Confidence Men

    When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things. -Joe Namath

    Mr.Namath was talking about playing for the New York Jets in the '60s, but he very well could have been talking about the Montreal Canadiens in 2026. The young Habs players are doing amazing things and having a ton of fun. It all goes back to confidence...having it, building it and maintaining it. And that can be traced in part to the coach.

    Dr.Cal Botterill is a sports psychologist (and dad of Jennifer and Jason) who's worked with NHL teams for years.

    "It is so important. I mean, you can be a demanding coach and sometimes that's part of being good, but you've got to be careful with it especially with young people," he says. "It it is such a special situation in Montreal. I love Marty (St.Louis) and I think he's just an amazing young coach and he was a great teammate.  And he's building with his caring nature. I mean, watch him coach. He's got his hand on their shoulder. He's speaking right in their ear. He's chatting with them. He's relating, you know, and they're coming out as young players and playing like this. I mean, it is magic."

    Botterill has been around long enough to know not every coach is a confidence-builder like St.Louis.

    "I remember dealing with Mike Keenan," he recalls. "I said for Christ's sake, Mike, stay out on the ice after practice and the rookie kid out there, he's just, I knew he was hurting. Go there I said. Twenty minutes later they come in. They're both grinning from ear to ear. You know, I said, those kids don't need any more crap. And he comes to me 10 minutes later and said thank you, I want you to always tell me what you think we need to do, not what I want to hear."

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    Players, coaches and fans know you have to have confidence to play your best at such a high level.  The problem is, confidence can be ephemeral; destroyed more easily than it's built. Botterill says a lot of it comes from early experiences. If a player grows up with supportive parents and coaches, he or she is more likely to be confident. Other than that, he says the most important thing in developing confidence is belief. And if a player doesn't believe in him or herself, it can help tremendously when someone else believes in them. If Marty St.Louis believes they can do a thing, soon the player starts to believe it too.

    There are other, concrete ways to develop confidence as well.

    "Music is powerful," Botterill explains. "A lot of athletes will have their headphones on for a couple of their favorite songs and and there we go. And you mix highlight videotape of players on your team. We did this in Chicago and put a soundtrack on it. A little good piece of music, you can turn them from being the most depressed team to the most positive."

    Good habits are important too, he says.

    "Physiology first, you can never forget. You have to have a decent lifestyle. You have to hydrate, you have to have good nutrition. And a lot of even high-performance people still neglect that a bit and they wonder why things slip in terms of confidence when you haven't treated yourself well."

    Botterill believes players need to work on their confidence the same way they work out in the gym.

    "There's four ways. That's what you're doing, what you're thinking, what you're feeling and your physical shape," he says. "If you get feeling better about something with your music or if you have eaten the right things and hydrated with water, you're going to have energy and that will translate into confidence."

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    When a player loses confidence, it can have long-term effects. Careers have ended because talented players don't believe in themselves. For guys who have it and are performing well, like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson, it's not a difficult message for St.Louis to deliver.

    However, when a guy like Patrik Laine or Samuel Montembeault is parked for long periods of time, it's a harder sell. 

    "The wrong thing happening again can kill it sometimes," warns Botterill. "And it really hurts people if they make a mistake that they felt bad about or didn't go the way they thought or whatever. And if they've had trauma somewhere in their life, it's very easy to go back to that."

    Fortunately, St.Louis knows that too. And he knows how to communicate it to all his players, in the lineup or not.

    "It starts with honesty," he says. "There are days when they won’t be happy about all the things I tell them but it’s my truth. I’m thinking often about the person they will become and not the person they are today. It takes honesty to bring a person to that point. It’s part of coaching. It’s not just about teaching, it’s building relationships and confidence. I think they know I have their best interest at heart. It’s always about the person they will become, the player they will become, not the player they are today.”

    St.Louis will win the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year one day.

    We can be confident in that.

    

The Warrior

    

    When Trevor Timmins took the stage at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles on day two of the 2010 NHL entry draft, nobody paid much attention to his fifth-round pick. The big names...Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin and Eric Gudbranson...had been feted on national television the day before and interest in the lower rounds was mainly from scouts and GMs who hoped to find a steal.

