Hall of Famer Gainey enjoying Canadiens’ playoff ride

MONTREAL -- Comfortably reclined in his downtown home on Tuesday night, Bob Gainey divided his focus between two one-goal Montreal hockey games.

At Bell Centre, the NHL Canadiens -- for whom Gainey played, captained, coached and served as general manager spanning 37 years through four decades -- fell short 3-2 against the Buffalo Sabres in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Second Round.

At Place Bell in Laval, a dozen miles north of his condo, the Montreal Victoire defeated the Minnesota Frost 2-1 in sudden-death Game 5 of their PWHL Semifinal, the Victoire advancing to the championship round against the Ottawa Charge.

If a team based in Canada hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since the Canadiens’ 1993 title, a women’s team from this country is now guaranteed to win a major hockey championship.

Bob Gainey on the cover of the December/January 1986 Les Canadiens magazine, and holding the Stanley Cup, on the shoulders of teammates, at the Montreal Forum on May 21, 1979, the Canadiens having defeated the New York Rangers in a five-game Cup Final.

Gainey will be tuned to the next face-off of both Montreal teams on Thursday, when the Canadiens face the Sabres in Buffalo in Game 5 (7 p.m. ET, HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC), that series tied 2-2, and the Victoire play host to Ottawa in Game 1 of the Walter Cup Final.

It says a great deal about Gainey, who for the Canadiens between 1973-89 played his entire 1,180-game regular-season career, 189 more in the playoffs, that he would quietly channel-surf while the city below him is energetically, even frantically obsessed with the team for whom he won the Stanley Cup five times.

His No. 23 was retired to arena rafters in 2008; a Class of 1992 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, his portrait is displayed in the team’s dressing room among those of other Canadiens similarly enshrined.

He was awarded the Frank J. Selke Trophy as the NHL’s best defensive forward the first four years it was presented (1978-81), and in 2017 he was voted among the 100 Greatest NHL Players for the League’s Centennial year.

Bob Gainey and his family watch his No. 23 banner raised to Bell Centre rafters in a jersey retirement ceremony on Feb. 23, 2008.

Today, with the city where he made most of his professional living hanging breathlessly on every shift of every game during the Canadiens’ current playoff run, the 72-year-old native of Peterborough, Ontario, is happy to be in a quiet place with a remote control in his hand.

“I’ve been to one playoff game, against Tampa Bay (in the First Round),” Gainey said, in wide living-room conversation on Tuesday. “I was involved for a long time, I spent enough nights in buildings, at games, that I don’t need to be in a building to enjoy a game.

“I do I like to see the teams I was associated with do well,” he added, having as GM led the Dallas Stars to their 1999 Stanley Cup victory. “I like to see the best team win, with competition as fair as it can be. The next best thing to being the winner is being second, because that means you were in the game.”

Gainey has always walked his own path, true to himself, the Montreal Forum having been the local address for his ferocious, nearly indestructible 200-foot game as the best defensive forward of his generation.

Bob Gainey salutes Bell Centre fans during a pregame ceremony on Oct. 22, 2024.

He is a sharp, engaged observer of this year’s Canadiens, who defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in a seven-game first round and are now locked in fierce battle against the Sabres.

“I think this is a nice series,” he said. “Both are young teams that are trying to bypass others who have been in front of them. Montreal was able to push Tampa out of the way, a very experienced, hardened team, and Buffalo had the same challenge with Boston, a team that’s had a lot of success in the last decade.

“From that point of view, I was happy for both teams to see them advance. I think they’re comparable in many ways because of that, for their youth and enthusiasm and desire to move up the ladder of the rankings of NHL teams who could be considered contenders. I find it enjoyable to see both of them make that step.”

Bob Gainey on the Canadiens bench at Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Oct. 16, 1987.

Gainey has seen Canadiens hockey from every perspective in this unique market. He has skated on champions, moved behind the bench to coach and steered the ship from the GM’s office.

From a distance, he looks at the current management team of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes, respectively the Canadiens’ executive vice-president of hockey operations and GM, and considers the challenges they face in a 32-team NHL.

His own experience tells him that a hockey operations department works best when there is a connection, common purpose at every level of management.

“All hockey operations departments are working within the Collective Bargaining Agreement (of salary-cap and free-agency),” Gainey said. “I see a solidarity with the Montreal group and that’s not easy to find.

Bob Gainey skates against the New York Islanders at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, in a 1984 game.

“Look at the last month, how many coaches and managers are gone, how many searches for new people are ongoing. This group here, I’m sure they don’t agree on everything, but I’ve never heard of it.

