  And for the first time in decades, they're willing to take a pay cut to do it.

    This is where today's two biggest Habs-related stories intersect. 

    Chris Kreider is now a Montreal Canadien (much to the chagrin of fans who can't let go a certain play that happened 12 years ago). After Anaheim cut him loose for cap reasons, Kreider had a lot of options. Even if he is 35 years old he can help the team and he not only chose the Habs, but he accepted less money than other teams offered.

    This is almost unheard-of in Montreal.  The Canadiens actually attracted a valuable free agent who will help the team and who had other options. Ten years ago, Marc Bergevin was telling fans how difficult it is to make trades and entice free agents into signing. That was then. This is now.

    It undoubtedly helped that Jeff Gorton was Kreider's GM in New York, and it definitely added weight to the Habs' side of the scale to have Kreider's old linemate, Martin St.Louis, coaching the team.

    "I don't think that I can say that I've learned more from any one individual than the time that I spent playing with him on his line," Kreider said of St.Louis. "That's a massive draw. For me, having been lucky enough to play with him toward the end of his career, even back then he was almost like a player-coach. The intensity, the tenacity, just the things he brought to the rink every day.  He's super wise, incredibly smart and you knew he'd be a great coach. So he's definitely a big draw." 

    The respect is mutual.

    "The first thing that comes to mind with Chris, obviously, is his speed, his compete level, and when you have that kind of speed, you can bring physicality," the coach explained. "To me it’s simple: you look at our club; what do we need? Well, we need probably a little more experience: check; a little more sandpaper: he checks that box; net-front guy: checks that box. All these boxes wouldn’t matter unless he was a quality human being, right, and to me, it starts with that."

    That's the kind of endorsement no amount of torch waving can match.

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    And Kreider isn't alone. Ask any player in the Habs room what they think of their coach and the accolades come gushing out like Old Faithful. Even today, captain Nick Suzuki reaffirmed St.Louis is his favourite coach ever.

    That hard work and charisma on the coach's part has landed him a three-year extension after his current contract ends this season. Happy mensch, happy bench.

    The draw of St.Louis, added to the undeniable team spirit and rapid improvement is making the Canadiens an attractive option for players who want to win...for the first time in decades. That's the bottom line for most guys. Money is a necessity, but the current young Canadiens...and now Kreider...are proving players value a real chance at a Stanley Cup more than they do collecting the biggest salary possible. (Unless you're Taylor Hall, of course.)

    The winters are still hard, the taxes are still high and the fans still want to know what type of dental floss players use, but there's a new factor contributing to the choices potential new additions are making. It starts with St.Louis and the positive, winning energy he and his players are generating.

    Now, when a new guy comes to Montreal, he's not going to talk about past glories. He's going to talk about success and playing for a great young team today and in the future. The Habs can still trot out the torch, but the truth is they don't need it anymore.

    

    

Oily

     

    Well, it appears another mutt from the London Five kennel has found his forever home. To the surprise of few, it's in Edmonton. The Oilers have decided to sign Alex Formenton and add the controversial player to an already-controversial organization. 

    Formenton is one of five former Team Canada junior players accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a London hotel in 2018. Local police opened and then quickly closed an investigation at the time, but it was only when the woman filed a civil suit in 2022 that anyone really listened to her. Money talks. It's the loudest voice on the planet.

    Hockey Canada wasted no time drawing from its special compensation-to-victims slush fund to settle the case out of court. That fund paid out nearly $8-million in 21 cases since 1989, covering up for the perpetrators and allowing toxic, abusive hockey culture to rot the game from the inside out. 

    Public outrage over the case spawned a Parliamentary investigation and eventual criminal charges. In 2025, the five players were acquitted by a London judge who found "inconsistencies" in the woman's testimony based on the original local police investigative errors, even though Hockey Canada believed her story enough to pay her to go away.

    Formenton is the third of the London Five to land himself a nice payday in the NHL. Carter Hart, notoriously, signed in Vegas last year and this summer the Blues' management decided their image was too clean so they hired Dillon Dube. Of the three...even including Vegas...the only one of those contracts that shocked nobody was Formenton's.

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    The Oilers have been an embarrassment for a long time. Since their last Cup win in 1990, they've produced rosters ranging from mediocre to disappointing to gruesome. Promoting completely unqualified former players to management positions in a futile attempt to build a franchise legacy ensured they'd never create a true contender. At one point, the team was commonly known as Club Med North. 