     Brendan Gallagher was a hustler for the Vancouver Giants back then. He stood (officially) at 5'9" and weighed 180 lbs, although he looked more like he was on his way to junior high school wearing his dad's suit. Despite his stature, he was coming off three consecutive 40+ goal seasons in the WHL. He was still a gamble for Timmins who spent his earlier picks on Jarred Tinordi in the first round and Mark MacMillan in the fourth. The Habs had no second or third-round picks that year. There weren't really great expectations for Gallagher as an NHL player.

    In 2010, most people would not have taken the bet that Gallagher would play fifteen years and 900 games (plus), put up two thirty-goal seasons and literally bleed for the Canadiens. It's a rare photo that doesn't show him with a cut on his cheekbone or lip. His feisty fearlessness earned him grudging respect from opponents who hated him...in a good way. Early on, he and Alex Galchenyuk were put together by the team...public appearances, rooms on the road and even a shared nickname. Everyone thought if one of the players ended up leaving the Habs, it'd be the fifth-rounder.

    As we now know, Galchenyuk flamed out spectacularly and is playing in the KHL. Gallagher has become the heart and soul of the Canadiens, willing to sacrifice whatever he must to help the team win.

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    In his earlier years, sacrifice meant blocking shots with his hands until they broke. It meant spending most of his shifts in the other team's blue paint, getting crosschecked, punched and speared. It meant taking a hit from Zdeno Chara and bouncing up with a shit-eating grin. Now, fifteen years in, sacrifice is more cerebral. In the last decade and a half, Gallagher has lost his mom and his hair. He's gotten married and has one-and-a-half kids. Goal scoring doesn't come as naturally or frequently as it used to do.

    Coach Martin St.Louis has scratched Gallagher twice recently, which had to be dispiriting for a player who thrives on competition and being part of the group. To his credit, he has chosen not to be a distraction. Where some veterans who feel underused or disrespected publicly complain or ask for a traade, Gallagher has chosen to be a cheerleader.

    "I'm comfortable with what I bring to this group. If my number is called, I know I can contribute. If not, you be a good team-mate and that's it," he told the media. "I'm grateful for the amount of time I've had in this city, I'm really fortunate for it. Obviously, I understand that you never know when you're going to get pushed out; I just try to take advantage of every opportunity that I have."

    The elder statesman of the Canadiens has seen this happen to teammates before. He watched Marc Bergevin nickel-and-dime Andrei Markov out of town. He saw his captain, Saku Koivu, leave Montreal after management decided not to offer him a new contract and his teammate Tomas Plekanec get traded to the Leafs. This is something he knew was coming for him at some point.

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    For a player who's given his body, mind and talent to his team, what he's doing now might be one of his biggest contributions to the Habs' future. He's going to smile and joke around with the kids he's mentored to take his place. He's going to be gracious and supportive and avoid becoming a distraction for his teammates.

    It can't be easy for him. The end of his career is on an ever-nearing horizon and draft day seems a hundred years ago. Nobody would blame him for mourning the upcoming tangible loss of his hockey dream.

    Yet, despite his personal pain, Gallagher is there for his team like he always has been. Fans can just hope all his dedication will pay off if he holds on long enough to be part of a Stanley Cup-winning Canadiens squad.

    Nobody really knew his name on draft day in 2010, but they certainly know it now. He's a fighter and a gentleman and one very fine Montreal Canadien. Even if he ends up watching this team win on television, his dedication, mentorship and team-first mentality helped create the culture that will carry the Habs far.

All Hail the House Elf

    

    Goalies are a different species from your average hockey player. Good ones can be tall or short, fat or thin, nervous or serene. They can have weird habits (Patrick Roy talked to his goalposts, Glenn Hall threw up before every game and Jacques Plante knit his own caps and socks. Gilles Gratton thought he was from outer space) or seem like the most average guy in the room. There is no perfect mold for the ideal goaltender.

    That's why drafting them is such a crapshoot.

