Another photo find

More vintage photos are popping up on eBay:

Here's Guy and coach Jacques Demers during practice on Great Western Forum ice in Inglewood, CA during the 1993 Stanley Cup Final between the Canadiens and the Los Angeles Kings.  Love Guy's Gretzky-style JOFA helmet!

(photo credit:  eBay/The Sporting News)

Carbo and the '94 lockout

With talks between the NHL and its players' association at a standstill, let's go back in time eighteen years to the lockout of 1994.  It began on October 1, 1994 after a year of NHL hockey being played without a collective bargaining agreement.  The big issue was the implementation of a salary cap -- the owners were in favor of it while the players were opposed.

Guy was traded from Montreal to the St. Louis Blues on August 19 of that year, a move that stunned him.  Still, he found himself acting as the Blues' player representative for the NHLPA in negotiations with the league.  This role was not new to him -- he became the Canadiens' player representative in 1991 after Ryan Walter, the previous rep, was traded to Vancouver.

When the 1994 lockout was happening, Guy was quoted as saying that he wanted nothing more than to play hockey, but he'd rather be kept in the loop in negotiations than be left in the dark.  He also said of being a player representative with no formal education:

"It was really hard at the start.  There are so many things you have to remember, and I'm not an English (speaking) person, so there was a lot of vocabulary that I never heard of before. I got out of a few meetings with a headache. 

Now, it's a lot better. I understand a lot more. It's easier for me."

Guy also raised a few eyebrows at the time when he said of the NHL:  "I wonder why they don't ask Mike Keenan or guys who want to start the season."

When asked about the 1994-95 season being cancelled, Guy said:

"I don't think it'll be the end of hockey because you'll still have 650 of the best hockey players in the world, and we can do a lot of things.  If you have 26 owners without players, they're nobody...They have the contacts to bring the money in, but without us, they don't have the product to play and bring in that money.  We don't have (the contacts) now, but it could come. We can still play hockey without them. I hope that they realize that. I'm not going to make that much money, but there's still going to be hockey.  In what league and what form, it's really hard to say. A lot of ideas have been put on the table, but I don't want to talk about that. I want to wait a week or 10 days and see what their actions are going to be." 

The season wasn't cancelled, though -- the lockout was settled on January 11, 1995 and the season was shortened to 48 games.  Guy would play only one season in St. Louis before being traded to the Dallas Stars on the eve of the 1995-96 season for Paul Broten. 

(with quotes from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; December 11, 1994)

Small roundup

Here's a photo of Guy taken at Saturday's alumni game in Ottawa:

Photo source:  Facebook / Fondation franco-ontarienne

A few video links I found:  Here's Guy (in English) on why you shouldn't buy a counterfeit jersey (from last year's awareness campaign) and a brief Dallas Stars highlight video (the blood in that first shot!).  

Finally, here's a State of the 'Stache update, screencapped from RDS this evening:

As my friend Ron says, it's a pubestache with 36 years experience.

The first encounter.

Since I've recently posted about meeting Guy at the Match des Etoiles in Ottawa, I decided that I may as well do a write-up about the first time I met him.  Yes, the encounter on Saturday was actually my second time meeting him.  The first was in October of 2008 in Montreal.

I learned in the spring/summer of 2008 that the parking garage at the Bell Centre is a great place to meet Habs players after practices.  By then, I'd pretty much determined that I was going to try to meet Guy no matter what it took to do it, so I enlisted my friend Aisys (WordPress link), who'd been at the garage before, to help me.  Also involved were the Montreal contingent, Kathy (who writes the Drummondville Voltigeurs blog Seven Thousand Volts and also writes at AllHabs.net) and Alex.

We got to Montreal via Greyhound.  The bus happened to stop right outside the Bell Centre, which was rather convenient, so we headed straight to the garage.  Players spotted right away (the Habs were hosting the Bruins that night, it was the first home game of the season actually):  Phil Kessel, Cam Neely, and Aaron Ward (who was wearing his ENORMOUS Stanley Cup ring he'd won with the Hurricanes).    

It took a while for the Canadiens players to start exiting the garage, and by the time they did, there was a good amount of people waiting.  (Enough that security had to put up a barrier.)  Some of the players gunned it out of the garage, which I honestly couldn't blame them for because I'd been told that autograph seekers in Montreal can be crazy -- there've been stories of them chasing the players' cars down the street.  But many stopped to sign and take pictures.  I'd been forewarned that the coaches are the last to leave, so I braced myself for a long wait.

I was actually not paying attention when Carbo finally appeared.  I heard Aisys say "Lisa..." and then a huge swarm of people around Guy's car (a beautiful convertible).  First impression of Guy Carbonneau:  incredibly gracious.  I'm not kidding when I say there was a huge swarm, but he signed for everybody.  I had my Dallas Stars replica jersey for him to sign, which I handed to him quietly because honestly, how do you find words when your hero is right in front of you?