    Then came the lottery picks. Edmonton had the first-overall selections in the 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015 drafts. They had five other picks in the top ten since 2010 as well, including Leon Draisaitl at third in 2014. What legitimate NHL team gets to draft first-overall four times in six years and produce nothing...not even a playoff appearance in nine of ten years while it's winning lottery after lottery? If there were relegation in the NHL as there is in Premier League football, the Oilers would have been in the ECHL for a decade.

    Now, however, they're becoming the most cynical version of the franchise yet and a blatant example of what the NHL itself is becoming. It started with the hiring of nepo-baby Stan Bowman as GM in 2024. When Bowman was GM in Chicago in 2010, he knew player Kyle Beach had accused video coach Brad Aldrich of sexual assault. He and other executives agreed to keep it quiet because the team was in the middle of a playoff run. When it all came to light in 2021, Bowman resigned and the Blackhawks paid a $2-million fine. Within a month of Bowman's return to good standing in the NHL, the Oilers snapped him up, regardless of the sordid Chicago situation.

    Ditto Mike Babcock. Accused of verbal abuse by players in Detroit, he was then fired in Toronto for humiliating players. Then he quit in Columbus after only two months...after demanding players show him personal photos so he could "get a sense of their character." That one finally got the NHL to investigate. Naturally, Babcock was cleared and the Oilers, once again, jumped at the chance to hire a shameful executive.

    Now, with the hiring of Formenton, Edmonton has achieved the trifecta of disgrace; sexual assault enabler GM, abusive coach and former sexual assault defendant player.

    

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    The Oilers' elevation of controversial people is, sadly, reflective of the decline in class in the NHL generally. From the Panthers bringing the Stanley Cup to the White House during a fascist regime to the narcissistic Tom Dundon in Carolina inscribing his kids' names on it (to the exclusion of long-time team staff), the league's silver has been tarnished.

    NHL officiating seems to be getting more inconsistent every year and the department of player safety routinely allows dangerous hits to go unpunished. Television coverage of games is getting harder for fans to access and ticket prices are so high most families can't afford them. Corporate sponsors and gambling ads cover the ice, the boards and now, the players' uniforms. Gary Bettman's rules have made a circus of games with the shootout, the weird playoff format and the endless offside reviews. His decision to reinstate people like Bowman and the London Five alienated female fans and assault survivors and his ban on Pride sweaters alienated everyone who believes the game belongs to all people.

    So, in some ways, the Oilers becoming the league dogcatchers is just the next step in the NHL's devolution.

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    All of this is to underline why the Canadiens are a source of hope for fans and for the league. Perhaps the most telling piece of video published by the team in the last year is a clip of Kent Hughes on the phone with Ivan Demidov.

    It was early morning on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Hughes and his staff were set up in the Canadiens dressing room at the Bell Centre in Montreal, closely monitoring the draft happening at the Peacock Arena in Los Angeles. At one point, Hughes stepped out of the room and softly told his phone to "text Ivan Demidov."

    Hughes was about to draft Alexander Zharovsky in the second round, based on the recommendations of his scouting team. Before he made that call, however, he made the one to Demidov. He wanted more than just the scouts' impressions or the numbers and videos. He needed to know what kind of person Zharovsky was in his peers' opinions. That's why, when Demidov began to rave about Zharovsky's skill, Hughes asked "Good guy? Any trouble?" 

    To Habs' management, it's as important to ask those questions as it is to ask how many goals the guy scored last year or what he weighs. It's no surprise Hughes made the Zach Bolduc/Logan Mailloux trade. Even though Mailloux had paid his dues with an apology to the woman whose intimate photo he shared with teammates, sensitivity classes and community service (unlike any of the London Five), the fact that his name will forever be tied to his past was a no-go for the Canadiens.

    There may come a day when a Canadiens player of this generation ends up involved in a scandal of some sort, but it won't be for lack of diligence on the part of management. And there's no way Geoff Molson would inscribe his kids' names on the Cup. 

    The Habs have a reputation for classiness to uphold, which isn't easy in a time when some teams have no problem hiring people accused of abuse.  If any team in the league right now can claim to run a clean operation it's the Canadiens. Let's hope it stays that way and the London Five and whatever teams hire them never win again.

