Benden Morrow? Never heard of that guy!

Just a small funny that is peripherally related to Guy, as it is about his son-in-law Brenden Morrow.

This is the photo that the Stars handed out at tonight's game.  Morrow was being honored as part of the 20th Anniversary All-Time Team.

...Benden Morrow?  Oh dear.  Didn't someone think to proofread these before they sent them out to print?

At this rate I'm really hoping they don't misspell Carbonneau, which is a much trickier name!

The Dallas Stars 20th Anniversary All-Time Team is unveiled...

...and Guy is on it.  Yes!  I won't say how many votes I put in on the man's behalf, but it was a lot.

From the Stars' press release:

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The Dallas Stars announced the remainder of the 20th Anniversary Team, presented by Dr Pepper today.  Over the course of the last month, fans have had an opportunity to vote on DallasStars.com for who they would want to play on their all-time Dallas Stars team.

Marty Turco was the first member of the team to be honored on Thursday night against Vancouver; Brenden Morrow will be recognized Saturday night against San Jose, while next week's honorees include Jere Lehtinen (Thursday, Feb. 28 vs. Edmonton) and Jamie Langenbrunner (Sunday, March 3 vs. St. Louis).

Listed below is the full 20th Anniversary Team roster:

Forwards

Stu Barnes: 2002-2008

Jamie Benn: 2009-present

Guy Carbonneau: 1995-2000

Loui Eriksson: 2006-present

Bill Guerin: 2002-2006

Brett Hull: 1998-2001

Jere Lehtinen: 1995-2010

Jamie Langenbrunner: 1994-2002; 2010-2011

Mike Modano: 1988-2010

Brenden Morrow: 1999-present

Joe Nieuwendyk: 1995-2002

Steve Ott: 2002-2012

Defensemen

Derian Hatcher: 1991-2003

Craig Ludwig: 1991-1999

Richard Matvichuk:1992-2004

Stephane Robidas: 2002-2004; 2005-present

Darryl Sydor: 1995-2003; 2006-2007; 2008-2009

Sergei Zubov: 1996-2009

Goaltenders

Ed Belfour: 1997-2002

Marty Turco: 2000-2010

Members of the 20th Anniversary Team will be honored at home games with special appearances, promotions and interactive content on DallasStars.com. Commemorative photos of that night's honoree will be given to the first 10-thousand fans entering the building.

The number of votes garnered for each player determined what position in the depth chart they have (i.e. first line center). Twelve forwards, six defensemen and two goaltenders were selected by the fans for the team out of more than 200 players that have skated for the Dallas Stars. In total, over half-a-million online votes were cast. The remaining honorees will be announced on a weekly basis for the remainder of the season.

Fans are encouraged to visit DallasStars.com/myalltimeteam to view highlight videos of each player as they are honored.

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...a commemorative photo of Guy?  Gimme.  *grabby hands*  As soon as it's announced when Guy is being honored, it'll be posted here.

The story of Jimmy Roberts

This is the story of a Habs defenceman named Jimmy Roberts.

Born on April 9, 1940 in Toronto, Roberts played junior hockey with the Peterborough Petes.  In 1964, he made his NHL debut with Montreal and won two Stanley Cups before being selected by St. Louis in the 1967 NHL expansion draft.  He spent five seasons with the Blues, becoming team captain before his trade back to Montreal in 1971.  

He was a three-time All-Star.  He won five Stanley Cups, all with Montreal.  He played in over a thousand NHL games.  For all these accomplishments, it would seem that more people should know his name but instead he spent his career in relative obscurity.  Much like the subject of this blog, his job was to kill penalties and shut down the opposition's top scorers.  

Well, that's all fine and good, you say -- but what does all of this have to do with Carbonneau anyway?

At 37, Roberts' career was ebbing.  On August 18, 1977, he was traded back to the Blues in exchange for the Blues' third round pick in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft.

That pick was used by the Canadiens to select a promising young center named Guy Carbonneau.

Yes, that's right -- Carbo's playing career with Montreal began via a trade with the St. Louis Blues, and it also ended via a trade with the St. Louis Blues.  As for Roberts, after retirement he began a successful coaching career, coaching the Springfield Indians of the AHL to two Calder Cup titles (in 1990 and 1991).  In the 1996-97 season he served as interim head coach with the St. Louis Blues.

But, a salute to Jimmy Roberts.  Because without him, who knows how the story of Guy Carbonneau's career may have been written.

Why Guy isn't coaching in the NHL -- this blog's take on it

The Buffalo Sabres fired their head coach Lindy Ruff today, which is huge news because they hired him way back in July 1997.  To put that into perspective, I've doubled in age since he took the job.  (I was 16 then, I'm 32 now.) Many people in jobs that have nothing to do with hockey don't last sixteen years.

Anyway.  With Ruff's firing came the social media speculation that Guy would take over, which always happens when any coach in the NHL is let go.  The Sabres opted (at least in the interim) for Ron Rolston, who had previously been the coach of their AHL affiliate in Rochester.  I did some tweeting myself about why Guy is not currently coaching in the league, and I thought I'd expound on that here.

• The problems in communicating with players certainly figured in Guy's firing from the Montreal Canadiens nearly four years ago.  Here's the thing:  Guy, by all accounts I've read and by my own brief interactions with him, is an introvert.  Communicating isn't easy.  By his own admission he hired Kirk Muller as assistant because Muller had (and I'm paraphrasing Guy's words here) "something that I don't -- he can talk."  But, you ask, how can he discuss hockey on RDS and not communicate with players?  The answer is that introverts are funny -- I know, I am one.  I can stand up in front of a packed church and do readings but get me with someone one-on-one, and I run for the hills.  But the basic fact is that if Guy wants to coach in the NHL, if he wants to coach anywhere, he has to find a way to get around these issues.  There are ways to learn communication.  Which brings me to my second point:  

• Teams are turning to the AHL and other minor/junior leagues more and more to find new coaches.  (Case in point:  the Sabres and Ron Rolston.)  If Guy wants to be a head coach in the NHL again, I believe he will have to pay his dues and ride the bus -- something that, as of now, he's unwilling to do.  He has stated on the record that he will accept nothing less than an NHL head coaching position.  

