The 2015-16 season wasn’t exactly an easy one for the Montreal Canadiens, with some questioning the club’s choice of captain—including, according to a recent rumour, head coach Michel Therrien.
TVA Sports’ Renaud Lavoie cautions hockey fans against reading too much into those reports, and says instead that the issues lied not with Max Pacioretty‘s leadership skills, but rather with the captain’s lack of a supporting cast.
Like just about all of the Canadiens’ problems last season, trouble began with Carey Price‘s injury in November.
“Carey Price is a leader on that team. I always said he’s the natural captain of that team. The problem is, he can’t wear a C. And the other problem is, last year he wasn’t around the team at all. He decided that he had to go to rehab. He didn’t want to be a distraction,” Lavoie told The Jeff Blair Show on Sportsnet 590 The Fan Tuesday. “He was not traveling with the team before he was ready to practice with the team—that was in March, which was way too late. So there was a big problem inside that dressing room.”
Lavoie said Therrien and general manager Marc Bergevin took notice and recognized that “they needed to help Max Pacioretty, leadership-wise.”
“One man can’t do everything,” said Lavoie, pointing to Pacioretty’s supporting cast of 2015-16. “You look at the [alternate] captain with the team, Tomas Plekanec: great player, great guy, but he’s not a vocal leader. You have Andrei Markov. Great guy, good leader, but he’s not a vocal guy. Those two guys are not going to be the ones who are really going to help a captain.”
Enter Shea Weber, whom Lavoie said will make the difference for the Canadiens. The longtime captain of the Nashville Predators came to Montreal in the blockbuster June 29 trade that saw P.K. Subban depart for Nashville in return.
“That’s what Bergevin did this off-season. He really tried to help Max Pacioretty, and obviously the team,” said Lavoie, who also points to two-time Stanley Cup champion Andrew Shaw, formerly of the Chicago Blackhawks, as a vocal leader who can help Pacioretty.
“At the end of the day, leadership was a problem in that dressing room. Marc Bergevin and Michel Therrien noticed it, and instead of saying, ‘Well, we’ll see how it’s going to turn out next year,’ they resolved the problem. Period. That problem is not there anymore. This is a problem that was there last season,” said Lavoie.
“Remember that it’s the players who voted for Max Pacioretty. Remember two years ago, there was no captain with the Montreal Canadiens.”
Class is already in session. Lavoie said Weber and Pacioretty have spent much of the last few weeks prior to the World Cup together and are “talking all the the time.”
“Max embraced his role. He’s a true Montreal Canadien. He wants to win in the city, and he’s really happy now to have help,” he said. “That wasn’t there last season, and now help is coming in and I don’t think [we] will have another conversation about leadership in the Montreal Canadiens during the season.”