Give and Take

    

    When you think back to when you were 18 years old, what were you doing? You were probably finishing high school or just starting in college or the working world. You probably had never lived on your own before and likely had never been responsible for paying your own bills, feeding yourself or keeping a budget. You probably made some pretty dumb decisions.

    Now how about when you were 20? By then, you were probably used to making big choices and managing in the world as a grownup. You probably still made dumb decisions, but perhaps not as often or as egregious. And that mustache you were trying to grow since high school finally came in.

    It's only a two-year difference, but physical, mental and emotional development is much farther advanced in a 20-year-old than in a teenager. Any parent who sent a high-school grad away to university can tell you the kid who left home back then is a very different person than the one who's leaving to start her third year. When it comes to evaluating the development of a young hockey player, scouts need to have a clearer vision as to how they will pan out. And that's why one of the smartest things the league could do right now is return to a 20-year-old draft.

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    When the NHL draft was introduced in 1963, and up until 1978, a player had to be 20 in that calendar year to qualify for selection. Then, in the late '70s along came the World Hockey Association with its aim of challenging the NHL's pro hockey monopoly in North America. It found an advantage in setting its own draft age at 18, scooping up future stars like Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier two years before the NHL could grab their rights.

    With the merger of the two pro leagues in 1979, the NHL adopted the 18-year-old draft and scouting changed. Where once a scout's most valuable tool was whatever beater car he drove to junior rinks all over the country, now it's a crystal ball. Most of them will tell you it's pretty tough to tell at 18 how a player will look at 24 when he's theoretically entering his prime.

    Lane Hutson is the perfect example of how a player overlooked by every team in the league in the first round of the NHL draft can beat the odds and become a big-league superstar. And Alexis Lafrenière stands as proof the kid who looks like a world beater at 18 and is merely a competent pro winger at 20. If both players were given an extra two years to develop before their draft, it's unlikely Hutson would have slipped to #62 overall in his draft, and equally unlikely Lafrenière would have gone first in his. In fact, just about every "redraft" ranking...the hindsight report in other words...has a different look a couple of years after the actual draft.

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    There are a couple of problems with the crap-shoot aspect of the 18-year-old draft. NHL teams invest a lot of money scouting, drafting and developing young hockey players. These kids represent the future of a franchise and are appropriately given every chance to succeed. With the uncertainly around physical development (Hutson) and translation of skill to the pros (Lafrenière), as well as emotional and mental maturity (hi there, Alex Galchenyuk), teams basically commit a large part of their resources to growing children they hope will eventually help them win. When those players don't end up fulfilling expectations, teams lose money, the player loses hope and the fans lose patience.

    The other big problem with the 18-year-old draft is that not every player develops at the same pace. Sure, the Macklin Celebrinis and Matthew Shaffers of the world seem to roll into the NHL as fully-formed professionals. Others, like Hutson and even Juraj Slafkovsky, need more time to show their true potential. 

    Right now, David Reinbacher, drafted by Montreal fifth overall in 2023 is 21 years old and hoping to make the Canadiens' roster in the desperately-needed RD position. Unfortunately for him, he's now entering his fourth pro season and has played only two NHL games. That's enough for critics to be proposing he be included in a trade and writing him off as a bust.

    As a comparison, consider Hall-of-Famer Nicklas Lidstrom. He wasn't even on most scouts' radar at 18. He was drafted in the third round (Canadiens took Lindsay Vallis, Patrice Brisebois, Pierre Sevigny and Steve Larouche ahead of Lidstrom) at 19 years of age. He didn't play his first NHL game until he was 21 and what would today be considered a bit of a late start developed into an all-time great career.

    Reinbacher has had his injury troubles, definitely, but he's still on track to make the big league at the same age as Lidstrom. If he'd been drafted at 20 instead of 18, it might not feel so much as though his developmental window is narrowing. One could argue a lot of players would face less pressure and far less judgement if they were allowed to grow up before being drafted. That goes for teams as well, since managers tend to panic when the time and money they invest in their prospects risks being wasted. Panic-driven trades in order to avoid losing a prospect for nothing can end up being the source of huge regrets when it turns out a certain player is just a bit of a late bloomer.

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    Naturally, there are significant counter arguments to moving the draft back to 20. The players' association, for one, would be opposed to limiting its members' earning potential by two years. However, when you consider that many draftees don't sign pro deals until they're 19 or 20 anyway, that doesn't seem to be quite such a big problem. 

