Source :
Montrealgazette.com
One of the first conversations Daniel Brière might want
to have with his new Canadiens teammates will be with goaltender Carey
Price, a gentle apology for a villainous act Brière doesn’t even
remember committing.
It was Feb. 16, 2008, and Price had just
earned his first career NHL shutout, 34 stops blanking Brière’s
Philadelphia Flyers 1-0 at the Bell Centre. And before a Canadien could
retrieve the final-buzzer puck for Price’s trophy case, a frustrated
Brière flipped it lazily over the glass and into the crowd where it
would disappear forever.
“Really?” Brière said Tuesday evening
from Arizona, his first of many laughs punctuating a wide-ranging talk.
“I did that? I had no clue.
“I don’t remember it, but I can assure
you, it was not done on purpose. I’m very respectful of things like
that. Had I known it was Carey’s first shutout, I’d have been the first
to send the puck down the ice to him.
“Flipping it over the glass was a total accident.”
Price,
Brière should know, is not big on collecting souvenirs from his NHL
shutouts, currently 22 and counting; he’s never thought a thing about
Brière’s breach of etiquette. The Canadiens took another puck from the
game to mount on a plaque for Price and, probably until now, the goalie
has known nothing about it not being “the” game puck.
With this
mea culpa out of the way, Brière could get down to the business of
building relationships in the Canadiens dressing room, his home for the
next two seasons following the signing last Thursday of his two-year,
$8-million contract as an unrestricted free agent.
The 35-year-old
Gatineau native will arrive in Montreal in a fishbowl as much as on a
sheet of ice, a highly scrutinized francophone forward who is determined
to prove to his team, to its often mind-bent fans and even to himself
that he has not yet reached his best-before date.
His production
dipped to a career low in lockout-shortened 2012-13, totalling six goals
and 10 assists in 34 games; the year before shows a thin 49 points on
16 goals in 70 games.
There have been extenuating circumstances.
Brière suffered concussions in both seasons and arrived with the Flyers
following the lockout with a wrist mending from a fracture suffered in
Germany.
You suggest to Brière that 2013-14 could be viewed as a
comeback season for him and he replies: “I think that’s fair to say. I
know there’s a lot left in the tank, there’s no doubt in my mind. I
can’t wait to get out there and show everyone and be a part of the
greatest franchise in hockey.”
With 847 NHL games to his name
through 15 seasons, another 108 in nine playoff campaigns, you’d think
that Brière was beyond feeling that he needed to prove anything to
anyone.
“I do,” he contradicted. “Oh yeah, I do. I want to prove
that last year was just a fluke, that I can still play at the same level
that I did the season before in the playoffs (with eight goals and five
assists in 11 postseason games).
“It was a rough season,” Brière
admitted of 2012-13. “But I’ve also been someone who always bounces back
from adversity and that doesn’t scare me. I use that as motivation and
that’s what I’m going to do.
“One thing I know
for sure is that when I have the chance to play with that Montreal
jersey on my back, there’s no better motivation than to be a Canadien.
That’s going to give me a shot of adrenalin every single night that I
put it on.”
He will wear the No. 48 that’s been on his back since
he arrived in Buffalo from Phoenix a decade ago. And he laughs when he’s
told that the number in Montreal was last worn on Nov. 28, 2009 by J.T.
Wyman, the most recent goal scored by a player in that jersey coming on
Oct. 9, 1999, off the stick of Miroslav Guren.
“It’s got a lot of goals left in it,” Brière joked, “so that’s good.”
Of
course, the 5-foot-10, 180-pounder had the opportunity six years ago to
play for the Canadiens, the team he worshipped as a boy. But he chose
in the summer of 2007, as he left the Sabres as a UFA, to sign an
eight-year, $52-million contract with the Flyers.
When
Philadelphia elected last month to buy him out of the final two years of
that pact, freeing him to sign anywhere, the Canadiens again came
calling. And they found a different mindset in Brière than when they
unsuccessfully courted him in 2007.
With more than a dozen other
teams intrigued at various levels, Brière this time opted for Montreal,
leaving longer terms and bigger dollars on other tables.
“We’d
talked to 16 different teams and it was very flattering. But at the end
of the day, it always came back to Montreal and having the chance to
wear that jersey,” he said. “There was nowhere else I could get the same
kind of feeling.
“I think we spoke first with the Canadiens (on
July 3). I remember hanging up and thinking, ‘Wow, whoever I’m going to
talk to next, it’s going to be tough to match what (GM) Marc Bergevin
and (coach) Michel Therrien said.
“They did a fantastic job of
explaining where they were going and what they thought of their team. I
was very impressed with both of them, how they view their team and where
they’re going with it. There was no turning back after that —
especially starting with the fact that I wanted to be there in
the first
place.”
Brière has been booed relentlessly by Canadiens fans the
past half-dozen years for having previously spurned the Habs advances.
And now, he says he quite frankly doesn’t know how the cheers will sound
to him.
“I don’t know exactly. I’d by lying to you if I said I
do,” Brière said lightly. “That’s part of the reason why I’m here — I
want to see what it’s like.
