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There are mind games in professional sports and a lot of them, comes playoffs time, the strongest team mentally often takes the win. During the 1996 playoffs, the Avalanche was facing the Blackhawks and Jeremy Roenick dared to taunt Patrick Roy by saying the Colorado netminder probably had to get his jock out of the United Center rafters after game 3. When the media asked Roy about it, what came out of his mouth was pure gold: “I can’t hear what Jeremy is saying because I’ve got my two Stanley Cup rings plugging my ears”. The Hawks were leading 2-1 at the time, but they ended up losing the series 4-2, they didn’t win a single match after the trash talking.
That quote just sums up what Roy is, a very confident winner, a guy who steps up at the best of time and who you can always rely on when the pressure is on. His departure from Montreal hurt the team so badly and marked the start of a dark age for the 24-time Stanley Cup champion. After the divorce, Roy won two more cups with the Avs, while the Canadiens are still stuck at 24 championships.
Perhaps it’s recency bias, but when I think of quotes coming strictly from the Montreal Canadiens, all that comes to mind are Marc Bergevin quotes. The first one came in the middle of a disaster of a season when the Canadiens kept on losing and the GM kept refusing to face facts standing by then coach Michel Therrien saying: “If you’re ever in a foxhole and you want [someone] next to you, that’s what Michel Therrien is”. Those simple words infuriated a huge part of the fan base as in their mind, Therrien had long overstayed his welcome.
The second one came during the tumultuous 2017 offseason. The Canadiens had made the playoffs but been rapidly dispatched 4-2 by the New York Rangers in the first round. During the regular season, Alex Radulov had logged in 54 points and became a fan favorite. As the Russian was a free agent, the fanbase was nearly unanimous that he had to be resigned, just like fellow Russian Andrei Markov who had been the Canadiens’ general at the blue line for so many years. As the days passed it became more and more unlikely that the GM could resign his two unrestricted free agents and, in the end, when he was asked if he expected loyalty from Radulov after giving him a chance to come back to the NHL, Bergevin said: “If you want loyalty, get a dog.” He uttered those words on July 2nd and the very next day, Radulov inked a five-year deal with the Dallas Stars while Andrei Markov latter announced that he was going back home to Russia to play in the KHL after playing 990 games with the Canadiens. There’s no telling if the players had heard Bergevin’s comment, but if they did, they probably thought “oh yeah? Well then, I’m no dog, I’m out of here”.
Do you have quotes you’ll never forget from anyone in the organization?
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