Carbonneau enjoying Canadiens' 'pretty amazing' playoff atmosphere

MONTREAL -- Guy Carbonneau won’t be in an RDS television studio Friday night, working his regular gig as an analyst. Nor will he be on official Montreal Canadiens duty as one of the team’s ambassadors, visiting Bell Centre corporate suites, glad-handing team sponsors.

On Friday, the Hockey Hall of Famer will be at Bell Centre as a former Canadiens captain, coach and as a fan, cheering on his team that needs a victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning to advance to the Eastern Conference Second Round.

Montreal leads Tampa Bay 3-2 in the best-of-7 series with Game 6 set for a punishingly loud Bell Centre (7 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, ESPN2, The Spot). Should the Lightning square the series, Game 7 will decide the series winner in Tampa on Sunday.

“I’ve said the last couple of years that I like what (general manager) Kent Hughes has put together,” said Carbonneau, who won the 1986 and 1993 Stanley Cup with the Canadiens, captain of the latter team, adding a third championship in 1999 with the Dallas Stars.

Guy Carbonneau at center ice of the Montreal Forum for a 1993-94 portrait, having captained the team’s 1993 Stanley Cup championship.

“It’s pretty evident that the Canadiens have more pure talent now than they’ve had the past bunch of years. They’re still young but they compensate by having that much talent. They can score a lot of goals and they’ve been one of the best high-octane teams in the League this year, which has been exciting.

“I talk to people who love the Canadiens and they’re right, it’s been pretty amazing -- a little taste of it last year and this year for sure. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Following Game 5 on Wednesday, Montreal having defeated Tampa Bay in a nail-biting 3-2 triumph, Carbonneau joined fellow 1993 Stanley Cup champions Vincent Damphousse and Benoit Brunet in the RDS studio for L’Antichambre, a widely viewed panel show of analysis and highlights.

The trio broke down the fifth one-goal game of the series, the first three having been decided in overtime; other than Montreal’s 4-3 win in Game 1, each has ended 3-2.

There’s nothing to suggest Game 6 will be a blowout for either side.

Canadiens’ Guy Carbonneau accepts the Stanley Cup from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman at the Montreal Forum on June 9, 1993, coach Jacques Demers shaking his captain’s hand.

Precious little time and space is hockey that defined much of Carbonneau’s career. A three-time winner of the Selke Award as the NHL’s best defensive forward, he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2019.

“I’ve always been a believer that the better you play defensively, the more chances you have offensively,” Carbonneau said. “When you have the puck, you’re trying to score goals. when you don’t have it, it’s trying to get it back as quickly as possible. The less time you give your opponent with it, the better it is.”

Again on Wednesday, the Canadiens’ offense came from deeper in the lineup. Forward Brendan Gallagher, playing his first game this postseason after having been a healthy scratch the first four, got Montreal on the board first, followed by forwards Kirby Dach and Alexandre Texier.

The Lightning have outshot the Canadiens 134-117 through five games, Montreal having scored one more goal (14-13) and holding the special-teams edge on the power play (23.8 to 17.4 percent) and penalty kill (82.6 to 76.2 percent).

The Canadiens' first line of captain Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky and Cole Caufield had just four of Montreal’s 24 shots in Game 5. The trio has a combined 12 points in the series(four goals, none at 5-on-5, with eight assists), so as often happens in playoff hockey, others have stepped up.

Canadiens’ Kirby Dach scores his team’s second goal of Game 5, beating Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy.

“The further this series is going to go, that first line is going to be watched even closer,” Carbonneau said. “Tampa puts their best against them, they don’t take as many chances, stay really close to them, they hit them. The excitement comes from the fact the Canadiens can score at any time and in different ways.”

Tampa Bay entered the series with more than three times the playoff experience of Montreal, its roster totaling 1,508 postseason games to the Canadiens’ 499.

“At the beginning of the season I was hoping the Canadiens would make the playoffs, even if they might not yet be ready to win,” Carbonneau said. “But once you get in there, you never know what’s going to happen.”

He speaks from experience, Montreal’s most recent Stanley Cup win in 1993 built on the back of 10 overtime victories.

Guy Carbonneau and fellow Canadiens legend Yvan Cournoyer pose with Elise Beliveau, wife of late captain Jean Beliveau, at Montreal’s Bell Centre in November 2019, Carbonneau having just been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Twenty-three Stanley Cup titles are represented by the three – Carbonneau’s three, 10 each won by Cournoyer and Beliveau.