“I think that’s a strength that should make it not easier, but better for them to work in the environment they’ve been given and to accomplish the mandate that they started out with.

“Everybody is dealt a slightly different hand of cards, who their owner is, what their city expects,” he said. “I worked in two environments (Montreal and Dallas) that were very different. You still have to work within that environment with the rules, some of which may advantage you where you are while others may not.”

Gainey looks at the current Canadiens under owner Geoff Molson and sees the many parts of youth and experience, a roster having melded into something special this playoff season and presumably into the future.

Canadiens captain Bob Gainey helps rookie goalie Patrick Roy defend against the Calgary Flames during Game 2 of the 1986 Stanley Cup Final.

“Some of the things we see in the playoffs, it’s not always the elite players we see in the season who are able to function as well,” he said. “It’s other players who step in and find this advanced or heightened participation and result in the playoffs. You need those other players. They might not get as much ice time or the prime time to score, but Montreal is a pretty good example that you just don’t advance without 23 (on the roster).”

He could but he won’t compare the intensity, strong confidence and success of rookie goalie Jakub Dobes to that of Patrick Roy, the Hall of Famer who with a fire in his belly led the Canadiens to the 1986 Stanley Cup, Gainey wearing the captain’s C.

“I’d say that finding one goalie, putting him in and letting him establish himself has been one of the improvements for the Canadiens the last quarter of the season,” he said of Dobes.

“The goalie who’s there now is giving them the kind of play from that position that can allow the other players to do their stuff and win a game. … Sometimes the goalie can carry the game but over time, you need all the different areas functioning well.”

Bob Gainey accepts the 1981 Frank J. Selke Trophy as the NHL’s top defensive forward from Frank Selke Sr. Gainey won the award the first four years it was presented.

Gainey considers captain Nick Suzuki, a finalist for the Frank J. Selke Trophy with fellow centers Anthony Cirelli of the Lightning and Brock Nelson of the Colorado Avalanche, and sees “a mature, full-blossomed athlete, an elite player.

“(Suzuki) plays one of the most difficult positions as a center,” he said. “You have to look to find the things he’s doing so well is because he makes it look so easy. You have to be that good to make it look easy.

"The small things, the details in tight space that are executed, it can be hard to pick those up. The end-to-end rush, the complete undoing of a defender that puts you in the clear on a breakaway, are much easier for most of us to recognize.

“We play in a team sport, aiming for team goals. Within that, there is certain recognition with individual trophies. Being nominated for one points to what competitors would like to have happen to them. Nick is a worthy finalist for the Selke.”

Captain Bob Gainey watches teammate Larry Robinson press the Stanley Cup overhead on the ice of Calgary’s Saddledome on May 24, 1986, the Canadiens having defeated the Calgary Flames in a five-game Cup Final. At right is Mats Naslund, with athletic therapist Gaetan Lefebvre tucked under Robinson’s arm.

The captain, like all others, must navigate situations of less time and space than is usually available in the regular season.

“The NHL season begins with 32 teams and 16 are eliminated by the start of the playoffs,” Gainey said. “Advance one more group and they're down to eight teams. You don’t have a lot of weak players on the ice. You don’t have a lot of guys who haven’t played or are up on injury recall, or are not quite ready to play, only ready in a year or two.

“Those who are playing on the eight teams that remain, there probably is less space because there are fewer mental and physical mistakes. The quality of players on the ice is enhanced as you move up the pyramid.

“We all can see that the pace of the game is much higher. There’s very little downtime when the players jump off the bench and onto the ice at maximum or very close to maximum speed. In some ways, it’s relative. The space is smaller but the players are quicker. They’ve had to adjust.

"If you haven’t been able to adjust and pick up the pace of how you do things -- your movement of the puck, your decisions -- then you’re going to be stranded and you’ll feel like you’re standing on the expressway with everybody going by you on all sides."

From left, Bob Gainey, Marcel Dionne and Lanny McDonald, inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as members of the Class of 1992.

The pace accelerated, the stakes higher, every shift of greater importance, Gainey is happy to put his feet up and watch it all with a leisurely pace that defines his post-hockey days, the game important but not the defining part of his life.

“I’m more of a follower. I’m not a fan who needs to be there," he said. “I’m not going to be waving a towel; I’m not going to be wearing a jersey. That’s not who I am. You come to realize that you can follow the game and enjoy it and appreciate it without being in the middle of it.”

Top photo: Bob Gainey photographed in his Montreal home on May 12, 2026.