Rather deftly, Lebeau played both sides of the fence, tugging at his francophone forelock for French reporters when they came ’round, but never overtly criticizing his coach. He also understood that, in Montreal, youngsters had to wait their turn, no matter who they were.
“We had a funny relationship, me and Pat,” says Lebeau. “He was a policeman in his previous life, and I think he was also a policeman as coach. He really behaved like the man of authority, to the point of intimidation. That’s how I felt, especially as a rookie. But even veterans were often scared of him, of his reaction. At the same time, he was respected because, despite having that attitude, he was also respectful, which I think is how he ended up keeping his players around him.”
At one fraught juncture, Burns took Lebeau for lunch across the street from the Forum. “He said he had nothing against me, it was just a coaching decision. He said he believed in me and he asked me to continue working hard. But Pat was not an easy person to deal with. In the dressing room, he could pass right in front of you for five days in a row without even looking at you. And then, on another morning, he could act like you were his best buddy—‘How’s your family doing?’ So you’d say, ‘Okay, now he’s going to talk to me.’ And the next day, he’d be back to walking by without looking at you again. He was tough to read.”
Frequently dour and frightening to his players, Burns was also an unregenerate prankster, endlessly devising tricks to pull on the guys and good-humoured about those pulled on him. This was lowbrow, Three Stooges slapstick. “There was one really funny joke he pulled on Patrick Roy,” recalls Sylvain Lefebvre, who was then in his rookie season, another Sherbrooke graduate. “He had some powder that police use for getting fingerprints. When it gets wet, it turns blue. He put some in Patrick’s mask before practice. When Patrick started sweating, his face turned blue and he didn’t even realize it. He took off his mask and all the guys were practically falling down laughing.”
Lefebvre was the son of a Quebec police officer and so had some insight into what should be expected from the cop/coach when he arrived at camp. “Pat was tough but fair. Maybe there were some personality clashes, but Pat wanted to put his foot down early, make sure everybody was on board. Maybe he allowed a little more leeway with the veterans, but not that much, and that’s what made him respected.” Burns’s squabbling partner could be Mats Naslund one night, Stéphane Richer the next; nobody was safe or coach’s pet.
The extent to which these set-tos and perpetual ice-time disagreements were documented in the press reflected the media’s favourites. Says Lefebvre: “I mean, if he didn’t play me one night, you didn’t hear about it.”
A star Burns never crossed was Roy, largely because there was no reason. On a team that would be plagued by injuries all year—283 man-games lost due to ailments by the time playoffs rolled around, 126 more than the previous season—Roy was Burns’s ace in the hole.
“Pat was very good to me,” says Roy. “He would talk to me a lot. I felt he had confidence in myself, and that really helped. What I truly appreciated was he would explain everything and, when I was not playing, why.” In Burns’s first season, goaltending duties were generally split between Roy and Brian Hayward, the latter most often starting on the road. “The big change came the following year,” says Roy. “I remember going into his office and he said, ‘You know, you just won the Vezina and we lost in the finals.’ I told him I was ready to take on more games; I wanted to see if he felt the same way. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure how he would react, and I surely didn’t want to change my relationship with him. Well, he didn’t say much. But from then, he started giving me more games and more games and more games. He was the first to give me close to sixty games. He really gave me the net.”
And never considered taking it back, even when Roy surrendered three goals in fifty-seven seconds—a pair through the wickets—against the Bruins in a 3–2 loss in November, unflustered that his ace might be overloaded with work. Of far more concern was the continuing spate of injuries, which didn’t diminish expectations. “Because we wear the red-white-and-blue sweaters, they expect us to win,” said Burns of both fans and the team’s media entourage. But they beat Calgary in a Cup final rematch 3–2, reasserted Canadian proprietary rights over the game by defeating the Soviet Wings 2–1 in a January exhibition game at the Forum, and were 23–19–6 by the All-Star break, with Burns behind the Wales (Eastern) Conference bench. Nobody was remotely surprised when he padded out the ballot selection by naming three of his players to the roster: Richer, Chelios and Shayne Corson. For the actual game, his presence as coach was almost superfluous, simply opening the gate for superstar Mario Lemieux—fittingly, the spectacle was hosted by Pittsburgh—who scored three goals in the first period as the Wales Conference dumped the Campbell Conference 12–7.
