Interesting Canadiens Trivia, Facts And Numbers While You Wait For Game 5

Here's some past and present Habs tidbits to amuse and titilate you until the game five puck drops.

Not bad, for a whole four games into a playoff career!

Of all the goaltenders who have started at least one game in the 2007-98 playoffs, Carey Price leads or is tied for the lead in several categories. Most wins (before last night), our boy Carey with 3. Shutouts? Carey tied with one. Best save percentage? Price again at .956. Price also has the best goals against average, at 1.19. What other stats categories are left? Assists? He'll get one, but no one has any yet. Price was second in time on ice at 251:21, second most for goalies playing the first 3 games and about a dozen minutes behind leader Jose Theodore at 263. Price has stopped 110 shots in four games, 4 less than Martin Gerber has stopped in 3 games.

Oddly, Price has the best career save percentage of all goalies in Canadiens history with a .920 stat for 2007-08. How'd he manage that you ask? Well, they have only been doing the math since 1984, so Dryden, Durnan, Vezina, Plante, and Hainsworth don't figure in. Cristobal Huet is tied with Carey at .920 as well. Patrick Roy, the father of a fighting goalie in the Q sits 12th since 1984 with a .904 rate. Two Habs stoppers that made brief third period appearences in the Canadiens goal stopped everything. Olivier Michaud made 14 3rd period saves against the Oilers in 2002, and Randy Exelby stopped the one shot he faced in 1989. More on Exelby in a bit.

There are 13 former Montreal Canadiens playing in the present playoffs. They are: Chris Chelios, Theodore, Stephane Robidas, Cristobal Huet, Mike Ribeiro, Dainus Zubrus, Aaron Asham, Donald Brashear, Mathieu Schneider, François Beauchemin, Radek Bonk, Craig Rivet and Sean Hill. The Habs also have 3 former coaches in the playoffs ( one who's summer they are about to fast track ), one brother, and a son in law.



















In the 1915-16 season, when the Canadiens first won the Stanley Cup, their coach was Newsy Lalonde, who also happened to be the team's captain and the NHL's leading scorer that season. Years later, another former Canadien won a major NHL award ( no, not the Jack Adams Trophy, smart guy!) while coaching his team. I'll put the answer to that bit of trivia at the bottom of the page while you old timers wrack your brains. A clue would be: this player won the award while coaching a team other than the Habs.

Some round numbers: Matt D' Agnostini became the 700th player to wear a Habs jersey in the NHL on April 3, 2008 against Buffalo. After 71 goaltenders, D' Agnostini was the 629th skater. Gregory Stewart became number 701 one game later. Michael Ryder's next regular season goal in a Canadiens uniform will be his 100th. It will tie him with Serge Savard at number 54 on the Habs all time list. Alex Kovalev's next regular season point will be his 200th in a Habs jersey. He currently sits 70th all time, tied with Mathieu Schneider. Larry Robinson's career plus minus with Montreal is a fat plus 700. Wow!

Former Canadiens defenseman Guy Lapointe was a major prankster and general all purpose comedian. The Gazette's Red Fisher once said that Guy was his own biggest fan. Lapointe, in addition to being a power play specialist from the blueline, was vital to his team as well by being a clown and keeping things loose and stress free. Players would return from practice and find their shoes nailed to the dressing room floor or filled with shaving cream.

One time during the 1973 playoffs, the Canadiens were preparing to face the Philadelphia Flyers in the midst of their terrorizing Broad Street Bully era, and on the morning of one game, a group of Habs players were gathered together and staring off silently from a hotel balcony, an obvious sign of tension for what lay ahead. As visions of brawling fights and high sticks swinging filled the players minds, Lapointe sensed the impending feeling of doom while quietly looking around for a few seconds. Seeing the fear in his team mates eyes, lapionte dropped to his knees, cupped his hands together and raised them skyward. "Let us now pray", said the defenseman, as his brothers in arms buckled beside him in laughter. Players had tears streaming from their eyes and the laughs lasted a good while. Lapointe's goof had done the trick and the tension was erased. After losing Game 1 of the series, the Canadiens came back to win the next four, on their way to Stanley Cup number 18.


















Patrice Brisebois ranks 9th on the Habs all time list of most seasons played. He is 17th in most career games with 834. Saku Koivu is 23rd in games played with 727, and 34th in season with 12.

I'm a big fan of watching the annual NHL Entry Draft. I like all the trade drama, the talk of future stars and the wheeling and dealing of draft picks in the later non televised rounds. Each draft has over 200 chosen players, most of which you will never hear from again.