    There's also the issue of exceptional player status. When there's a Crosby, Celebrini or Shaffer available at 18, the NHL, like the QMJHL and other junior leagues, could grant them special draft status. Sometimes it's just obvious that a player is ready to make the jump, but it's rare. If the Canadiens had drafted Slafkovsky at 20 instead of 18, he might have benefitted from the extra development time and not have had to go through his first bumpy couple of years being questioned about his legitimacy as an NHLer. (On the flip side, in a 20-year-old draft, it's very, very unlikely Hutson would have fallen to 62.)

    The NHLPA could facilitate a change without harming its members' incomes too much by negotiating different entry-level contract rules. Right now, a rookie between 18-21 must sign a 3-year contract with a maximum base salary of USD 950-000. Even with bonuses, those contracts can't exceed USD 1.775-million. Allowing teams to offer more money to young players right away would take some sting out of the delay in starting a pro career. 

    Owners like having low contracts for young players because they save money that way. However, they also waste money by signing prospects to entry-level deals at 18 when they end up never making the NHL at all, or having little impact when they do get there. Managers like those first contracts too, because they allow teams to hold the rights of a prospect while he develops for a low price. The argument there is if a player is drafted at 20, there are fewer questions about what he brings to the ice and less need for under-contract development time. 

    That also reflects the direction in which the league is headed financially overall. The current collective bargaining deal was structured to make young players pay their dues before they earn big money while veterans signed their "career deals" in their later years. These days, kids are making up to USD 20-million a year (!) while veterans are increasingly on one or two-year contracts for minimal money. An extra two years to really know what a team is drafting would help managers better make those important financial decisions.

    Right now, about 75% of first-round picks play at least one NHL game. That number plummets to just 34% of second rounders. Imagine giving those players a little more time to develop and scouts a little more time to assess them, and those odds could conceivably go up...to the benefit of both the prospects and the teams.

    In the next week or so, as teams launch their rookie camps and dust off their crystal balls to predict what teenager will be a pro hockey player at 24, it's a move worth considering.

    

Odds and Ends:

     

    Recently, Alex Newhook and some of his teammates came to St.John's, Newfoundland...Newhook's hometown...to take part in a charity golf tournament to benefit low-income kids in sport, women escaping domestic violence and cancer patients.

    "I think we're in a very privileged position," he explained. "We're able to have this attention around us, to have that energy around us to be able to gather people together to donate back to the community. For us, we wouldn't be here if we weren't able to play from a young age and that's the biggest thing for us now, to give the opportunity to kids who can't afford to play. They may be the next wave coming through. You never know who it's gonna be."

    In the swirl of activity around the players and hundreds of excited fans, Newhook and his friends took the time to answer a few questions. Among them:

On who's the bigger Xhekaj these days:

Arber: "I'd say still me. I'm heavier and a little bit taller. He stretches his back and straightens up the shoulders." 

Florian: "I have better posture."

On job competition between Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble:

Struble: "We don't really think about it very much. It's all love between us."

Xhekaj: "Yeah, I wanted to catch him on my rod and cast him out there for some shark bait. Seriously, we're good friends and we don't take everything personally. It's just a job and that's the way it is. You can't put your friendship aside for that."

On Newhook's pitch to get his teammates to come all the way to St.John's:

Newhook: "It's an easy pitch. It's a beautiful place in the summer. Everyone on my team is always looking to give back however they can. Raise awareness, raise money, give back to the community. Everyone has a good time when they're down here, but they're mainly here to raise money and they've been really helpful."

Struble: "It's been a good time. Good cause and it's always fun to come down here. No pitch. Tell me where and when and I'll show up."

Chris Nilan: "Alex asked me to come. He was nice enough to join my golf tournament last year and he asked me to join his. It's great to give back to the community and help the guys out."

Florian Xhekaj: (Pointing at his brother) "It was actually his pitch. He told me how much fun it is and it's just something you need to experience so I said why not? I'll come."

Arber Xhekaj: "I love the way of life here. It's very special and people here are very awesome, so it's a good trip to have in the summer."

Jakub Dobes: "I try to support Alex and charity, which is a good thing. Newfoundland is very beautiful. You experience something else and meet different people. I feel we have a really good group. A couple of days, a change of scenery a little bit. And it's for a good cause."