    Three times in NHL history a goalie has gone first overall. Habs' pick Michel Plasse was the first in 1968 and he had an unremarkable career, bouncing around pro and semi-pro teams with a lifetime GAA of 3.79 and save percentage of 0.881. Then in 2000, the Islanders went wildly off the board taking Rick DiPietro first in the draft. His career was hampered by injuries, but he put up respectable numbers in his 319 NHL games. In 2003, the Penguins chose to spend the first pick on Marc Andre Fleury. Of course, Fleury has gone on to win three Stanley Cups, a Vezina Trophy and is a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Three goalies taken first overall with three very different career outcomes.

    To paraphrase Forrest Gump, with goalies you never know what you're going to get.

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    When the Canadiens drafted Carey Price fifth overall in 2005, everyone expected him to be a rock star. From early recognition as a WJC-winning goalie to a Calder Cup championship in Hamilton, Price found success everywhere he went. Even during the "Price vs. Halak" debates in 2010 then-GM Bob Gainey came to Price's defence, calling him a thoroughbred. Jaro Halak meanwhile, after carrying the Habs that playoff year, got traded away. You get a lot of do-overs when you're a talented goalie and a first-round draft pick.

    When the Canadiens drafted Jakub Dobes in 2020, the story was very different. He was a fairly unheralded Czech junior with good size and a toolbox full of unfished skills. He was still around in the fifth round when most NHL scouts are looking for long-term project potential and hope to strike gold. Nobody was really expecting much. Aside from Brendan Gallagher, picked in 2010, no Habs fifth-rounder has made much of an impression in the last twenty years.

    Dobes has been a more-than-happy surprise. In Price's first season, he played 41 games, won 24 and put up a 2.56 GAA and a .920 save percentage with three shutouts. So far this year, Dobes has played 38 games with 26 wins, a 2.73 GAA and .903 save percentage. Not too shabby for a fifth-round pick on a rebuilding team that's had defensive issues most of the year..

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    One of the criticisms the Canadiens face as they push for the playoffs is the risk they're taking of putting their hopes in a pair of rookie goalies. Fortunately, the team has a history of rookies shining in the post-season. Bill Durnan won the Cup and the Vezina in his first season in the NHL. Ken Dryden actually won rookie of the year after he won his first Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy. Patrick Roy played a huge role in winning the 1986 championship in his first season. Steve Penney dragged a mediocre Canadiens team through to the conference finals in 1984 with some great goaltending. So, no, Habs fans are not afraid of going into the first round with a pair of rookies in net.

    In fact, sometimes inexperience is a good thing. These guys don't know what is supposed to happen, so they just go with what is happening. It's all a big adventure right now, like WWI recruits heading off to whip the Huns and be home by Christmas, not realizing the reality of the trenches.

    The beauty of this is if Dobes should falter in the run up to the playoffs, or in the early rounds, the Canadiens have Jacob Fowler. He's the guy Price says reminds him of him. He's going to be a star goalie too. So yeah, Habs fans are not scared of rookie goalies.

    The thing with goalies is you never know what you're going to get, but sometimes you end up with a Faberge when you thought you had a Cadbury egg. It may be possible the Canadiens have two of them.

    

Purity

   

    "Real men don't score empty-net goals." That was long-time NHL defenceman Al Iafrate's response when a reporter asked him why he passed up an easy scoring opportunity and knocked the puck into the corner instead. (Although his actual language may have been rather less than politically correct.)

    "I don't like gimmes," said Brett Hull after he scored 86 goals in the 1990-91 season without putting one in the empty net.

    And Rocket Richard, the first player to score 50 goals in 50 games did so without any gimmes at all. In fact, when he became the first player to record 500 goals in his career, he still had never scored an empty-net goal. When he retired with a lifetime total of 544, all of them had been against a goalie.

    Now the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy is the NHL's award for the most goals scored in a season;  named after perhaps the purest goal scorer in league history. A Canadiens player has never won it since its introduction in 1999.

    That could change this year.

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    Cole Caufield has 47 goals with eight games to go in the regular season. Like the Rocket, he's never scored an empty-net goal in his entire NHL career to date and he seems to be disinclined to start now. In the last game against Tampa, Nick Suzuki could easily have served up Caufield's 48th into an empty net, but decided to shoot it himself instead. Nobody seems to want to say out loud it's about Caufield preferring to score "pure" or "ethical" goals, but their actions say otherwise.