In 2000, Canadiens GM at the time, Andre Savard was involved in a couple of deals wherein teams swung multiple picks one team's way in order to move up in the draft order and select a player they coveted. The Mighty Ducks had it bad for Ilya Bryzgalov that year, and gave the Canadiens 3 draft choices in order to take the Habs 44th overall pick and select the goalie. In return, Montreal received Anaheim's picks for rounds 3, 4, and 5, or 78th, 124th, and 145th overall, who respectively became Josef Balej, Michel Ouellet, and Ryan Glenn. Balej was the player Bob Gainey dealt to the Rangers for Alex Kovalev. Ouellet, who is now with Tampa, was not chosen by the Canadiens in the 124th slot. Montreal traded picks number 124 and 145 to Pittsburgh in order to move up 10 positions and select Christian Larrivee, a big center with Chicoutimi in the QMJHL. Larrivee didn't exactly pan out. After a whole 11 games with the Hamilton Bulldogs over 2 seasons, he is now a member of the Rodovre Mighty Bulls in Denmark. The Habs in the end, might have been best off staying put, but it's strange sometimes how these things work themselves out. Just another proof that drafts are often crapshoots.

Mikko Koivu, Saku's younger brother, was drafted one position ahead of Mike Komisarek in 2001. Had the Wild not taken Mikko, one wonders who the Habs would have taken if presented with the choice?

Jacques Plante played 33,226 regular season minutes for the Montreal Canadiens from 1953 to 1963. If you break that total down it becomes 7 months, 20 days, 10 hours, and 46 minutes. That would be like going between the pipes on October 1st at midnight and staying there until May 20th of the following year, at a quarter to 11 in the morning! Former Habs goalie Randy Exelby spend a whole 3 minutes in the Montreal net in 1989. It was long enough for Exelby to be credited with having an NHL career stat as a Canadien player and slightly longer than it took Habs starter Patrick Roy to run to the Habs dressing room and relieve himself. They are not called relief goalies for no reason!

Answer: Doug Harvey coached the 1962 New York Rangers while winning the Norris trophy for best defenseman.
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A True Relief Goalie

(Robert L Note: A few weeks back I read this interesting tale and semi - bio on former Habs netminder Randy Exelby on the official NHL site. I always copy and paste these stories from external sources because they have a habit of vanishing on me just like news items tend to a few weeks after publication. You can be excused if you don't remember Exelby - his NHL stint was trivial and his tale quite unique. Exelby had the misfortune of being a goalie prospect in the Habs system during Patrick Roy's heyday. He was fortunate in his misfortune, you could say - many players don't even get to sniff an NHL game.

I have gotten away from posting historical pieces here at the site of late, getting caught up in the training camp stories and events leading up to the season opener. On non game days, I'm going to make a more concerted effort to post more stories and articles dealing with former players and their respective era's. If anyone stumbles across something they feel is of interest to Canadiens fans, feel free to share the link and I'll do my best to get it posted.

On another note, certain EOTP readers may know that I have another blog under construction called Montreal Canadiens Goaltenders. It features more than just the known goalies who have donned a Habs jersey, but also includes draftees and signed puckstoppers from 1909 to the present. Not all goalie bios are up, but there are close to 150 featured at present. Check it out.)

Every season, dozens of players get their first chance to play in the NHL. Playing in that first NHL game is something they’ll always remember.

Randy Exelby certainly will never forget his NHL debut.

In January 1989, Exelby got the call to join the Montreal Canadiens after starting goaltender Patrick Roy got sick. Exelby was playing with the Canadiens' American Hockey League affiliate in Sherbrooke. Quebec, and was the farm team's No.1 goalie.

Exelby had no chance at supplanting Roy, now a Hall of Famer, as the Habs’ No. 1 netminder. Nor was there much chance that he would dislodge Bryan Hayward, who was a solid backup with years of experience between Montreal and the Winnipeg Jets. He figured to do nothing more than sit on the bench and watch for a few games before heading back to the minors.

But on Jan. 27, 1989, Exelby got his chance to play -- briefly -- in an NHL game, against the Sabres in Buffalo. The tale of how Exelby got into the game may be the oddest story of a rookie finally hitting the ice in NHL history: He entered the game because Roy had to go to the washroom.

Talk about a "relief" goalie.

"It was a strange situation," Exelby said. "I was up with Montreal because Patrick Roy had tonsillitis, so I was there as Bryan Hayward's backup. I was up there for about five or six days - and just when Patrick was ready to come back, Bryan got sick and so it allowed me to stay a little bit longer. Patrick was taking medication for his tonsillitis, and it just so happened that I wasn't sure whether I was going to start the game in Buffalo, and I ended up not starting. I thought that was going to be my NHL debut."

Exelby went through the pre-game warm-up, then took his accustomed seat on the bench for what looked like another night off. He was at the end of the bench when he finally got the call to play - thanks to a little help from Mother Nature.

