Serge Savard won seven Stanley Cups as a player with the Canadiens and Bob Gainey won five.
They were teammates on the Canadiens’ 1970s dynasty team that won four straight Stanley Cups, starting in 1976. Both men wore the “C” as captain of the Canadiens and both later became the club’s general manager. Gainey also had a couple of stints as interim head coach.
Savard was GM of the Canadiens for their last two Stanley Cups — in 1986 and 1993 — while Gainey was GM of the Dallas Stars when they won the Cup in 1999.
Both Hall of Famers know a lot about playing for and managing championship teams, and they were together again Wednesday night at the Bell Centre when the Canadiens honoured the 1970s dynasty team with a Tribute to the Champions pregame ceremony.
I had a chance to speak with Savard and Gainey ahead of the pregame ceremony and figured it was a good time to get their thoughts on the current rebuilding process the Canadiens are going through under Jeff Gorton, the executive vice-president of hockey operations, general manager Kent Hughes and head coach Martin St. Louis.
The Rangers’ 7-2 manhandling of the Canadiens once the puck dropped highlighted just how much more work needs to be done before this is a legitimate playoff team — never mind a Stanley Cup contender.
“Rebuilding is something that you have to do all year long with a team,” Savard said. “You have to build from the base. I guess those two guys (Gorton and Hughes) understand that. I think we’re going in the right direction. The team has to be built from the draft to start with. Sure, you can make trades and all that, but the teams that get to last place in the league usually it’s because a team missed two, three, four years of drafts and didn’t have much success. Those guys understand that and I think we’re really heading in the right direction.”
Gainey agrees and noted that Gorton was GM of the Rangers when they started a rebuilding process of their own six years ago. The Rangers are off to a 5-0-1 start this season.
“It’s not a path that I understand because of the cap and different kinds of dynamics that were never a part of what I worked with (as a GM),” Gainey said. “So making a comparison is impossible. But Gorton had that experience with the Rangers and they’ve been a good team for a number of years now. So there’s a template there that he could follow.
“I guess the thing that really comes to the surface for me is that they seem to be cohesive,” Gainey added. “Jeff and the GM and the coach seem to be cohesive in their thinking, which is important. They’re not on the same page on every line all the time, but they’re in there backing each other up and we can see them making progress. They’re adding talent to the team slowly and at some point when there’s enough of those players then it’s time to turn them into a team.”
Because of the salary cap, there will never be another dynasty team like the 1970s Canadiens.
“It’s a different time,” Savard said. “There’s more teams and when people were used to having a winning team in the ’60s and ’70, making the playoffs was not a question. Now it is. Now the question is: Are you going to make the playoffs? In our time it was: Are you guys going to win the Stanley Cup? Every year we lost the Cup in the ’60s and ’70s, all summer people were asking: ‘What happened?’
“But people are patient and the Canadiens are doing a good job in the marketing,” Savard added. “Now they’re selling hope … selling this player like (Lane) Hutson, who is doing some unbelievable things. We’ll see what happens a year or two from now.”
Savard believes goal-scoring will be the biggest problem moving forward, adding that Patrik Laine could help once he recovers from his knee injury.
“If you look over the last few years, we lost a lot of games by one goal because we didn’t have enough scoring touch,” Savard said. “If I look back at the last Cup we won in ’93, we had four guys with over 80 points (Vincent Damphousse, 97, Kirk Muller, 94, Brian Bellows, 88, and Stephan Lebeau, 80). They don’t have that. It’s nice to say we have a good group on defence, we think we’re going to be fine for the next five years. Fine. But you have to score.”
The last time the Canadiens had a single player hit the 80-point mark was 2007-08 when Alex Kovalev had 84.
“We were used to for many years to bet on (goalie Carey) Price,” Savard said. “I remember comments before the playoffs one year and they said: ‘If Price can steal one game we might have a chance.’ But goalies don’t steal games. You got to score a few goals and that’s what we’re lacking.”