    Caufield may have the smile of a cherub but he's also got the stubbornness of hellhound. If he's decided he wants 50 goals without an empty-netter, he's likely going to be quietly determined to do it. It'll be interesting if it's Game 82 and he's got 49 goals, but he's got a few games to accomplish his mission before it gets to that point.

    The beautiful symmetry of Richard recording the first-ever 50-goal-season without an EN goal and Caufield doing the same thing to become the first Canadiens player to win the Richard trophy is pure art.

    Some around the league are raising the question of whether empty-net goals should even count for the Richard trophy, as the man himself never scored one. If those weren't counted, Caufield would be two goals ahead in the race for the lead. Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon has 50, but five of those were without a goalie.

    That's all conjecture, though it's an interesting thought. Empty-net goals do count, and that's unlikely to change. But it says something about the personality of the player to not only want to meet his goal, but to accomplish it in his own way. 

    Juraj Slavkovsky has said his Canadiens' teammates will be looking for Caufield every chance they get as they help him hit the 50-goal mark. They'd just better not expect him to go for the "gimme."

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    So what difference would it make if Caufield happened to add an empty-net tally to his total this year? For fans, none at all. Fifty goals are 50 goals and there'd be no asterisk in the record book if some of them were easier to bury than others. His 50 would be just as legitimate as MacKinnon's.

    For Caufield, though, we're seeing a young player challenge himself  to be better and live up to standards he sets in his own mind. His determination to do so is a reflection of what he expects of his level of play. That's something a coach can't teach or inspire in someone who isn't built that way to begin with.

    That's the kind of determination and self-set standard that wins Stanley Cups.

    And we know there are no "gimmes" in the playoffs.

    

    

The Dog and His Reflection

     

    A Dog, to whom the butcher had thrown a bone, was hurrying home with his prize as fast as he could go. As he crossed a narrow footbridge, he happened to look down and saw himself reflected in the still water below, as clearly as in a mirror. But the greedy Dog thought he was looking at another dog carrying a bone much bigger than his own.

    If he had stopped to think, he would have known better. But instead of thinking, he dropped his bone and lunged at the dog in the river, only to find himself swimming for his life to reach the shore. At last he scrambled out, and as he stood dripping and miserable on the bank, he realized what a fool he had been.

    His own bone was gone, carried away by the current. And the other dog and the bigger bone had never existed at all.  - Aesop

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    Lots of Canadiens fans...and those who eat up endless hours of airtime talking about the Canadiens... this season are on the same wavelength as Aesop's greedy dog.

    Their team hasn't won a Stanley Cup in 33 years. They haven't had a fifty-goal-scorer or a one-hundred-point producer in longer than that. Until this past spring and the arrival of Lane Hutson, no Habs player had won the Calder Trophy since Ken Dryden in 1972.

    This is a time to appreciate the team Montreal leadership is building. The Habs are young, fast and score a ton of goals. It's fun and exciting to watch them, knowing they'll never quit. It's joyful to see the players smile, and the little rituals of friendship that are the building blocks of a real winning team. Fans should be happy at last.

    So, to hear them complain about Martin St.Louis failing to coach a better defensive system, listening to them give up on this player or that one, or the need to trade Kaiden Guhle for a second-line centre is frustrating for fellow Habs supporters who want to feel good about their team.

    Since the trade deadline has passed, at least there are no more suggestions of signing Nazem Kadri or trading for Alexis Lafreniere. Still, though pundits like to go on about how Ivan Demidov is slumping and Mike Matheson is used too much. They talk about how the Habs aren't tough enough and without more size will do nothing in the playoffs. Or how going into the postseason with two rookie goalies is a bad idea. Or whether the team will be playing into the late spring at all. They're rehashing done deals like Logan Mailloux for Zach Bolduc as though their crystal balls are shinier than Kent Hughes'.

    

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    Critical fans, problematic management and overly-zealous media have chased players out of Montreal in the past. Patrick Roy. John LeClair. Jose Theodore. P.K.Subban. They booed Carey Price in preseason. Canadiens fans are tough on their team out of love, allegedly, but how can you love a team you seem to hate? 

