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MONTREAL — It is difficult to arrive here right now, to soak up some of the excitement around the hockey team and the affection for the guy who runs it, and not think about the very different situation at the other end of the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway.
Tonight — that would be the 23rd day of the month, one of those little details that they tend to pick up on hereabouts — Bob Gainey's jersey number will be hoisted to the rafters at the Bell Centre, among those of the other anciens Canadiens where it so clearly belongs.
Yesterday, a luncheon honouring Montreal's sports personality of the year (boxer Lucien Bute), with proceeds benefiting the Gainey family foundation, turned into a love-in for the Habs general manager, and a preview of what's surely to come during the ceremonies.
It was also a chance for hockey's Great Sphinx to bring the house down with his speech — you really had to be there — showing a side of Gainey normally visible only after a few beers at a local pub.
Sitting discreetly in the back of the room, the team owner's son, Foster Gillett, cheered and laughed along with the rest of the crowd.
So there, in a snapshot, you have it. A hero general manager. A visible, accountable owner. An appropriately-honoured past, coupled with a promising present. A once-great hockey franchise, a decade and a half removed from its last championship, apparently on the verge of a return to glory.
Eat your heart out, Toronto.
As a player, Gainey so defined the position of defensively-attuned forward that they had to invent an award to acknowledge its existence (the Frank J. Selke Trophy). He is remembered as an essential cog on great teams, as an honest worker, a self-effacing anti-star, as someone who rarely wore his heart on his sleeve but who showed up to play every night.
Later, he enjoyed success as a coach, taking the Minnesota North Stars to the Stanley Cup final, and as a team-builder, winning a championship in Dallas. His return to Montreal (if Ken Dryden had his way, he would have wound up running the Toronto Maple Leafs) was supposed to signal the beginning of a new golden era, though the truth is it has taken a little while.
Last season, the Habs fell apart in their final game of the season, narrowly missing out on the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The betting entering this year was that they would be part of a group of teams, including the Leafs, battling for eighth place once again, but for all intents and purposes spinning their wheels.
It was even whispered in places — well, not whispered, since here, on the all-Habs, all-the-time sports media, they tend to do a whole lot of hollering — that Gainey's job ought to be on the line.
Instead, with a nucleus of homegrown players and a reinspired Alexei Kovalev, Montreal is challenging for first place in the East.
And because of their youth, the Habs may be in that position for some time to come. Of late they have been surrendering goals at an uncomfortable rate, but give any general manager the chance to build a team on the foundation of a potentially brilliant, mature-beyond-his-years kid goaltender such as Carey Price, a still-evolving young first defensive pair in Mike Komisarek and Andrei Markov, and they'd happily take their chances with the rest. Perhaps they're still a year or two off. Perhaps the core of the Hamilton farm team that last year won a Calder Cup still needs another season in the NHL under its belt.
But with the East apparently wide open right now, with Gainey actively seeking to make a deal before the trade deadline Tuesday to improve his club, who knows how this hockey spring in Montreal might evolve?
This much is certain. Tonight's ceremony will be a tear jerker. The Habs do this stuff better than anyone else (consider the closing night at the Forum, versus the closing night at Maple Leaf Gardens), they strike the right balance (even if they sometimes inadvertently stumble into the quagmire of linguistic politics). And playing in the background will be the knowledge of Gainey's personal struggles, of a wife lost, a daughter lost, and the great dignity with which he and his children have played the hand they've been dealt.
"It may not look like it, but … it will be emotional," Gainey said at a press conference yesterday morning, acknowledging he's not the easiest person to read. "It has to be emotional. It should be emotional."
In this moment, with this team, so emotional that it will blow the roof off the place.
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