On whether the wolf head hat was ever washed:

Newhook: "The wolf head? I don't think so. It's a little gross, but that's guys in hockey. It may or may not have been washed. You'd have to ask our equipment manager about that one!"

Struble: "I don't think so. I don't think it did. Now that you say it, we definitely did not wash it. Now that you say it."

Arber Xhekaj: "I don't think so. I think if you wash it you'd probably ruin it. It's pretty greasy. Every year we get a new prop so I think that one's over now."

On their golf game:

Dobes: "I don't golf much, to be honest. I'm not bad, not great. It's about hanging out with the guys and having some fun."

Struble: "We played a warmup round earlier. Took some money off Flo and Dobes. I'm getting better."

On the increased interest in the Habs after their recent playoff run:

Newhook: "Yeah, there was a higher demand for tickets this year. That was quite a run. You hear of lots of people being converted now who weren't before."

On Lane Hutson summer hours on the ice while his teammates golf:

Struble (laughing): "We have time limits for him. He lives at the rink."

On the group fishing trip:

Dobes: "Yeah, we go fishing every year for pretty much the first day we get here. But we didn't catch much. Last year we caught a lot of fish, this year not so much." 

On the items Newhook provided for a silent auction, including teammates' sticks:

Paula Newhook: "I think he just went to the equipment guys and grabbed a bunch of stuff. He came home last week with a huge bundle of sticks."

Arber Xhekaj: "My stick's in the auction? I didn't know that!"

(Likely Juraj Slavkovsky, Nick Suzuki or Lane Hutson didn't know either.)

    Anecdote: A little girl who plays goal brought her gloves for her favourite goalie, Dobes, to sign. Just before she arrived at his station, the organizers had announced only one item could be signed because of the crowd and the slow-moving line. She reached Dobes and offered him the gloves (as she was wearing them). She told him he was only allowed to sign one, so he signed her blocker. Then, he surreptitiously looked around, signed the catching mitt, winked at her and told her "ssshhhh!"

    The weather wasn't great for cod fishing this year, but it turned out the boys got a beautiful day for golf and raising money for a good cause. And who knows? Maybe the fourth annual Alex Newhook and Friends Golf Classic could even feature a big, shiny, silver guest of honour.

Eyes on the Prize

    

    Jakub Dobes stands awkwardly in the shadows, as many big men without ego do. He's almost relieved to be quietly approached to talk about hockey. Once the subject is broached though, he's enthusiastic. In describing his training, he admits pro hockey is a year-round job.

    "I will say an hour to an hour-30 in the gym and on the ice 45 minutes to an hour. It's pretty much...I wouldn't say all year round. But 11 out of 12 months a year. It's pretty much. But it's so exciting. I love playing hockey." 

    Dobes exudes professionalism, encased in a shy, gentle humour.

    His teammates laugh at his "weird" warm-up routine, but it turns out, he's possibly more scientifically advanced than they are. 

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    Dr. Sara Hutchens is an optometrist in St.John's, Newfoundland. She's working on a project to determine whether goalie performance improves with specific eye training.

    “Vision is so much different than what we think of it as and how we work in the real world is different. And sport is a perfect example of that," she says. 

    Hutchens has worked with the Toronto Blue Jays, training the comparative vision of fielders and pitchers. 

    "What we test for a pitcher versus an infielder is going to be a little bit different," she explains. "So we're getting very much into contrast sensitivity. So we make the letters fade and figure out how light can they be and you still pick them up. Like, when you're looking at a pop fly ball, you know, is that going to blend into the clouds and they can't pick it up anymore?”

    Hutchens was used to baseball players; she was one herself. However, most of the young people who populate her waiting room were hockey kids.

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     "I want to see if there is a different performance measure that is correlated," she says. "So then if we do find a performance measure that is correlated with save percentage, that is something that is trainable.”

    Dobes welcomes that. He wants to get better, and if science can help him, he's all in. He's following Hutchens' advice.

    "I try to warm up my eyes before every game. Just movement," he says. "It's a muscle kind of. So it's like the same principal. You've just gotta warm them up. It's working."

    "Your vision is very important."

    Hutchens agrees:

    "So this is very much visual performance skills, which are different than your routine eye exam. In a routine eye exam, you're reading letters on a chart and everything is static and the world is dynamic and sport is dynamic," she says. "So we want to see how your visual system is performing under pressure in a high paced environment. So we're looking at things like your peripheral awareness, reaction time, eye tracking skills, also, you know, inhibition decision making in response to visual cues."    