    And why bother tossing speculation and judgement around? Hughes is not listening to you. Other Habs' GMs have succumbed to public pressure and jumped too unwisely on moves they should never have made (Scott Gomez, I see you there) but Hughes is made of different stuff. He's not going to be pushed into action by anybody outside his bubble. So critics who want to pick this roster apart should perhaps consider looking for a perfect team to support or report about instead of wasting their breath crapping on this one.

    The Canadiens are not perfect by a long shot. They have holes in the roster. They still have learning to do before they win it all. But they're growing up together and for fans who've been with them for the long haul, it's a joy to see. 

    If old Aesop taught us anything with his fable of the dog and his reflection it's that always craving the bigger, juicier bone means ignoring the bone you already have. And if you're not careful, you can end up with no bone at all.

    

    

The Belt

     

    When your kids are little, they're like sponges. They hear everything you say and their capacity to absorb knowledge is better than their diapers. They're sweet and funny and make you love them. In return, you teach them how to walk and talk, eat with a spoon, dress themselves and have manners. You show them how to be kind, how to share and how to cope with their big feelings. 

    Then, they start to grow up and you teach them about things like honesty, responsibility and graciousness. When they inevitably break the rules or act out, you send them to time out or you confiscate a favourite toy. You explain what they did wrong and why they need to learn not to do that again. You're a gentle, guiding hand.

    Suddenly, before you ever even register it's happened, they're teenagers. They develop ideas, values and opinions of their own and most of the time, they're not the same as yours. They roll their eyes when you advise them. They challenge you and demand to know why you set the standards you do. They know how to push your buttons and try your patience. Their mistakes grow in consequence too. Instead of writing on the wall or spilling an entire bag of flour, they're throwing parties that wreck your house and crashing your car. Sometimes they drive you around the bend and you yell at them. You may even go old-school and whip off your belt to snap it at them in frustration. 

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    The young Canadiens players have grown into metaphorical teenagers (some not too far off being actual teenagers.)  That means their coach/dad isn't treating them like toddlers any longer. Marty St.Louis expects the early, basic lessons to be ingrained by now. He wants to work on more advanced issues, so when players regress and start wetting the bed again it sorely triggers his temper. 

    In the Habs' last game against Detroit Alex Newhook had the misfortune of making the fatal error that caused that temper to fray. Like any dad who's just had enough of kids who don't listen and repeat the same mistakes, St.Louis lost his cool and snapped.

    In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that much...just a few shouted words and a bit of swearing. For St.Louis however, it was a departure and notable for that reason. Newhook could have been any of the Canadiens players who made a big mistake on an important play. He's certainly not alone in contributing to lost points this season, but he was the one in Marty's sights at that moment. It had to be embarrassing and a bit of a shock to the system to be on the receiving end of such a rare display by a coach everyone likes and admires. It was also a learning experience for the rest of the players who know they're lucky it wasn't them to draw coach's ire and will try extra hard to avoid the same treatment.

    More than momentary frustration on St.Louis' part, the incident underlined one important fact. The kids aren't kids anymore. Sure, they're the youngest team in the league, but they're also gaining experience in every single game. Their coach is becoming harder on them because their errors have bigger consequences now than when they weren't expected to crawl out of the basement as quickly as they have. 

    Now expectations have grown and the pressure to keep improving is real. As we've seen with the healthy scratches of Brendan Gallagher and Arber Xhekaj and the benching of Sam Montembeault, the coach is getting tougher in his decision-making. He's not the guy who carries the kids on his shoulders at the parade anymore. He's the dad of teenagers who need a little more tough love these days.

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    Fortunately, as the Canadiens continue to evolve and grow up, their coach really is an actual dad of teenagers. The same challenges facing his three growing sons face his evolving young players. And he's learning too. Just as a first-time dad grows with his kids, St.Louis is developing as a coach. A new dad doesn't have the tools to deal with teens. He learns how to teach and how to discipline as time goes on.

   St.Louis is well equipped to cope with the unexpected. He also has lots of patience...most of the time. When that patience is at an end, he's shown the kids are old enough to take it when he calls them out publicly and know they deserve it.

