In the early 2000s, the Montreal Canadiens were not an elite team. That began to change in the summer of 2009, when Habs GM Bob Gainey underwent a big roster makeover.

The Montreal Canadiens are currently in the midst of a major roster rebuild. But it wasn’t all that long ago they were on a similar mission. 

Indeed, in this cover story from THN’s Aug. 3, 2009 edition – Vol. 63 Issue 2 – then-THN senior writer Ken Campbell investigated the Habs’ busy summer that would lead to a stunning Stanley Cup playoff run.

(And here’s your daily reminder: for complete access to THN’ exclusive 76-year Archive, you can subscribe to the magazine at THN.com/Free.)

The Canadiens were coming off a 2008-09 season in which they were first-round Stanley Cup playoff fodder, getting drilled in a four-game sweep at the hands of the Boston Bruins. Montreal GM Bob Gainey subsequently went out and added veteran forwards Mike Cammalleri and Brian Gionta via free agency and traded that same summer for longtime New Jersey center Scott Gomez. But the significantly revamped Canadiens lineup did not lead Gainey to make big pronouncements about how good the team could be.

“Could this team win the Cup? Who knows?” Gainey said of the new-look Habs. “Could this team miss the playoffs? Who knows?” People saying this and people saying that is very abstract. Let’s just get together and play.”

Spoken like a veteran of many Cup victories. But Gainey’s quiet confidence came after filling a key center role with Gomez.

“What we knew was we needed a centerman,” Gainey said. “What we felt we had was lots of pieces. We’ve been putting pieces together here for six or seven years. But we needed a really good centerman and we didn’t have it and we didn’t have it in our system and it didn’t look like it was going to show up in free agency. We knew we needed a centerman and that was our No. 1 objective and once that happened, the other things happened.”

“We try to acquire the best players available and Scott Gomez became available,” Gainey continued. “He upgraded us at center ice and it was our responsibility to do that. Is he good enough? He was good enough in Jersey. Will he be good enough again? That’s why we play.”

The Canadiens did play very well in 2009-10, making it to the Eastern Conference final that season before falling to Philadelphia in five games. But Montreal’s all-around quality up front that year was in no small part due to the impact the three forwards had on the group.

“A line (of Gomez, Gionta and Cammalleri), it excites me,” Cammalleri told Campbell. “That guy (Georges) St-Pierre, the (UFC) fighter, he’s not big, but he’s tougher than everyone else. So who’s bigger? I would say the guy who won the fight is bigger and if we win the game, we’re bigger, period. If we’re stronger as a line and we’re going to compete harder and we can make more plays and we’re just as or more skilled than the line we’re playing against, that’s my answer right there.”

TOTAL RE-HAB

Vol, 63, No. 2, Aug. 3, 2009

By Ken Campbell

Less than 15 minutes after the NHL’s Free Agent Frenzy™ began July 1, Mike Cammalleri was on the telephone doing the we’d-really-like-to-have-you-here-what-can-can-you-do-for-me ritualistic mating dance with Canadiens GM Bob Gainey. While the two spoke, Brian Burke, Bryan Murray and Glen Sather placed their calls in an attempt to cut Gainey’s grass. Thank goodness for call waiting. A little while after that, Mike Gillis made his pitch.

Cammalleri knew he was about to become even more wildly wealthy than he already was, so money and term were not the only issues.

The more Cammalleri listened to what Gainey had to say, the more he liked what he was hearing.

“When I talked to Bob, we talked about playing in Montreal and he talked about what he was going to do to try to make the team successful,” Cammalleri said. “I asked him what his plans were and he laid out exactly what he was going to do and he did exactly what he told me he was going to do.”

Everything Gainey has done in his 36 years as a player, coach and executive has been deliberate, well planned and sufficiently thought out. Even playing for a season with a team called the Epinal Squirrels in France was done with a purpose. Suffice it to say Gainey doesn’t fit the Imelda-Marcos-in-a-shoe-store profile. But there he was in the days leading up to and after free agency, cutting loose 11 established players and trading for and signing seven others. When the dust cleared, Gainey had taken on 24 years’ worth of contracts and a total outlay of $113,960,709.

Like everything else Gainey does, he did this after much rumination, then acted decisively. He changed the complexion, chemistry and culture of his team in a bold way. You may not like what he did – if so please take a number – but you cannot say the man was not decisive.

Nobody knows what to make of this team, even the man who himself assembled the roster.

“Could this team win the Cup? Who knows? Could this team miss the playoffs? Who knows?” Gainey said. “People saying this and people saying that is very abstract. Let’s just get together and play.”

So the Canadiens enter their second 100 years of existence not only with that distinct new car smell, but with almost as much on- and off-ice intrigue as they had when they took to the ice for the first time on Dec. 4, 1909. This is a franchise with a new owner, a new coach and a roster so radically reconstructed that new recruit Scott Gomez still struggles to remember all the new names.