    "You know, they don't think about training your vision and that is determining almost everything. 80% of what we take in is visual. So then, you know, they're thinking about how do I train my speed, my strength. But they have you think about vision in a different way."

    Jakub Dobes can see everything. 

Play It Again, Diane

     

    Diane Bibaud used to be a biter. 

    When she was seven years old, she was going to boarding school and regularly chomping on anyone who crossed her. The only time she found it easy to behave was in music class.

    "I started piano because I was a monster," she laughs. "But not in front of a piano. The nuns, they phoned my parents. They said you got to make her learn music because your daughter is a monster, but she's an angel in front of a piano. That's the best advice I ever had in my life."

    She started in keyboard lessons when she was eight and performed her first public solo, Beethoven's Für Elise, when she was nine. Music came naturally to her, gifted as she was with perfect pitch. 

    Ever since childhood she's been able to hear any sound and tell you what note it's making. Air conditioners, wasps in the garden, dishes clashing...she hears it all as music.

    "It's wonderful," she says when asked about what that's like. "The only thing is, we hear everything. Everything disturbs us. It's crazy, but it becomes handy, too."

    It's definitely handy when she's sitting at the Bell Centre organ in Montreal, playing her heart out for the Canadiens and their faithful.

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    Madame Bibaud's journey from seven-year-old wannabe vampire to the icon she is today was built on a dream. Just as the players for whom she helps create a special atmosphere started imagining the NHL as kids, she did too.

    "At 8 years old, we were watching every Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada," she recalls. "I was saying to my parents, one day I'm going to play for them. And that was my dream of a lifetime. So I started to play for arenas for little minor tournaments, then junior teams."

    "Then after I played two years in the stadium for the Alouettes. I went to the Forum and presented myself to (then Habs GM) Serge Savard and I said I've wanted to be the organist for the Canadiens for so many years. So they took me for one evening here and there and then after a few years they hired me full time."

    Still, it took many years of practice and working her way up the ladder to reach that lofty seat in the rafters of the Bell Centre. It wasn't always easy.

    "They say if you have a goal, everybody will try to stop you," she warns. "I just pushed them away and kept on going, and I got to my goal. And here we are. I live my dream and the players live their dream, and we're all part of the family."

    And she's been part of the family for most of the last forty years, barring a brief hiatus between 1987 and 1992 when the Canadiens thought they no longer needed an organist and decided to go "modern" with just a DJ playing the music. They called her back and she played until 2002 when the team again opted for a DJ only.

    "Yeah, they tried that. I never criticized that, but I had a broken heart. It was like a divorce, you know? But then they called me to come back. It's like popcorn and movies. Organ and hockey. You cannot split these two things."

    It took another seven years and the sale of the team to Geoff Molson for her to make a permanent return. Now it's hard to imagine a game without her, or an anthem that's not, to quote Michel Lacroix, "accompanied on the organ by Diane Bibaud."

    These days she works in tandem with the team DJ to create that special Bell Centre atmosphere.

    "It's so fun. He'll say, 'Go Diane! It's your turn.' And he's very good, been there for years," she explains. "It goes around between us but it's about the feeling. Like, let's say there are fights. He'll get me to play. He won't tell me what to do, but I'll do like Eye of the Tiger, boxing things and people like it." 

    "Even the players...like Cole Caulfield came to see me because he was injured and sitting in the press gallery. He told me the players really like what I'm doing."

    On game nights, Bibaud's evening begins long before the fans fill the seats.

    "An hour and a half before the game, I play an hour of music," she says. "So let's say New York would come in Montreal, I'll play New York New York and songs to please the team. I play as they come into the arena."

    The extra playing time helps her relax because even after all this time, she still gets stage fright.

    "I'm so nervous," she confesses. "Oh, my goodness. You wouldn't believe the days I go there I sometimes cry. But the thing is, I love it." 

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    While she's no stranger to pounding out Les Canadiens Sont La or Bleu, Blanc, Rouge after a goal, her real musical love is classical. It's what she studied at McGill University, but she can't see sliding into Für Elise at the Bell Centre.

    "No, it wouldn't be appreciated," she laughs in a big, hearty 'could you imagine that' guffaw. "Too bad, it's the best. That's my music, but it won't work there."

