MONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens’ greatest captain was surprised, and he wasn’t, when it became clear last week that Saku Koivu had played his final game wearing the “C” above his CH crest. Jean Beliveau has been around hockey a lifetime, long enough to expect the unexpected.
The massive overhaul of the club by general manager Bob Gainey added five players, requiring the departure of others. Atop the list of the outgoing would be Koivu, the team’s 27th captain and its leader for nine seasons – 10, including the lockout season of 2004-05.
Gainey, the Canadiens’ 20th captain from 1981-89, remains the most recent to retire with the C on his jersey. The seven since have been traded or released, four of them trapdoored during a 26-month period in the mid-1990s.
Koivu has represented uncommon stability. In the eyes of many, the hugely popular Finn has been the heart and soul of this franchise since teammates voted him captain in the autumn of 1999, a courageous and inspirational leader on and off the ice.
Which counts for nothing in this salary-cap era, lavishly paid imports bringing the payroll to within a few million dollars of the league ceiling.
“I’m like everybody else. I’m a little surprised by all the changes,” Beliveau said of the Canadiens, dramatically altered in one day with a trade and four free-agent signings.
“They say that things were not that great in the (dressing) room last season. Am I surprised that Saku won’t be back? Yes and no, I suppose.”
Not for a second was Beliveau suggesting that Koivu was responsible for the off-ice controversy that infected the club for much of the year.
Nor does he believe that his own style of leadership, an effort to maintain harmony both in the room and away from the rink, can travel four decades to the global game of Koivu’s very different generation.
Beliveau still was feeling the shock of his 1961 election as captain when he told his teammates, “At any hour, if there’s anything I can do, not only for your career but in your personal life, I’m at your disposal.”
Try to imagine a Canadien text-messaging Koivu from a nightclub, or elsewhere, at 3 a.m., in need of counsel or consoling.
Montreal would win five Stanley Cups during Beliveau’s captaincy from 1961-71. When Koivu played his 663rd NHL game on Nov. 3, 2007, he became the longest-serving Canadien not to win a single championship.
But don’t ladle this solely onto his plate; he never led a team with the talent that could hold a candle, much less a torch, to those guided by Beliveau, whose clubs included 18 future Hall of Famers.
“The fact the Canadiens didn’t win a Cup (during Koivu’s captaincy) might have made his position more difficult,” Beliveau said. “I suppose not winning one might reflect on your leadership. Honestly, I don’t really know.”
The Canadiens’ legendary No. 4 has watched Koivu the past 13 seasons from a few rows behind the Montreal bench, and he’s spoken often of the Turku native’s work ethic that is beyond reproach. But now the page has turned and Beliveau soon will see his team select its 12th captain since he retired in 1971.
“Do you give the C to an experienced player who’s just starting with the Canadiens?” he asked. “(Defenceman) Andrei Markov is the one who should have it, I think. But does he have the temperament to undertake all the responsibility?
“If Gainey brings back Alex Kovalev, it would be difficult not to make him captain.”
Sunday, a few hundred fans rallied outside the Bell Centre to show the GM their support for the mercurial Russian.
“Maybe,” Beliveau said, laughing softly, “Bob is out of town.”
There was no such rally for Koivu, whose departure might be one purely of the bottom line. Or it might have been, though unspoken, something more.
It had nothing to do with his exemplary community involvement, his most obvious legacy a foundation that raised millions to help the gravely ill and disadvantaged. His selflessness and compassion for others had been pioneered in this city by Beliveau a half-century ago.
On April 23, less than a day after the Canadiens had been swept from the Stanley Cup playoffs by Boston, Koivu stood on a box of 100 pucks at the Canadiens practice facility and for 20 minutes quietly critiqued a season that had been loudly criticized for months.
Through four post-season games, he was the only Canadien to physically challenge hulking Bruins captain Zdeno Chara, getting in the sternum of a beast 11 inches taller and 80 pounds heavier.
In 68 days, Koivu would leave the team that in 1993 drafted him into the NHL, and he sounded like a man who knew that divorce was near.
He admitted that the prospect of new ownership, general manager and head coach come free-agency on July 1 – he was right, two out of three – could change the landscape entirely. Which it has.
Koivu was a Canadien for 16 years and five days, from the date of his drafting at age 18. His final shot on goal for Montreal, a 19-foot backhand, came at 19:47 of the first period in Game 4 of the quarter-final playoff against the Bruins.
He leaves with 191 goals and 450 assists in 792 regular-season games since he arrived in 1995, adding 16 goals and 32 assists in 54 playoff games. Koivu captained the Canadiens for 563 games, No. 3 all-time behind Beliveau’s 712 and Gainey’s 663.
Montreal has given him a broad perspective on life. In Montreal he’s grown as a player, husband and father as he battled cancer and linguistic intolerance, underwent knee surgeries, tore up a shoulder, played on a broken foot and nearly lost an eye to a high stick.
“I’ve seen and experienced a lot,” Koivu said of his captaincy in the hours before last season’s opening faceoff. “When you’re 20 or 30 or 35, you look at life in a different perspective. In every stage, there’s something good and something you want to change.”
Eighty-six games later, during a dark April post-mortem, a final question was put to him as captain: if he were Bob Gainey, which Canadiens free-agent would he sign first?
“Good thing I’m not GM,” Koivu said through a tight smile.
And then he disappeared through a side door, into his future beyond Montreal.
Source: Montreal Gazette
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