Now, this is PURE SPECULATION, but honestly?  I think Guy's thinking is that he would take an NHL head coaching job if one comes up, but for now, he's enjoying the exposure and contact with the league that his current analyst position on RDS is giving him.

His former assistant in Montreal, Kirk Muller (who is now head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes) said recently when asked that Guy "should be coaching in the NHL."  I do think Guy's second chance in the league will come; he may just have to be very patient.

OT: Get well soon, Erik

Those of you who have been following the blog for some time know that I am an Ottawa Senators fan.

Tonight, our star defenceman, Erik Karlsson, was injured during a hit from Matt Cooke in which Cooke's skate cut his Achilles tendon.  He requires surgery and will be out indefinitely, if not for the season.  I'm not going to get into a debate on Cooke and whether the play was dirty, but I just wanted to say that Karlsson will be sorely missed on the ice and I hope he is feeling better and able to play again as soon as possible.

Best wishes.

Show and tell

Typically I don't buy Carbo autographed stuff anymore -- I have so many of his autographs it's not even funny, including some that he signed for me personally.  The exception to this is when something really interesting comes up.  So when this came up on the 'Bay recently, I went for it.

It's an original snapshot from 1993 of Guy in the Canadiens' Stanley Cup parade, which the seller had signed by Guy later.  His pen apparently died though, but that's okay by me.

And man, the shirt Guy wore in that parade sure was atrocious.

Guy's last goal

Mentioned previously on this blog was Guy's first NHL goal, on October 23, 1982 against the Quebec Nordiques, scored on goaltender Daniel Bouchard.

What about his last?

Guy's last NHL goal (regular season, excluding playoffs) was scored on March 29, 2000, eleven days after his 40th birthday.  It was the winning goal in a road game against the Florida Panthers, scored on goaltender Trevor Kidd.

And incidentally?  Guy was the last 40-year-old to score a goal for the Dallas Stars until Jaromir Jagr did it on January 19, 2013.

(photo by Brad Amodeo)

Dear L'Antichambre:

(photo source:  Twitter/ @JulienPaquette)

You really need more chairs.

Love,

Me

Carbo in the Final: 1986

This is the first in a series of five posts about Carbo's five trips to the Stanley Cup Final:  1986, 1989, 1993, 1999, and 2000.  First up, his trip to the Final in 1986, which resulted in his first Stanley Cup win.

There were a few stories in the 1986 playoffs.  First, the elimination of the Edmonton Oilers -- Stanley Cup Champions the previous two years -- which took many people by surprise.  But the bigger story, I think, was the Canadiens' rookie goaltender Patrick Roy.  He made his first appearance in net for the Habs in February 1985 and began playing regularly the following season, winning the starting job in the playoffs.  He would become the youngest Conn Smythe winner ever, at age 20.  

That Habs team had many young players, along with the veterans Bob Gainey (the captain) and Larry Robinson.  Guy was in his fourth season with the team.  Up to this point, he was the Canadiens' Molson Cup winner in 1983-84 and had scored the first of two career hat tricks.  In the 1985-86 season he achieved his career high in assists (36), and appeared in all 80 games.  In the playoffs, he notched a total of seven goals and five assists.

The Canadiens also had a new coach that year, Jean Perron, who in the playoffs confined his players to the team's hotel when they weren't playing or practicing.  Because of this, the players dubbed themselves "Alcatraz," and had T-shirts made of their new moniker.  There's a photo of Claude Lemieux, Gaston Gingras, and Serge Boisvert on the team plane returning from winning the championship in Calgary, celebrating while wearing their Alcatraz shirts.  Boisvert has a rose tucked behind his ear.

Before facing the Calgary Flames in the Final -- an all-Canadian matchup -- the Canadiens would first defeat the rival Bruins (in three games -- back then the division semifinal was a best-of-five series).  They would then knock off the Hartford Whalers in the division final (in seven games -- the Whalers' division semifinal victory in the previous series was the team's lone playoff victory before the move to Carolina), and the New York Rangers in five games in the conference final.

Carbonneau, Roy, and Lemieux after winning the conference final.

In the Stanley Cup Final, five games were played -- three in Calgary and two in Montreal.  The Canadiens would defeat the Flames by a score of four games to one.  After winning, they traveled all night on a returning flight to Montreal where they were greeted at Dorval Airport by an enormous crowd.  In the parade, the team traveled in convertibles and were mobbed -- the decision was then made in 1993 to have the Habs greet the Montreal faithful on raised floats for their protection and security.

Guy (behind Chris Nilan) in the Stanley Cup parade.

Nominated for the Frank J. Selke trophy for the first time that year, Guy would lose to Troy Murray.  His time as the league's best defensive forward would come.  But in 1986, at the age of twenty-six, he was a Stanley Cup Champion.

Carbo in GIF form

Playing around with some video editing software, and thus I made a GIF of this early Carbo goal against the Nordiques.

Enjoy!

ETA:  Made two more, of moments from Carbo's 1999 playoff run.  Here's a moment of Carbo frustration during the Stanley Cup Final vs. Buffalo:

And here he is with Lord Stanley at the Stars' rally:

This is fun!