Former owner George Gillett, who came onto the scene as an American interloper eight years ago and leaves as everyone’s favorite old uncle, is being replaced by a group of investors led by Geoff, Andrew and Justin Molson, who represent the epitome of Montreal old money.

Guy Carbonneau – fired late in the season before Gainey took the coaching reins himself – is being replaced behind the bench by Jacques Martin. And Saku Koivu, Alexei Kovalev, Mike Komisarek, Chris Higgins, Alex Tanguay, Robert Lang, Tom Kostopoulos, Francis Bouillon, Mathieu Schneider, Patrice Brisebois and Mathieu Dandenault are being replaced by Cammalleri, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta, Travis Moen, Jaroslav Spacek, Hal Gill, Paul Mara and some prospects.

It is a facelift the likes of which has never been seen before in Montreal. The Canadiens always seemed to be above unrestricted free agency, almost never making much of a splash come July 1. But rarely have they flamed out so spectacularly as they did this past season in a 100th anniversary celebration that slowly morphed into a kitchen party where people argued about religion.

So when Gainey looked at his lineup after his team was embarrassed in four straight games by the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs, he and his hockey department came to the conclusion the roster as constituted wasn’t going to take them forward.

And with more than $20 million in valuable cap space, Gainey went to work. He blew up his first line and set out to find a bona fide No. 1 center and apparently captain Koivu didn’t fill that need. Discuss amongst yourselves whether Gainey accomplished what he set out to do, but he filled the void by acquiring Gomez from the New York Rangers, he of a $7.4-million price tag in exchange for 16 goals this past season.

The Canadiens had previously tried to move heaven and earth to get Vincent Lecavalier from the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Sedin twins never did come up for bids and it became a seller’s market for UFA centers or for teams with a pivot to spare.

“What we knew was we needed a centerman,” Gainey said. “What we felt we had was lots of pieces. We’ve been putting pieces together here for six or seven years. But we needed a really good centerman and we didn’t have it and we didn’t have it in our system and it didn’t look like it was going to show up in free agency. We knew we needed a centerman and that was our No. 1 objective and once that happened, the other things happened.”

The other dominoes fell quickly and dramatically after that and by the time Gainey was finished, the roster had changed so radically it took some time to digest. Reviews were mixed. Critics argued Gainey blew a golden opportunity to significantly upgrade his roster, he needed to get bigger at forward and his team actually got smaller at that position, and he spent an enormous amount of first-line money on second-line players.

To be sure, it’s difficult to get a read on what this group will accomplish. It’s hard to imagine a line of Cammalleri, Gomez and Gionta getting near the net if they’re facing the likes of Chris Pronger and Braydon Coburn. On the other hand, they’re all character players with a winning pedigree. Montreal lost an average of nearly three inches and 13 pounds from a top line (Kovalev, Koivu and Tanguay vs. Cammalleri, Gomez and Gionta) that lacked size in the first place. They went out and got a bunch of very good offensive players and are trusting their collective success to Jacques Martin, one of the most conservative and defense-minded coaches the game has ever seen.

Perhaps the sentiment was best summed up on the Canadiens website by a fan who goes by the name weepingminotaur:

“Right now I’m neither happy with nor disappointed in the new Canadiens,” he or she wrote. “I’m sort of in between – mourning the past and missed opportunities, hoping things will work out but not particularly optimistic that they will and, paradoxically, energized by all the changes.”

To be sure, Gainey has taken a substantial amount of heat for the players he acquired. Some projections have the Canadiens missing the playoffs and in other corners the Habs have been roasted for the long-term deal to Gionta ($25 million over five years for a guy who had 20 goals last season) and acquiring the Gomez contract in exchange for Higgins and Ryan McDonagh, their first round choice in 2007.

“You have to take what’s available,” Gainey said. “We try to acquire the best players available and Scott Gomez became available. He upgraded us at center ice and it was our responsibility to do that. Is he good enough? He was good enough in Jersey. Will he be good enough again? That’s why we play.”

For his part, Gomez acknowledges he was “embarrassed” by his play this past season, which produced his worst offensive output in seven seasons and was the second of a seven-year, $51.8-million dollar deal he signed with the Rangers. He can take solace in the fact he was an 84-point man and Gionta scored 48 goals when the two played together in New Jersey in 2005-06.

“There is absolutely no question about it, Brian Gionta and I have a lot to prove,” Gomez said. “We need a big rebound year and what a place to have a rebound year. If putting on that sweater and playing in that building doesn’t get your blood pumping, you’re in the wrong game.”

Perhaps it’s a little easier for Gomez, who spends his summer fishing in Alaska, and Gionta, who spends his summers in Boston. But Cammalleri summers in Toronto and was privy to all the nasty projections for the Canadiens after they made their off-season moves. It was a crash course in the scrutiny he’ll face when he starts playing in Montreal. There were times when Cammalleri had to show his NHL identification card to get into the Staples Center in Los Angeles, but there is nowhere to hide now.

