Ask Gerv! No. 6

Have questions for Canadiens equipment manager Pierre Gervais? He's got the answers! Every week, Pierre will answer questions from fans submitted through social media. Here's the sixth edition of Ask Gerv!
To read the previous editions, click
here
.

1. Question from Paul-Emile, via Facebook
"When a player breaks a stick, how do you get them another one so quickly? There are around 20 players and you manage to get them the right stick in a matter of seconds!"
The sticks are arranged on the bench by order of jersey number. We've come to familiarize ourselves with the knobs, because each guy does his differently - different colors, different shapes.
I don't take care of that so much anymore - it's Pat [Langlois] or Steamer [Pierre Ouellette]. But let's say that Galchenyuk breaks his stick on the ice, we've become so used to knowing exactly which stick to grab. We know that around the middle of the rack, it'll be such and such number, and the goalies are at the end, because we never need them. The trick is knowing the sticks, but don't forget that we're doing it every day. It doesn't take a lot of time to familiarize yourself with them. Generally, when a center is taking a faceoff close to the bench, we always get one of his sticks ready in case he might break it. So if it happens, it's a lot quicker. We have some little tricks like that.
That said, if we were to all of a sudden be working on the San Jose Sharks stick rack, it wouldn't be the same at all!
2. Question from Ken Craig Pierre, via Twitter.
"Who spends the most time on their sticks?"
Carey [Price] spends quite a bit of time on his sticks. [Tomas] Plekanec, too. If we look a little further back, it would be Mathieu Dandenault. He spent a really long time on them!
3. Question from Eric Crevier, via Facebook.
"What happened with P.K.'s Subban's skate last year [in 2015-16]?"
I'm going to explain what happened, because it's not at all what it seems!

I was in the locker room and P.K. had a problem with his skate. Sometimes, players get caught on something and he had a nick on his skate blade. That's when I got back to the bench. It looked bad on TV, because it seemed like he was angry with me, but he was just showing me that he had a problem with his skate and that he had to take it off and put on the other. He was never happy when he had to do it, but he wasn't upset with me, he was just unhappy that he had to take the time to change his skates. That's what happened that time. But it wasn't what it looked like on TV. He has nothing against me.
From my point of view, I really saw nothing wrong with it to the point that when a reporter asked me about it after the game, I had no clue what he was talking about. It got so out of proportion that you might've thought P.K. threw his skate at me… but if that were the case, I would've thrown it right back at him! (laughs)
It wasn't like that at all and even the next day, I went up to P.K. and asked him if he knew what people were talking about. He was so surprised, and he wanted to speak about it publicly to clear the air. He wanted to take care of it, to talk to reporters about it, but I told him not to bother.
It's just that it came out looking like that on TV. P.K. spoke to me about it for three days straight, that's really not who he is. So nothing happened, it just looked that way.