More stimulating was a late-January match with the Division-leading Bruins, marked by a heated exchange of words with his opposite number, Mike Milbury, who’d taken the coaching reins in Boston. Standing atop the Montreal bench, Burns hollered and gestured towards Milbury, who was just as vocal in return. The harsh words prompted the two coaches to move menacingly towards each other, but the officiating crew—and police—held them back and order was eventually restored. Boston squeaked out a 2–1 victory.
Burns reminded anyone who asked—and they all asked—that Montreal was rebuilding, a word he was antsy about using. “We can’t call it rebuilding,” he told a media scrum in mock horror. “We have to call it a transition. If I use the word ‘rebuilding’ here, they’ll hang me.” When a package arrived for him at the Forum, he gave it a leery shake, pretending to be worried about a bomb. “It’s the greatest job in hockey, but it comes with a curse. The curse is, you’ve got to win. I’m trying to make everybody understand that we won’t get 115 points this year and we might not get to the Stanley Cup final.”
There was no jovial bantering a month later, when co-captain Guy Carbonneau and defenceman Craig Ludwig were scratched for a game—suspended—after disobeying a Burns order not to leave their hotel following a crushing 5–3 loss in Boston and sneaking off to a bar. Carbonneau sucked up the punishment as just. “Even if I’m captain, the rules are there for everybody.”
The injured started trickling back, but Burns was still forced to lean heavily on his “brats,” especially on the blue line, Lefebvre and Mathieu Schneider stepping up when Chelios was felled by a stretched cruciate ligament in his left knee, for which he went under the knife in late March. Without “Cheli,” it would be a prohibitive task to catch Buffalo for second place in the Adams Division—they didn’t—much less make another run at reaching the finals. A nightmare season of injuries had taken Carbonneau, Lemieux, Bobby Smith and Brian Skrudland out of the lineup for more than a month at a time.
Back-to-back ties closed out the season, giving them 93 points overall and third place in the Adams Division, the Sabres their first-round opponent. Buffalo had twice defeated Montreal since February, when their hold on second was threatened, and were 3–0–1 against the Canadiens in the cozy confines of the Memorial Auditorium, where the series would open.
A classic Buffalo blizzard raged outside the rink on April 5 as the teams lined up for game one. Inside, the Sabres whipped up an ice storm of their own, freezing out the visitors 4–1. High-tempo, fast-paced and bone-crunching, Buffalo punished the Habs’ battered bodies with goalie Daren Puppa prolonging his mastery of Montreal. In the trainer’s room, Chelios continued his frantic rehab regimen.
The Sabres, unwisely, crowed about their win, some speaking prematurely about a Stanley Cup final for the franchise. Montreal’s players were indignant to learn Buffalo had a cardboard Cup cut-out in the dressing room. For game two, the Aud was festooned with “Pump it up for the Stanley Cup” banners. Carbonneau sniffed: “You could see all those banners. They made the mistake of being overconfident. You have to know how to stay humble.”
Montreal humbled the Sabres, surviving an early two-man disad
vantage, their confidence growing from there to surface with a 3–0 win. “Playoff hockey has a lot to do with luck, with who gets the breaks,” Burns said afterwards. “It was our turn.” It was more than merely luck. While Burns had sometimes been damned with faint praise as a coach big on motivational genius but wanting on Xs-and-Os tactics, it was his sharp penalty-killing strategy that kept Buffalo off the score sheet: setting up a passive box that frustrated Buffalo’s penchant for making pretty cross-ice passes, Burns ordered his players not to rush the puck carrier or challenge aggressively against the point. The Sabres were thrown off stride by this passive-aggressive technique.
