Last night the Montreal Canadiens added former captain Shea Weber to their Ring of Honor. It was predictable since the whole concept of the Ring of Honor is to pay tribute to the Habs players that are inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as Weber was last week. The Wraparound takes a look at the Montreal Canadiens' goaltending issues. While the fans were thrilled for the gritty blueliner and cheered him as he deserved, that addition and that of Pierre Turgeon made me wonder if the concept is flawed. I understand the desire to pay tribute to the men who wore the Tricolore and made it into the HHOF, but the truth of the matter is, they might not have played that much of a great role in Canadiens' history. I'm not questioning Weber's worthiness for the HHOF here, or Pierre Turgeon for that matter, but both players had their best years in another uniform. If you look up Weber's page on the HHOF website, he's wearing the Nashville Predators colours. If you do the same exercise with Turgeon, he's wearing the St. Louis Blues colours and yet, both of them are on the Bell Centre's wall. Meanwhile, a player like Tomas Plekanec who spent his whole career in Montreal, save for 17 games after the trade deadline one year, and has put up 537 points for the Habs is not honored anywhere. The man stuck with the Canadiens through thick and thin and had multiple impressive seasons at both ends of the ice, despite the state of the team and is nowhere to be seen. Last night, the Czech was in attendance at the Bell Centre and when I posted his photo on X, I was impressed with people's reaction. On a platform that's often a cesspool of negativity, all reactions were positive. Plekanec is not the only one in his situation. The same can be said of Andrei Markov. 990 games with the Canadiens and 572 points. Third in Canadiens history for points by a defenseman to only Larry Robinson (883 points) and Guy Lapointe (572 points in less games than Markov with 777 matches played). Neither of these players will make it to the HHOF and they won't get their numbers retired either. Markov has the numbers, but not the Stanley Cup, so essentially, he doesn't deserve to be remembered because the team that was put together around him wasn't good enough? There are Stanley Cup banners to remember championships teams, the numbers are meant to be about the players themselves. There are even those who are ready to argue Carey Price shouldn't get to the rafters because he never raised Lord Stanley's mug. The man is the goaltender who won the most games in the team's history. In a franchise which is famous for elite goaltending. This season, another player is climbing up the Canadiens' history ladder. Brendan Gallagher is now the 19th best goal scorer with the Habs with 226 tallies, he's 31st in points with 435. He won't get to the HHOF or to the rafters, but he devoted his life to the bleu, blanc, rouge and embodies what it is to be a Hab at heart, shouldn't there be a tribute to him somewhere in the building? Granted, the Canadiens haven't won a Cup since 1993 and the team went through some dark times since Patrick Roy was traded. Understandably, fans don't want to remember the teams from those years, but there were some players worth remembering throughout those dark times. A few generation of Canadiens' fans have never seen their team win the big prize, but does that mean their heroes are not worthy of getting some sort of tribute? What about Saku Koivu? He has the 10th highest point total with the Canadiens, if that's not worth immortalizing what is? Follow Karine on X @KarineHains [https://x.com/KarineHains] Bluesky @karinehains.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/karinehains.bsky.social] and Threads @karinehains [https://www.threads.net/@karinehains] Bookmark The Hockey News Canadiens' page [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/montreal-canadiens/] for all the news and happenings around the Canadiens
