GM wants Canadiens players to ‘chart their own path’ 

MONTREAL – Twenty-four Stanley Cup championship banners hang above Bell Centre ice, among 15 retired-number banners celebrating the 18 Montreal Canadiens Hall of Famers who wore them with great distinction.

On Saturday, the Canadiens played their 106th NHL home opener, a 3-2 victory against the visiting Chicago Blackhawks. They followed that with a 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday and end a three-game homestand Saturday against the Washington Capitals (7 p.m. ET, TVAS, CITY, SNE, MNMT).

The entertaining home opener followed a curtain-raising ceremony that, by Canadiens standards, was understated and more simmer than sizzle. The relatively modest presentation of staff and players and a toned-down focus on the past was further illustration of this team’s change in culture.

Montreal Canadiens players lined up on Bell Centre ice following introductions before the Oct. 14, 2023 home opener, the Chicago Blackhawks just arriving on the ice.

“I grew up here, I totally respect the Canadiens’ history,” general manager Kent Hughes told NHL.com on Tuesday. “I grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s. It almost became a rite of passage to watch them win a Stanley Cup here (six times in the 1970s).

“I grew up playing with Larry Robinson’s son and I think my brother played with Jacques Lemaire’s son. The history was always around us. I think there’s the balance here: the past and the expectations of the present and allowing this group to chart their own path.”

There was no appearance on Saturday of the team’s flaming torch, often shared by players in past ceremonies.

The ice was not digitally set ablaze, there were no special effects, players did not skate onto a rink shrouded by dry ice.

Montreal Canadiens players salute Bell Centre fans following their 3-2 home-opener win on Oct. 14, 2023.

The historic past was not ignored, team legend Yvan Cournoyer opening a video montage. But this ceremony was about the current group, players skating out by position for their introductions -- goalies, defensemen and forwards followed by captain Nick Suzuki and alternate captains Brendan Gallagher and Mike Matheson.

Saluted in the stands and a suite during TV timeouts were Paul Byron, the popular forward who announced his retirement in September, his career ended prematurely by injury, then Carey Price, the winningest goalie in franchise history who is unable to play because of a surgically repaired knee.

But this game, the introduction to fans of the 2023-24 team, was virtually all about the present and the future.

Coach Martin St. Louis behind the Canadiens bench during the team’s home opener.

“It’s great to have the history around us,” Hughes said. “We’ve tried to open the doors more to our alumni. I hope that a player or two will connect with an alumnus and that they can learn more. Our players know this team has been very successful, but they don’t necessarily appreciate the history.

“We think that piece is important but it’s not going to supersede what these guys need to do. We need to focus on what we’re trying to build here.”

In fact, Gallagher and Tanner Pearson are the only players on the current roster who were alive in 1993, the last time the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup. Lost in the mists is the press release famously issued by Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau during the team’s run of four consecutive championships from 1976-79: “The Canadiens’ Stanley Cup parade will follow the usual route.”

Brendan Gallagher (left) takes the team’s torch from captain Shea Weber during 2019-20 home-opener ceremonies.

The torch, figuratively and literally, has been part of this team’s history for decades.

"To you from failing hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high…"

The passage displayed in Bell Centre and the Canadiens’ suburban training center dressing rooms is from the World War I poem “In Flanders Fields,” written in May 1915 by Canadian army officer, physician and poet John McCrae, a lieutenant colonel who fought, wrote and died in the Great War, succumbing to pneumonia in France in 1918.

Since 1952, the words have been displayed above the Canadiens’ dressing room stalls. They were put there by then-general manager Frank Selke Sr., who saw a profound meaning in McCrae’s words for his club, then coached by Dick Irvin Sr.

Montreal Canadiens Jean Beliveau (left) and Guy Lafleur with the team’s torch during 2013-14 home-opener ceremonies.

“In Flanders Fields” has been virtually sewn into the Canadiens fabric for more than seven decades; it will remain there moving forward. But the torch was nowhere to be seen on Saturday in a ceremony that was produced by the team’s marketing department and approved without revision by the hockey operations group.

“We receive memos from the League in terms of timing of pregame ceremonies, start times for games, and consideration for the visiting team,” Hughes said.

“You’re balancing a lot of different things. We were in agreement that the focus should be on this team and this group of players and the course they’re trying to chart.”

Canadiens executive vice-president Jeff Gorton (left) and GM Kent Hughes during the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville.

There will always be reminders of and respect for Canadiens history, Hughes said, players walking past a display of 24 miniature Stanley Cup replicas on their way into the Bell Centre dressing room.

“There is no disrespect to what’s been accomplished or our history, far from it,” he said. “It’s important.”

He pointed to gatherings the team organizes a few times per season, the idea of coach Martin St. Louis to have small groups of players invited to mingle with alumni.

“Marty has a great idea, doing this,” Hughes said. “If we brought the whole team in, the guys would stay among themselves. But bring three or four guys in and sprinkle them among the alumni, they have the opportunity to connect, to learn their stories and learn who they are.

Bell Centre ice is set digitally ablaze during 2019-20 home-opener ceremonies.

“Marty says a lot, talking to the group, ‘They’re your expectations for this group, they’re not mine. I’m here to help you create them but ultimately it has to come from within. It will be meaningless if it doesn’t come from within.’ ”

It's up to the current Canadiens, Hughes says, “to take ownership of that way of thinking and run with it.

“We hope that they aspire to get to those heights and take it step by step to win the Stanley Cup. It’s their history now.”

Top photo: Montreal Canadiens Nick Suzuki is introduced to Bell Centre fans before his team’s Oct. 14, 2023 home opener.