On the morning of game three in Montreal, Burns woke up sniffing OT in the air. “We’re due for an overtime game,” he predicted, correctly. “I can smell it.” Montreal prevailed in the ultra-conservative encounter that unfolded, Brian Skrudland squeezing the winner past Puppa and the left post at 12:35 of the extra frame. Two nights later, Buffalo evened the series on Montreal ice, Pierre Turgeon notching a pair in the 4–2 victory. It was their last hurrah. Montreal edged the Sabres 3–2 in Buffalo—Burns double-shifting Richer, who scored his fifth and sixth of the playoffs—and the coach was anxious to end it back at the Forum in game six. “We don’t want to come back here for a seventh game.” Actually, neither home nor away ice seemed to please Burns, who found reason to fret over playing in front of a keyed-up Montreal audience. “Playing at home, guys get more nervous. The fans get impatient. They want a goal right away. By doing that, the players tend to lose the team concept and start playing as individuals. Players start doing things that aren’t them. Then mistakes happen and the other team scores.” He tried to quell the rah-rah. “We can’t win a game in the first five minutes or even the first period.”
And Montreal did start sluggishly, but there was no real doubt about the outcome from then on, as the home side emerged 5–2 victors, taking the first round in six. Montreal had proved too opportunistic, too experienced and too quick for the Sabres to handle. The grinding goaltenders’ duel was not particularly entertaining hockey, and Burns made no apologies for that, though Claude Lemieux did. “I know sometimes we’re not a pretty team to watch. I know people pay good money to see us put on a show, but we’re not here to do that—we’re here to win.”
Inside their dressing room, the Habs celebrated in reserved fashion. They’d been the underdogs against Buffalo—Burns’s preferred status—because the Sabres had the better season. But few truly expected the Queen City to emerge triumphant when tossed into the playoff bell jar against a club with Montreal’s history. For the seventh consecutive season, Buffalo had lost in the first round.
In New England, Boston had weathered seven-game fits with Hartford en route to what was expected to be yet another titanic showdown with historical nemesis Montreal in the Adams Division final. There was no time to savour the triumph. Said first-year coach Mike Milbury following his team’s game seven thriller: “A series win over Hartford deserves more than a Budweiser, a baloney sandwich and five hours of sleep.” Burns professed to have preferred Boston as a playoff dance partner over Hartford: “Montreal versus Boston is the series all of Canada wants to see. I would have been a bit worried if we’d played Hartford. I know the guys will have no trouble getting up for Boston—the feeling is completely different in the dressing room when we play the Bruins.” That history gave Boston GM Harry Sinden agita. “I’m tired of losing to them every spring.” Montreal, of course, had eliminated the Bs in five of the last six seasons and were 21–3 overall in playoff series against them. Despite their edge in season play, the Bruins were yet again staring down a playoff barrel, seeing red-white-and-blue jerseys stampeding their way.
Montreal got an emotional—and lineup—boost when Chris Chelios, who’d missed the final twenty-one regular-season games and the Buffalo series, was pronounced fit to resume his hockey labours. Didn’t make a lick of difference as the Bruins outdefended the defence-first Canadiens with a crisp, pristine, 1–0 win behind Andy Moog’s stellar goaltending. For game two, sniper Stéphane Richer also returned from a twisted ankle and scored two. But in the oppressive heat of the Boston Garden, the Bruins rallied from four one-goal deficits, Cam Neely’s second of the night with 1:49 left in regulation time sending it into overtime and Garry Galley scoring the 5–4 winner. Suddenly, the Bruins had a stunning 2–0 lead in the series. When the Canadiens were then rudely smacked around 6–3 back at the Forum, Patrick Roy chased from the net, they found themselves in the mortifying position of becoming the first Montreal squad in thirty-eight years to bow out in a straight set. Fans had emptied the Forum with seven minutes left. “It was hard, very hard, but he understood,” said Burns of yanking Roy. “I can tell you right now, Patrick Roy is going back in.”
The Montreal machine was unravelling like a ball of string, and tempers were fraying. Burns tried to strike a reasonable tone at first, pointing out Boston had finished eight points ahead of Montreal in the regular season and the Habs had been hard pressed to get past the Sabres. “People didn’t give us a chance in hell of beating Buffalo. And when we did, everyone gave us the Cup. We know that’s not true.”
