Habs' Gainey shows he's in total control

[Habsfan84]

Editor's note: This is the first in what will be a new weekly column by Jack Todd, appearing every Monday.
There was a moment during his post-deadline presser last week when Bob Gainey was explaining his decision to anoint Carey Price as the goaltender of today (rather than the goalie of the future) and to jettison Cristobal Huet for a second-round draft pick.
"We ...," Gainey started to say. Then he corrected himself: "I ... decided."

It was a revealing moment. Gainey has assembled a solid brain trust to run this organization. He is not afraid to surround himself with people like Pierre Gauthier or Trevor Timmins, men who might legitimately aspire to his job. No doubt, he consults them fully and carefully before he makes a move - just as he talks to head coach Guy Carbonneau and assistants Doug Jarvis and Kirk Muller.
But Gainey is not the type to pass a buck. He was not comfortable hiding behind that vague, corporate "we," so he stepped out, front and centre. Much the same way he skated around the ice the night his jersey was retired. "I decided ..."
And so he did. Ixnay on the "four elephants" Don Waddell wanted for Marian Hossa, three of whom were skating when the Habs pasted the Thrashers 5-1 a few hours after the deadline passed.
Yes to Washington, where Huet now plies his trade. Batten down the hatches and (this being Montreal) wait for the hullabaloo.
I had planned to extend the hiatus following my "retirement" from The Gazette for at least another month or two, but as I turned the dial from English radio to the French side and back last Tuesday afternoon, I decided that it was high time to say a few words about Gainey. On the radio, he was being bashed from pillar to post by fans who clearly felt that he should have been able to get Hossa for Huet and Michael Ryder, possibly with Ilya Kovalchuk thrown in for good measure.
There is no reason to believe that His Bobness gives a flying fandango whether he has the support of one more or one fewer columnist in this town. But for what it's worth, I simply wanted to say that I believe he did the right thing despite the headlines and the outcry on open-mouth radio. This was before the Canadiens mini-surge into first place in the Eastern Conference and the critics were out in force.
"Surprise and disappointment," the headline on Page One of La Presse said.
"Disappointing, very disappointing," echoed a blogger in Le Journal.
Was it?
The Pittsburgh Penguins paid an exorbitant price to obtain Hossa's services: Erik Christensen, Colby Armstrong, Angelo Esposito and a first-rounder. A trade would have cost the Canadiens Christopher Higgins and Maxim Lapierre just for openers, to obtain the services of a player whose Pittsburgh career could be over by the end of April.
Meanwhile, back at the Bell Centre, is it disappointing to see a team that could finish in first place in the Eastern Conference remain intact? Disappointing to retain the services of Higgins and Lapierre and two additional young players who could help to carry this team for years to come? When you look at what Higgins can do at both ends of the ice, his impact in the room and his relative youth, I'm not sure I would deal Higgins for Hossa even up - much less trade "four elephants" for one horse.

Face it, the whole rent-a-player concept is of highly dubious
value. You bring in a player who has minimal time to fit in, on the ice and in the room. You disturb the chemistry your team has. You mortgage your future. You
create cap problems.

Do all that and you had better win a Stanley Cup, because anything less can be a long-term disaster. That's why Gainey made the right call. Within a matter of hours, Higgins had shown how right he was, scoring two goals to lead the Habs over the Thrashers. Not that Gainey needed the vindication.
By now, nearly five years after he took over, it is evident that Gainey has finished the job of bringing the Canadiens out of the abyss, that awful trough where the club languished between 1999 and 2001. It is not quite true to say that Gainey inherited a mess. André Savard (who receives far too little credit hereabouts) had already begun the turnaround and might have finished the job had he been given the time and the support from above. Savard lacked nothing in hockey acumen but, in comparison with Gainey, he lacked everything in terms of "juice" - power, influence, whatever you want to call it.
From the moment he became the 15th general manager of the Montreal Canadiens on June 2, 2003, this was Gainey's club. He moved slowly in the beginning, but he left absolutely no doubt as to who was in charge.
Were the fans and media picking on Patrice Brisebois? Gainey came to the rescue. Was the club stumbling under Claude Julien? Gainey himself stepped into the breach. Had José Theodore finally worn out his welcome in Montreal? Gainey had the sang-froid to deal the former Hart Trophy winner without batting an eye.
The point is not that Gainey is always right (no one is), but that he clearly has a plan, he sticks to it and he accepts full responsibility for the decisions he makes. It's not "we," as he said last Tuesday, it's "I".
As long as Gainey is in the head office, the lines of authority will be absolutely clear: the buck stops where he stands, as calm as he was in the din of the Forum during the seventh game of a Stanley Cup final.
The ceremonies the night Gainey's No. 23 was retired at the Bell Centre also signalled a shift in the way he is perceived in this city. In the almost exclusively male world of the NHL, only Gainey would choose two women to speak on such an occasion; both acquitted themselves brilliantly. But the emphasis was not on Gainey's career as the greatest defensive forward in the history of the league.
Instead, Christine Pickrell and Gainey's sister, Maureen, emphasized his qualities as a friend, father, sibling - and Montrealer. Gainey is one of us now and among the former heroes of the bleu-blanc-rouge who still grace us with their presence, only Jean Béliveau is held in greater esteem.
For me, that's enough. If Bob Gainey elects not to gut his club for a rent-a-player, I'm going to assume that the man knows what he's doing, because he has never given us a reason to think otherwise.