"In the second period, all of a sudden, the linesman came to the bench just like a student in the classroom and looked at (Montreal head coach) Pat Burns, and he says 'Pat, Patrick Roy has to go to the washroom.' Pat Burns looks around and says ‘What?’ He says 'Yeah, Patrick Roy has to go to the washroom.'

"So Pat looks over at Patrick and Patrick is nodding like ‘Yes, is it OK for me to go?’ And the whole Montreal bench is just cracking up and Pat Burns is dying laughing himself. So here I am, a 23-year-old rookie just happy to be on the bench, and that’s just a thrill enough for me. And then the next thing I knew, Coach Burns looks down at me and says; 'Well, you are going to have to go in. So, I put on my mask, grabbed my stick and just skated in there.

"I was in there for three minutes, I had one shot, Rick Vaive, off my pads and (Canadiens defenseman) Rick Green cleared the puck and Montreal received a penalty. They were just about to drop the puck for a faceoff and out from behind the net (from the dressing room) comes Patrick from his washroom episode. He kind of like taps me on the pads and (I was) back on the bench, more or less before I can get hold of the situation. I think I was nervous sitting back on the bench because I didn't have time to be nervous when I got in there."

In the end, Exelby’s NHL debut lasted three minutes and one shot. But those three minutes certified him as an NHL player - something no one can ever take away from him. But the situation that led to his playing time has become a legendary tale.

"They were giving me some static," he said of his Montreal teammates. "Russ Courtnall, after the play - actually it was a couple minutes later - when (Sabres goaltender) Darren Puppa broke, I think, (it) was his arm. Russ Courtnall came up to me and I asked me if I wanted the game puck and I was kind of shy and embarrassed, so I said no. I got a little bit of static for it and it was humorous. I thought it was kind of funny, and I got kind of a laugh out of it."

Exelby's stint in Montreal soon came to an end when Hayward returned. He was sent back to Sherbrooke, where he finished out the season.



Exelby's stint in Montreal soon came to an end when Hayward returned. He was sent back to Sherbrooke, where he finished out the season.

Back in Sherbrooke, Exelby noticed that people took a bit of an interest in his tale. It was one of those special moments that will always be remembered by anyone in attendance - both on and off the ice.

"They didn't make too big a deal out of it," he recalled. "It was humorous. It was one of those humorous parts of sports. It puts the game into perspective."

Over the years, people have asked Exelby if he ever played in the NHL. Aside from his famous three minutes with Montreal, Exelby appeared in one game for the Edmonton Oilers, a 6-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Feb. 2, 1990, Exelby allowed five goals in the defeat. But it’s those three minutes with Montreal that receive all of the attention.

"I usually say; ‘Yeah, I played in one game,’" he said with a laugh. "I don't elaborate unless they ask me to. But I keep thinking that it would be a great trivia question; ‘Who had the shortest career in Montreal?’ Three minutes, but that three minutes allows me to say I played with the Montreal Canadiens.

Yeah, I can see me and Ken Dryden sitting there and talking about our playing days with Montreal."

After his three minutes of "fame," Exelby went back to Sherbrooke and was named the AHL’s First-Team All-Star goaltender, won the Baz Bastein Award as the best goaltender in the league and shared the Harry "Hap" Holmes Memorial Award with teammate Francois Gravel for fewest goals allowed. But the Canadiens had nowhere for him to go and traded him to Edmonton just before the 1989-90 season. His pro career ended after the 1990-91 season.

Exelby’s preparation for a pro career wasn’t exactly a textbook model, either. He finished his college career in March 1987 with Lake Superior State in the CCHA. But the Canadiens didn’t call him up or send him to the minors, so he went home to Toronto, played some adult hockey and prepared for his pro career by becoming a "rent-a-goalie" at various rinks in the area.

"Our college season ended at the beginning of March, and training camp for Montreal didn’t start until September, so I had a long time between there," Exelby said. "I was working for construction for a few months, and I had to get in shape and get prepared for camp. Ice time in Toronto (in the mid 1980s) was pretty tough to get; there were a lot of arenas, but there was a lot of hockey going on as well. So I was playing once a week with some buddies of mine and I decided I needed more ice time. So I was in the rink one day and I looked on the board and it said, ‘Wanted: goalies for this rent-a-goalie.’

"This guy had a business. He ran a rent-a-goalie. He was more or less like a taxi dispatcher. People call him and maybe they don’t have a goalie. I called him up and went to his house and he explained everything and how it worked."

Exelby received about $10 a game to play during the summer of 1987 for playing against all levels of competition - from pro players down to adults who just learned how to skate.

"I didn’t really think of it as a job. It seems strange, and it’s another oddity," he said.