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The Canadiens know how desperately the club has needed a bona fide elite sniper for decades.
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There was never the ghost of a whisper of a chance that Cole Caufield was going to end up anywhere except where he is.
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Let the rumour mill spin. It means nothing. Kent Hughes is a fine, thorough, one-step-at-a-time general manager, operating in sync with Jeff Gorton and France Margaret Bélanger, who herself provided the Canadiens organization with an injection of high-level ability at exactly the right time.
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Credit also to Geoff Molson, who has proven that he can learn on the job.
They know what Caufield is. They see the spark he brings to this team. They know how desperately the club has needed a bona fide elite sniper for decades. No matter what you heard from Morning Mouth on the radio or read from Joe Insider, Hughes was going to bring this contract in with all the finesse of “Sully” Sullenberger feathering is Airbus A320 into a gentle landing in the Hudson River.
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Unlike his predecessor, Hughes doesn’t take things personally and turn vindictive. So Caufield is signed for eight years at $7.85 million, a respectful few bucks below his buddy and linemate Nick Suzuki, who carries a bigger load.
A round of applause, if you please. Now Hughes can get on to other things, like Samuel Montembeault and the draft, and the rest of us can go back to watching the playoffs. Or not.
Lessons from the ’93 Cup: Speaking of watching the playoffs, I spent a lot of time glued to the television the past month, watching not the 2023 postseason but the Canadiens’ marvellous spring to their 24th Stanley Cup in the spring of 1993 — research for Saturday’s piece on the last time the Cup came home.
Watching 20 consecutive episodes of a decades-old Stanley Cup triumph is a head-spinning experience. You feel a bit stunned at the end, out of sync, out of time. But it was well worth it, watching the 1993 Canadiens triumph unfold with 16 wins and the riot along the usual route.
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There were many takeaways, but three worth mentioning: First, that team was far better than you’ve been led to believe. Second, Eric Desjardins was a premier plan defenceman, head and shoulders above the rest of the Montreal blue-liners at the time.
Finally, while it’s not true that Patrick Roy won either the 1986 or the 1993 Stanley Cups by himself, watching him take the puck between his teeth and run with it was one of the genuine delights of the game.
Unfortunately, the gift of hindsight also makes it impossible to ignore that little voice in your ear that keeps whispering, “what went wrong? How did the Canadiens become such sad sacks in such a short time? Why were so many of the heroes of 1993 gone almost before we got a chance to salute them?”
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(In terms of the sheer speed of the collapse, of course, what happened in 1993 doesn’t rival the freefall of 2021, when Marc Bergevin and Dominique Ducharme steered the Stanley Cup finalists to the basement with all the grace of a drunk tumbling down a flight of stairs.)
First of all, the narrative that the Canadiens undoing was all Réjean Houle’s fault is completely false and always was. It was Ronald Corey who finished the job in the autumn of 1995 — but it was Savard, architect of the last two Canadiens Stanley Cups, who was guilty of dismantling a team he had built so well.
Between 1990 and the day in October 1995 when he was fired along with Jacques Demers, Carol Vadnais and André Boudrias, Savard dealt Chris Chelios, Petr Svoboda, Guy Carbonneau, Eric Desjardins, John LeClair, Kirk Muller and Mathieu Schneider.
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Sometimes the return was pretty good — Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov for Muller and Schneider. Sometimes it wasn’t enough — Recchi for Desjardins and LeClair. Sometimes it was nonexistent — Carbo for Jim Montgomery.
Simply by refraining from these deals, Savard could have had Damphousse, Muller, Carbonneau and Saku Koivu up the middle. He could have had a defence with Chelios, Desjardins, Svoboda, Schneider, Patrice Brisebois, J.J. Daigneault and hard-work Lyle Odelein.
Yes, Houle would make the Roy deal under pressure, and unwisely toss captain Mike Keane into what was already a bad trade for the Habs. More blame attaches to Houle for later deals when he shipped Turgeon and Craig Conroy to St. Louis for Shayne Corson and Murray Barron and to the 1999 trade that sent Damphousse to the Sharks for a couple of useless picks and a first-rounder that became Marcel (The Wrong) Hossa.
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But much as Serge Savard deserves credit for building two Stanley Cup champs, he deserves a healthy share of the blame for undoing what he built.
Heroes: Cole Caufield, Kent Hughes, Jeff Gorton, France Margaret Bélanger, Samuel Montembeault, Ilkay Gundogan, Elina Svitolina, Carlos Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek, Eric Desjardins, John LeClair &&&& Patrick Roy — the greatest Habs goaltender and the greatest money goalie of all time.
Zeros: The Las Vegas Golden Knights, Gary Bettman, Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Mike Babcock, Novak Djokovic, Anthony Bass, Clayton Kershaw, Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.
jacktodd46@yahoo.com
twitter.com/jacktodd46
When the Stanley Cup last came home
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