    Bibaud usually enjoys everything she plays...with one exception.

    "I shouldn't say it, but there's three broadcasts now this year with Amazon and they have a key song that they like me to play. So I do it, play it, but it's against my heart," she reveals.

    That's because when she's not playing for the Canadiens, she runs a music school and shop and has done since 1987.  Amazon and online shopping generally have not been kind to her business. 

    "They're competitive to our music store but in the end, it's not really Amazon. It's the customers who buy through there and then they bring their broken shit here to get repaired and they're not happy because we send them back to (Amazon.)

    "I mean the music stores or any store to be on the platform, they pay 15% of duty to this company," she continues. "So that the customer says they don't want to pay that. Then they say you won't repair my instrument because I didn't buy here. I say no, but your instrument was outside at -30° for whole day. So that's normal that your guitar is defective. So I sent that back to them." 

    "That's the way it is. It's hard to be in business today. With online shopping, we could have to close the store. It's crazy."

    While she's still hoping for the best for the business, Bibaud knows she'll always have the Canadiens. At 66, she has no thoughts of retirment.

    "Listen, it's funny, they asked me lately and I said I'm going to play until I drop. Unless they kicked me out, you know, because otherwise it's a love of a lifetime. Every day I think about them. The Canadiens are special. I'm in love with this team since I'm 8 years old."

    And these days, Diane Bibaud doesn't have to bite anyone to get what she wants.

La Première Étoile

    

     "Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen. Accueillons nos Canadiens!"

    Forty-one (soon to be 42) times a year, plus playoffs, Michel Lacroix exhorts the crowd at the Bell Centre in Montreal to welcome their Habs to the ice. He's been the full-time voice of the Canadiens since 1993, taking over from the late Claude Mouton, but he got his first taste of the job way back in 1977.

    "To be honest with you, it's been a heck of a ride," he laughs. "I was working for a local newspaper and I was hosting corporate events and somebody said, well, you've got a good voice, maybe you should do some sporting events." 

    "So I went and did some preliminary competitions for the Olympic Games back in 1976. Then I was hired as the PA announcer for the junior team in Laval, where Mike Bossy played at the time. At the same time I was lucky enough to announce track and field competitions and I was asked to be the voice of the Olympic Stadium for the Olympic Games. 

    "Later, Claude Mouton needed to go back in the press box, so he came up to me and said well, if you're good enough to announce the Olympics maybe you should give it a try with the Montreal Canadiens. So in 1977 I worked my first game."

    "And I was maybe at the right place at the right time."

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    Now, all these years later, Lacroix is almost as well known as the players whose highlights he announces to the faithful. 

    "I saw somebody standing in Rome wearing a Canadiens T-shirt and I shouted 'Go, Habs, Go' and this guy turned around with a big smile," he recalls. "I remember vividly, I was covering the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia in 2000.  And when I got there, somebody came up to me and said, 'Hey, you're Michel Lacroix from the Montreal Canadiens.' Then you go to Lillehammer, a little village in Norway and there's some kind of a sports store. And the only thing they had in their window was a Montreal Canadiens jersey. Wherever you go, there's always somebody."

    "I was in Italy two years ago, walking slowly. Somebody shouted 'Are you having a tough year?' My girlfriend looked at me and said 'Don't wear your Habs hat in Rome, please.'"

    Everywhere he goes, people want to ask him about the Canadiens. 

    "You just say yes, I'm part of it. And you do realize that it is to this day a very special thing."

    His pride in his work is earned. He's always careful to make sure he's as respectful as possible of the players and their names.

    "When I'm not really sure of the pronunciation I go and see the player," he explains. "Like we've got a kid from Austria, Reinbacher. If we want to be picky with the pronunciation, the German pronunciation, it might be a little hard for our fans. So we basically tried to make it as easy as possible. So like Reinbacher, I went to see his father. I said, if I say it this way, will you recognize your son? He said absolutely."

    "And for Demidov, we know that in Russian the accent is on the second syllable. So it should be Dem-ME-dov." 

    Once he's got all the pronunciations down, it's on to pre-game preparation and getting ready for the opening notes of Coldplay's "Fix You." Amazingly, after more than 20 years, he's still not tired of it.