“There you go,” Cammalleri said. “There’s the first bit of negative right there. ‘This is brutal. They brought in Cammalleri, Gionta and Gomez to lead them. They’re going sideways.’ That’s what I’ve heard. I quite honestly don’t think many people have that great a mind for hockey. I think there are a lot of people who aren’t that smart when it comes to figuring those things out, so I’ll probably just discredit a lot of that right away. I don’t see it that way. I think when you look at our roster, it’s like, ‘Whoa, we have a formula here that can be a winner.’”

Few know exactly what to make of the Canadiens. When asked what his team’s identity will be, Gainey said, “New. I think it’s new – to be formed.” But when you look at what kind of character the Canadiens brought in and their approach to the game, say what you want about whether or not they’ll be any good, but it’s certain playing a game against Montreal will rarely be a leisurely stroll.

“When you play the Montreal Canadiens,” Gomez said, “you’re gonna know you were in a game.”

If the Canadiens lack in size up front, they’ve certainly made up for it in the back end with the acquisitions of Gill and Mara. Spacek is a very good puck-mover who will complement Andrei Markov nicely and Moen gives the Canadiens a piece of sandpaper on skates, a Stanley Cup winner who can play a checking role and drive opponents to distraction. Just ask Cammalleri, who was filmed for the MTV show Cribs a couple of years ago sporting a purple and black eye courtesy of a meeting with Moen the previous night.

“Punched me right in the face, right in the face,” Cammalleri said. “It was a scrum and I came to help a teammate and he gave me a right to the eye and it stung. I hated playing against that guy.”

Off the ice, the Canadiens have been making news for a different reason. When Gillett announced his intention to sell his 80.1 percent of the team, plus 100 percent of the Bell Centre and the highly successful Gillett Entertainment Group in the spring, it did not take long for the lineup of bidders to form. Reports suggest the Molson brothers and their group won with a bid anywhere from $543 to $560 million, by far the richest in the history of the sport.

It’s important to note the Molson-Coors brewery owns the other 19.9 percent of the team, but the 80.1 percent purchased was done so by the Molson brothers, using some of their own money and a lot from other people. Bell Canada has made its investment public, but there are hosts of others according to sources, ranging from Woodbridge Investments to the ALDO Group to Mike Andlauer, who owns the Hamilton Bulldogs of the American League.

The Molsons also represent a tie to the glory days of the franchise. Hartland Molson and his brother, Thomas, first bought the team in 1957 and held it until ’71. The brewery purchased the team in ’78 and held it until selling to Gillett in 2001. The Habs won 13 of their 24 Cups under the Molson corporate or personal name.

The deal is due to close in late August and will then be ratified by the NHL’s board of governors. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said there was still much to do before it’s finalized.

But at least one expert thinks the deal was a good one for both buyer and seller, saying the Molson brothers paid a fair price given the fact there were apparently 10 suitors for the team, including publishing giant Quebecor, which planned to use the Canadiens as a vehicle to operate a 24-hour all sports television station and to acquire a cellular license. Depending on how the Canadiens and Bell approach their convergence strategy when it comes to streaming and using the team for content, their ability to make money could be virtually limitless.

“And remember, the Canadiens are totally recession proof,” said Bruno Delorme, a professor of management who specializes sports business at Concordia University in Montreal. “The arena is always sold out. Last year, they found their merchandise boutique was too small, so they built a bigger one. Last year for the 100th anniversary, they were selling commemorative bricks and they sold out so fast they went into Phase 2. The Canadiens have an absolute monopoly on Tier I professional sports in Montreal.”

That is largely because of the passion the fan base has for the team and its universal appeal both inside and outside Quebec. Some players want no part of that kind of personal scrutiny, while others embrace it. Cammalleri knows there will be wonderful days to play in Montreal and very difficult ones to deal with if the team doesn’t fulfill expectations. So much, of course, depends on the play of goalie Carey Price, who turns 22 in August and likely had too much success too soon in his career and this past season failed to meet what others had expected of him.

Some are comparing the Canadiens and their new additions to the Smurfs, but it’s something players such as Cammalleri have been dealing with their entire lives. When Gionta was at Boston College, he was the smallest player on the team, but could bench press and squat more than anybody on the roster. None of Gomez, Gionta nor Cammalleri is noted for physical play, but they don’t get pushed around, either.

“A line like that, it excites me,” Cammalleri said. “That guy (Georges) St-Pierre, the (UFC) fighter, he’s not big, but he’s tougher than everyone else. So who’s bigger? I would say the guy who won the fight is bigger and if we win the game, we’re bigger, period. If we’re stronger as a line and we’re going to compete harder and we can make more plays and we’re just as or more skilled than the line we’re playing against, that’s my answer right there.” 

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