The Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League is renaming its trophy for the most gentlemanly player in honour of former Canadiens centre David Desharnais.
Desharnais won the award for three straight seasons starting in 2004-05 with the Chicoutimi Saguenéens when it was called the Frank J. Selke Trophy. Selke won six Stanley Cups when he was general manager of the Canadiens from 1946 until 1964. The NHL also has an award named after Selke that goes to the best defensive forward each season.
The 5-foot-7 Desharnais was never selected at the NHL Draft despite putting up 97, 118 and 108 points during the three seasons with Chicoutimi when he was named most gentlemanly player in the league.
Desharnais would go on to play 524 games in the NHL with the Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers, posting 87-195-282 totals. He never had more than 26 penalty minutes during his nine seasons in the NHL. Desharnais’s most productive NHL season was 2011-12 with the Canadiens when he posted 16-44-60 totals.
After his junior career ended, the Canadiens invited Desharnais to their 2007 rookie camp basically as a favour to Guy Carbonneau, who was head coach of the team at the time and had been part of the Saguenéens ownership group when Desharnais was in Chicoutimi.
“He had a really, really good career — a great career, actually — in junior,” Carbonneau said during an interview in 2013 after the Canadiens signed Desharnais to a four-year, US$14-million contract extension. “I’m not going to go so far as to say that he had a chance to make the NHL, but we thought that he could be a good player in the American league, so I asked the organization just to bring him to our training camp or at least the rookie camp. They obliged and the rest is all David … it’s all him.”
The 38-year-old Desharnais retired as a player after spending the last four seasons with Fribourg-Gotteron HC in the Swiss-A league. He had 13-29-42 totals in 52 games last season.
In March, the Saguenéens retired No. 15 in honour of Desharnais during a pregame ceremony in Chicoutimi.