    The coach has been remarkable in his forbearance. St.Louis is a winner who's spent the last four-plus years clinging to patience, even though it eats him up to lose. He's about ready to move on from teaching to motivating. 

    For now he's yelling at them, but we (and they) have to expect he knows when and how to use the belt too.

Glass Houses

     

    Once upon a time, in a little town in Alberta, Kirby Dach was born on a freezing January day. The hockey gods looked fondly upon him and bequeathed to him three gifts. The first was the gift of size. As he grew to his full mass at 6'4" and 220lbs, he developed the frame he'd need to withstand the physicality of the NHL. The second was the gift of hands. The Chicago Blackhawks drafted him third overall because he proved in junior he can put the puck in the net, and set up his teammates effectively. The third gift was the gift of speed. NHL EDGE has him in the 95th percentile for maximum skating speed reaching 23.42 MPH in November of this season. 

    Though the gifts of the gods were generous and rich, they came with a curse. The ghosts of Maple Leafs past conspired to thwart the young player by giving him a glass skeleton. At first there were concussions. Then a broken ankle or wrist, and these weren't exactly breaks from crushing hits. Eventually it became apparent Dach could hurt himself buttering toast. The Blackhawks had enough of gluing him back together and Kent Hughes took him on as a reclamation project.

    In Montreal, Dach's woes have continued. The Glass Bone Curse has followed him and he's yet to play more than 70 games in a season at any level. With the Canadiens, his best season saw him lace up for only 58 games in 2022-23. The following season, he played just two.

    When he's in the lineup, Dach is noticeable for his gifts, but by the time he gets up to speed and starts to feel the game once more, the Curse strikes again. 

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    It's not easy for a body to absorb the punishment dished out over 82 games in an NHL season, plus preseason and playoffs. It's normal to sustain injuries and a lot of it in Dach's case is pure bad luck. He's not the first gifted Canadiens player to stand on the brink of "written off" because of injuries. Before Rocket Richard even reached the NHL he'd gained a reputation for being injury-prone. 

   In his first game with the Montreal Senior Canadiens (a team in the QSHL) in 1941, Richard crashed into the boards and suffered a broken ankle, missing the majority of the season. While still in the QSHL, he broke his wrist in 1942, which limited his play and hindered his progress. In his NHL rookie season with the Canadiens in 1943, he scored 5 goals in his first 16 games before suffering a broken leg that ended his debut season early. Even his own general manager, Tommy Gorman, thought Richard would never cut it as a pro hockey player because of his "brittle bones."

    In the early years of Serge Savard's career, he was beleaguered by broken bones too. In March of 1970, he crashed into the goalpost and shattered his left leg in five places. He spent months in a cast and underwent several surgeries. Ten months later, he broke the same leg again. And during practice for the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit Series, he broke his right ankle, which kept him out of games four and five.

     Like Richard before him, observers were skeptical Savard would last very long in the NHL. Seven Stanley Cups, a Hall-of-Fame career and a retired sweater proved them all wrong.

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    Both Savard and Richard eventually overcame the perception of their fragility. In Richard's case, after his disastrous rookie season, he devoted time in the summer to intense training to build up his muscle strength and help support his joints and bones. He had a breakout second season and was never overly sidelined again.

    Savard ended up changing his game entirely. His early impressive skating ability was hampered by the recurring leg injuries, so he turned his attention to becoming a stay-at-home defenceman. When paired with Larry Robinson or Guy Lapointe, Savard's play allowed them to join the rush. They owe him a lot for their own stellar careers.

    As for Dach, perhaps he's just unfortunate. Perhaps his bad luck is now in the past and he'll come back stronger from his latest upper-body injury. Or maybe he really is cursed. The thing is, if he doesn't follow the example of guys like Savard and Richard, he's soon going to run out of road in Montreal. Like his predecessors, he needs to work with the experts to find out why this keeps happening to him and how he can change his approach to prevent it.

    Michael Hage is coming soon. The Habs' lineup is already flush when everyone is healthy and there soon won't be a place for a guy who spends more time on the training table than on the ice. It was a great attempt by Hughes to give Dach a new start. Now the player will have to find a way to adapt and stay healthy.

    If he can't, all the gifts of the hockey gods don't matter. If he can't...the Curse will win.