“You can’t buy experience, you have to live it, and going to the playoffs this year adds to that,” he said. “Before the playoffs, Tampa was one team that scared me. Experience is an important thing and they have a lot of it. They know how to win. They have players who can win a series, make a difference, but so do the Canadiens. That’s why it’s been so close.”

At this point in the series, Carbonneau weighs the psychological against the physical, the idea of facing the same team night after night putting the game as much between players’ ears as in the corners and the dirty ice in front of the net.

“I don’t know if there’s a point when the mental game plays the bigger role,” he said. “I remember a defensive player in the NFL in the 1980s saying that his goal was to make the guy in front of him quit, just say, ‘(To heck with) it. I’m done, I don’t want to play against him.’ That’s mental intimidation.

“I wasn’t extraordinary on face-offs but I was good because I never wanted to lose one. I wanted to be sure the guy in front of me changed his style, have him think, ‘If I can’t beat him, I’ll try something else.’ And once he did that, I thought, ‘I’ve got him.’"

Guy Carbonneau with a Canadiens puck during 2019 Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

In the 1993 Stanley Cup Final against the Los Angeles Kings, Wayne Gretzky had four points in Game 1 (one goal, three assists), a 4-1 Kings win in which the Great One skated circles around Canadiens checking.

“Give me Gretzky,” Carbonneau told coach Jacques Demers before Game 2, and Demers did so every chance his line matchups permitted. In the remaining four games, Gretzky had three points (one goal, two assists), wearing Carbonneau like a blanket.

Like current Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, Carbonneau arrived behind Montreal’s bench without a single game of NHL coaching experience, guiding the team through full seasons in 2006-07 and 2007-08 before he was released 66 games into the 2008-09 season. He’s a keen observer of St. Louis and the delicate balancing act that he, and any coach, walks in today’s NHL.

“I don’t know Martin well but obviously he has a way of communicating, explaining things differently than a lot of people,” said Carbonneau, who was 124-83-23 in 230 regular-season games as Canadiens coach and 5-7 in 12 playoff games. “That’s what coaching is: trying to get them to understand what you want. That’s the challenge all the time.

Guy Carbonneau with the Montreal Canadiens Alumni team before a charity game in January 2020.

“All coaches have good intentions but getting players to do it every day is hard. I was a bit skeptical at the beginning when he was hired (midway through 2021-22), not because I didn’t think he knew what he was doing. I was a good player but I was a brand new coach, I’d never coached a day in my life. I was a way better coach when I was fired than I was at the beginning of my career.

“Martin is learning. He makes adjustments better now than when he started and that’s to his credit. You can see he’s passionate about it and it’s fun to watch.”

For now, Carbonneau is enjoying Montreal's ride along with a wildly enthusiastic fan base that will take its energy to a new level again for Game 6 on Friday.

It’s been 33 years since the Canadiens -- since any team based in Canada -- has won the Stanley Cup. There are no guarantees in hockey, of course, but this franchise seems closer to winning its 25th championship than it has in decades.

“The fact we won it at the Montreal Forum was pretty special,” Carbonneau said of the 1993 victory. “I touched the Cup for maybe a second before I gave it to (injured) Denis Savard. After our win in 1986, the pinnacle, it was awesome having the chance to do it again, and once more in Dallas.”

Guy Carbonneau salutes the crowd at Bell Centre after his 2019 Hockey Hall of Fame induction, and with the team’s torch during 2015-16 season-opening ceremonies.

Carbonneau would be delighted to relinquish a title he has held since 1993 – the most recent Canadiens captain to have won the Stanley Cup.

“I feel good about being the last one to do it but it’s been a long time,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind if that someone wouldn’t be me. I think this team has what they need. They just need to stay on the path, gain experience, stay healthy and be lucky.”

At 66, lean and fit, Carbonneau looks like he could still take a regular shift.

“I’m alive and I’m healthy,” he said. “It would be fun to have a Stanley Cup parade in Montreal so I could experience it from the other side.”

Top photo: Guy Carbonneau in 2019 with one of his three Stanley Cup miniatures and his three Stanley Cup rings for championships won in 1986, 1993 and 1999.