Guy signing my jersey (photo by Aisys Adona)

Through my absolute terror I asked for a picture, and Guy removed his sunglasses.  (I wonder how many players think to do that when asked for pictures.)  Aisys then took this photo:

Look at me.  I really do look terrified.  Furthermore than that, I don't have any piercings!  (I didn't begin to get really actively interested in body modification until 2009.)  I should note that the young woman next to Guy in the car is his daughter Kristina, and I couldn't help but think that it must be strange to have all this attention centered around your father.  The Carbonneau daughters grew up with it and I'm sure they're used to it, but still.

My impressions of Carbo from both encounters -- he's very kind and obliging but also very quiet.  Whereas the other alumni players on Saturday were quite chatty, Guy was over there doing his thing.  Which is in line with what I've read about him in the locker room.  Quietly leading.  Words are not his forte (unless you incur his wrath) -- he shows you what he can do.  Which, in turn, reminds me of myself.  I'm much the same way.  (Though I can be quite long-winded on this blog.)

I guess it can be seen as somewhat crazy that I travelled all the way to Montreal for an autograph and a picture, but it was something I wanted to do, and in the end I'm glad I did it.  We spent the rest of the day touring the city, ate lunch at St-Hubert (yum), visited the Bell Centre store (yikes are souvenirs ever expensive in Montreal), relaxed in a park (I won't tell you what I wrote on a park bench, though perhaps you can guess), almost got interviewed by CBC News (Aisys told the reporter in regards to me "she's a big Guy Carbonneau fan"), and then jumped on the subway to catch the bus back to Ottawa (it was interesting to watch the throngs of people in Habs jerseys come up from underground, on their way to that night's game).

The other thing I learned:  hockey is very serious business in Montreal.  Which was underscored later on in the season and the following March, when the Canadiens relieved Guy of his duties as coach.

So that's the story of the first encounter.  I would wait four years to meet him again, and four years has seemingly made a huge difference for both of us.  Guy went from coach to TV analyst, undergoing two hip surgeries which were necessitated by the wear and tear of his playing career; and I found my way out of a huge personal rut, losing my own father along the way.  (My father's thoughts on the first meeting at the time:  "You need your head examined."  Oh dear.)

Will there be a third time?  Who knows.  For now, I'm grateful for the first two.  

And we're going for the hat trick

Third post, then this is it for today, I promise.  You may notice that the blog has a new layout.  Yes, after doing this blog for over a year, I decided to give it something other than the basic Blogger layout.  

The header photo is by photographer Bob Fisher and originally appeared in the December 1986 issue of Les Canadiens.  (Note the then-new Stanley Cup ring on Guy's hand.)  Image edited by me.

A post that has nothing to do with Carbo

I hope the readership will forgive me for doing this, but I'm going to do an off-topic blog post.  Well, maybe it's sort of on-topic because it is about hockey.

There are very few current players that have managed to capture my imagination and my loyalty the way Guy has.  That is not to say that I don't love the current NHL (lockout aside), but I guess I just like the old guys.  One of the exceptions to this rule has been goaltender Pascal Leclaire.  Regulars to this blog will know that I am an Ottawa Senators fan, and Leclaire came to our team in 2009 when he was traded from the Columbus Blue Jackets for Antoine Vermette.  At the time I was furious -- Vermette was one of my favorites (and a player who I believe has a lot of parallels with Carbo).  But in time I warmed to the goalie.  I was struck by his personality and humility.  Those who have played with him have said that he's a great teammate.

Unfortunately, Leclaire battled injuries throughout his career and the expectations when he came to Ottawa were high.  The injury bug hit him again with the Senators and he never did live up to those expectations.  But I was still a fan anyway.  Being a goalie fan is tough -- goaltenders have so much responsibility and often are the first to get blamed after a loss.  I'll admit that I got into a few Twitter fights defending Leclaire.  

Tonight on L'Antichambre, Leclaire announced his retirement from hockey at the tender age of 30.  It's very sad -- he had such great potential, drafted 8th overall in 2001 by Columbus, but again, in the end the injuries were just too much.  As of last season (while rehabbing from hip surgery) he was working as a hockey analyst with Radio-Canada, the French language arm of the CBC.  I hope that he can continue his TV career, or perhaps even become a goaltending coach at some point.  (Edit:  per RDS, he is working as an agent, consulting with young players.)

Best of luck in your retirement, Pascal.  I'll miss you on the ice.

A brief update

Found this neat, short promo for Guy on RDS the other day.

Also, of course this blog is doing updates on Movember -- here's a good read from the blog Hab It Her Way on why the cause is so important.