Reporters, retroactively, studied the entrails of the season, seeking indicators for this precipitous downfall. The obvious chink was Montreal’s pitiful power play, but that was too banal an explanation for many. There were rumours of dissension in the ranks, a tendency towards cliques cool to each other, in defiance of Burns’s all-for-one doctrine. Some traced the friction all the way back to the split-vote over the captaincy. One loss away from elimination, Burns was clearly in a state of shock, looking and behaving like a man carrying the woes of the world on his shoulders, his voice strained by inflamed tonsils. In the crisis, he became once more the focus of attention, with answers demanded. At practice, Burns and Lemieux got into a heated exchange within earshot of reporters, and cameras caught the red-faced coach brandishing a stick right under his insolent player’s chin. Lemieux grumbled: “I know what’s wrong with our power play, and I’m not a genius.”
“BOSTON BROOMS!” shrieked gleeful headlines in Beantown, anticipating the sweep, which no B-team had ever accomplished in a seven-game series with Montreal. In desperation, and with no small amount of smirking from his French-Canadian critics in the media, Burns pulled Stéphan Lebeau out of street clothes for game four. The fan-favourite rookie, with fifteen goals on the season, hadn’t played in three weeks, and Burns had heard an earful, though the insertion had more to do with an ankle injury that sidelined Richer.
Lebeau’s playoff debut was memorable. In fairy-tale fashion, he broke a 1–1 third-period tie with his first NHL postseason goal, finishing off a play he’d started, and then stuffing a wraparound past Moog for his second of the night, giving Montreal the only two-goal lead it had enjoyed in the series. Coupled with a tough-as-rawhide effort from Carbonneau, who contributed two goals, the Canadiens staved off elimination 4–1. Montreal played with an intensity bordering on anger.
“Lebeau made a big difference,” said Burns. “With the injuries we’ve had all year, we’ve had to look for different people to step up and help us find a way to win. And tonight we found Stéphan just in time.”
The kid was over the moon. “I’ve tried to keep a positive attitude. I didn’t play much at the end of the regular season, but I kept ready in practice just in case there was an injury and I would be needed. And tonight was the night. I was on the puck all night long and it kept coming to me. I felt good in the warmup and confident that I could help. We’re still in this thing, and anything can happen.”
A reporter approached Milbury afterwards, wondering why the Bruins always lost to Montreal when it counted. Smiling warmly, Milbury responded, “Fuck you.”
Before the game, Lebeau had warned that he was no saviour. But a French paper the next day trumpeted his impact as “LEBEAU: LE SAUVEUR!” The team was already in Boston by then, where Burns vainly tried to justify his scarce use of Lebeau by claiming he’d sim
ply hoped to nurture him slowly. “I’m sure this morning in Montreal I look like a dummy.”
Lebeau had almost singlehandedly averted the sweep. “How sweep it wasn’t,” mourned a Boston columnist. And in game five, Lebeau looked primed to do it again, notching the 1–1 equalizer with thirty-three seconds remaining in the second period. But there’d be no miracle. Boston pulled ahead, and a Cam Neely empty-netter sealed Montreal’s fate, 3–1. Bounced in five.
If the guillotine were still in use, Forum faithful would have been screaming for heads to roll. In fact, the Canadiens had been in over their heads, Boston too strong an opponent, palpably the better team. Montreal finished the series 1-for-22 on the power play, 2-for-51 in the playoffs; that was the main problem. Carbonneau, it was revealed, had been playing with a cracked bone in his wrist. And Chelios would go under the scalpel again for a hernia operation. As a coach, Burns had shrunk to mortal dimensions, but the failures were not laid primarily at his doorstep—not yet.
Of course, this being Montreal, there was no real off-season. GM Savard, who’d taken intense heat from local media for not making late-season trades to strengthen his team as the playoffs approached, said the organization would “take a long, serious look at our hockey club,” indicating changes would be made.
Chelios was among those hoping there would be no shakeup. Then he became, dramatically, the first big name to depart. He learned about his trade to Chicago in a one-minute phone call from Savard, who was at the AHL meetings in Bermuda. The swap for native Montrealer Denis Savard—hometown boys trading places—had been in the works, allegedly, for about a week when announced in early July. But it seemed more than coincidence that Savard pulled the trigger within twenty-four hours of discovering that Chelios and close buddy Gary Suter had been arrested following a punch-up outside a bar in Madison, Wisconsin.
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