“I saw (booing) as a compliment,” he
added, laughing. “If they ignored me, it would mean they probably didn’t
care that I was somewhere else and I’m not so sure that would be a good
thing. Montreal is one of the most passionate fan (bases) in the NHL.
To have the chance to play in front of them, on their side, is something
I’m really looking forward to.”
Brière chuckled again at the thought of the “welcome” awaiting him as a Canadien back in heckle-happy Philadelphia.
“All
I know is I was treated great the whole time I was there by both the
organization and the fans,” he said. “I honestly don’t think it will be
an issue.
“It’s not like I left on my own terms. The Flyers had to
make a tough decision and decided to buy me out. It’s not like I asked
to go somewhere else. They made a decision and I have to move on. I’m
sure the fans will understand that.”
Sure they will.
The
Ottawa Senators would be the “hometown” team of most kids growing up in
Gatineau, north of the national capital, but they weren’t much on
Brière’s radar.
“Growing up, I watched the Canadiens,” he said. “I
admired all those Canadiens players. I wanted to be one of them, and
now I have the chance to be.
“I also believe that I’m in a good
place in my life right now where I feel that I’m more ready to attack
this chapter. I’m very excited about it. I just can’t wait for camp and
the season to start to take it all in.”
If the Canadiens had been a
dream since his youth, then, how much of Brière’s turning his back six
years ago was a matter of perhaps not being ready or willing to play in a
market that can suffocate its high-profile players, especially
francophones?
“I don’t know,” he replied. “It was a tough decision
back then also. My heart was with the Canadiens even back then. But
this time around I feel it’s good timing.
“The team is in a good
position to take it to the next level. It’s a new organization starting
with (owner) Geoff Molson and Marc Bergevin. They’re heading in the
right direction. I feel very fortunate that I have the chance to be part
of their solution, as they see it.”
Brière was in Hearst, Ont.,
last Thursday, at Flyers teammate Claude Giroux’s charity golf
tournament, when his Habs signing was announced. Telephone reception was
sketchy at best. So he was connected that evening to a 20-minute media
conference call on a land line in a bowling alley, falling pins echoing
in the background.
“At least it wasn’t a pay phone,” he joked.
Brière’s cellphone had nearly melted, six or seven text or voice messages arriving for each to which he replied.
“For
so long, so many people — friends and family — were trying to tell me
to come to Montreal,” he said. “They’d do it in a nice manner, jokingly
most of the time, but when they all realized it was for real. …
“I
had a big grin on my face going to bed that night, thinking about all
the players I used to watch growing up, thinking that now I would be one
of them and that probably a lot of little kids would be going to be bed
thinking about our team next year.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling. I
think there’s no better place in the world, if you’re a hockey fan,
than being in Montreal. Having the chance to put on that uniform is
very, very special.”
If Brière has been too busy in the past week
to spend time sifting through the Internet’s reaction to his signing — a
great deal of it uncomplimentary, and worse — he gratefully received a
handful of text message from new teammates.
“I can’t control
what’s being said by fans,” he said. “They’re allowed their own opinion
on it. It’s their right. It’s my job to convince the doubters that
they’re wrong and to prove to everybody who’s behind me that they’re
right.
“The reason I signed here is because I
think it’s a good situation. I think it’s the right time and I also
believe I can help this team.”
This week, Brière’s three young
sons pulled on Canadiens jerseys they’ve had tucked away. Their father,
who hasn’t yet worn one, smiled at the sight and photographed it for
posterity.
“Seeing so many Canadiens fans with jerseys and hats
coming out that night in Hearst, that was pretty cool,” he said. “But it
was also a little different for me. It kind of brought me back to my
younger days growing up cheering for the Canadiens. It felt like going
back to my own childhood.”
Brière is back in the gym working to
prepare for his return to skating early next month. He’ll soon find his
way to Montreal to deal with the myriad issues of settling in a new
hockey home, his fourth in the NHL.
And he will pause to recall what, until now, has been his most memorable moment in this city.
Brière
knew, upon signing in Philadelphia in 2007, how difficult the fan abuse
would be on his sensitive mother, Constance. So for his first two
seasons as a Flyer, he found a way to have Mom in Philadelphia to help
out with the boys, watching on TV while her son played at the Bell
Centre.
But come his third season with the Flyers, both knew it was time.
“My
mother met me at our Montreal hotel before the game (of Feb. 10,
2010),” Brière recalled, “and she said something that she’d never before
said.
“She said to me, ‘Please, score a goal for me tonight, I think I’ll need it in that crowd.’ ”
Brière
opened the scoring against Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak 4:37 into
the first period. And then he scored again six seconds from the end of
the second. And once more, this time against Carey Price, on a penalty
shot midway through the third.
“I believe I gave a game puck to my mom,” Brière said.
Constance
Brunet Brière passed away last summer, about 10 months before her son
signed to play with the team whose pictures he harvested as a boy.
“But
I know that somewhere my mom is laughing,” Brière said. “I’m sure she
is very glad that I’m now a Montreal Canadien, and like me she’ll be
very happy to see me put on that sweater.”