    "We needed something different coming back from the from the lockout," he recalls. "Coldplay is a fixture now. It's unbelievable. The way people react to the song is incredible. I mean, people stand up in in the middle of the warm up and start chanting. You say, oh, if they're that hot during the warm up, imagine what the things will look like when we score a goal."

    "With Coldplay I think the setup is perfect. The timing is great. We know exactly what to do and when to do it. The goalie just jumps down when I say 'Mesdames et messieurs, ladies and gentlemen.' As soon as I say 'accueillons,' bingo! They're with you every game."

    He says the most fun part of the job is announcing big milestones and special goals, like Cole Caufield's 50th this past season. 

    "That was funny," he smiles. "When I introduced Cole after his 50th the crowd went wild with a standing ovation for about two or three minutes and I was excited, too. That was the longest I've ever seen."

    Calling the three stars is also a highlight for him.

    "It's a ritual. It's been going on for years and years and years. And the guys would come on the ice and go back. Now the first star stays up and they connect with the fans. So that's quite a quite amazing."

    "Then again, we do have to get the the entire sequence done quickly, sharply so it won't embarrass our public and it won't embarrass the players. And we've got to do it also to fit in with the broadcasters. So technically it's a little harder than people imagine, but we do it in about what, two or three minutes? And that's perfect for us."

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    Michel Lacroix been there through the Canadiens' highest of highs...and their lowest of lows. He says his most memorable night was captain Saku Koivu's return to play after undergoing cancer treatment.

    "It was charged with emotion," he recalls. "The fans, the players his teammates, the entire organization. I remember Saku was looking at me saying 'OK, stop that ovation, we've got to go.' And I said, 'I'm sorry, but it's 22,000 against one, so you'll have to put up with that.' I just couldn't stop the people and they wouldn't stop because it was much more than the hockey game. It was a celebration of life. And that's a totally different story."

    He was also there for one of the organization's biggest moves.

    "I closed the Forum and I opened the Molson Centre at the time, now the Bell Centre," he says. "That was also amazing. And I remember quite vividly saying 'Last minute of play in the history of the Montreal Forum' that was also something special. And of course all the captains there and the torch and all that stuff."

    Now he's cheering on a new generation of players. He enjoys Caufield's joy and energy, and Nick Suzuki's calm leadership, but it's the veteran players with whom he really connects.

    "A guy like Mike Matheson is a charm talk to this guy or Phillip Danault," he praises. "I think these two are really special. They're calm, they're having fun. And they're not afraid to go up front and say yes we did have a hard time tonight. Or we're quite happy about the way things are going."

    He's seen many versions of the Canadiens, but he thinks this one reminds him of another time.

    "Well, I think I'm probably the luckiest guy in the world because the Montreal Canadiens is a wonderful organization. I've been with the team for close to 50 years now," he beams. "In that time, we had a fabulous team in the 70s winning four Stanley Cups in a row with a talented players like Ken Dryden and Larry Robinson and Serge Savard and Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt. All these guys."

    "Talking with these guys, hanging around with them when we were on the road, that was amazing for me. We were part of a family and that's mainly what I think is the greatest thing about the Montreal Canadiens."

    "And then a new generation of players came in. We had a fun Stanley Cup in 1986 and then another one in 1993 with a different group of players. So it's renewal. You look at the 10 first ten years, then another 10, then another 10 then and there's always something different."

    It's been decades since Lacroix has had the chance to announce a Stanley-Cup winning goal, but he's seeing signs that his wait might possibly be over soon.

    "This team is a lot of fun," he says. "You do realize that these guys want to hang around together. They're having fun together and it shows. The same thing applied in in the 70s with all these great names and guys who were eventually inducted in the Hall of Fame. But you see guys like Caufield and Suzuki, (Ivan) Demidov, (Lane) Hutson, they're hanging around and they are having fun."

    "My point of view is that the new generation is close to being the same that we had in the 70s. You can easily compare characters that we had in the 70s and characters that we've got right now with the team."

    Lacroix will spend the summer doing other things like covering PGA tournaments for RDS. He says he'll get a few days off here and there, but mostly he's waiting for the new hockey season to start. And he's not ready to hang up the microphone any time soon.

    "Not for now. I'm still hoping to get number 25 in. Oh, yeah," he says. "Oh, I want to be able to announce that. That's it. That would be really something. Yeah."

    "As long as they they don't ask me to sing the national anthem, I'm OK."