Carbo still steams at trade

6/14/99

By Red Fisher
The Montreal Gazette

The years - 17 of them playing the only game he knows and by his own admission, all he knows - have left their marks on Guy Carbonneau. The thin, white lines are reminders from old-time and recent high sticks. A criss-cross of little valleys spread out from the corners of his 39-year-old eyes. His hair is cut short, almost punk rock-style, but is there anyone, anywhere who imagines that this future Hall of Famer is anything less than the leader of this band of Dallas Stars?

Who has contributed more for these Texas rockers awaiting tomorrow's Game 4 armed with a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup dance with the Buffalo Sabres?

Carbonneau smiled thinly at the question yesterday, on the morning after what truly was one of his great and soaring nights. You've earned the right to smile when you've logged 19 minutes on 30 shifts against Buffalo's best players, nine turns on the ice more than Joe Nieuwendyk, who scored both Dallas goals, more time than the splendid Mike Modano, who had five of the Stars' 29 shots.

Smile? You can laugh out loud when you're a guy whose 17-year-old daughter will enter college in another year and you can look at the final accounting of Saturday's 2-1 Dallas victory, and discover that the only other forward who put in more time during this exquisite demonstration of Dallas's Big D (the hometown Sabres had only 12 shots) was Jere Lehtinen, age 25.

Five years after Carbonneau was shipped to St. Louis for a marginal talent named Jim Montgomery, who played only five of his 85 NHL games with the Canadiens, Carbonneau talked about what could have been. He talked about trying to understand why the Canadiens chose to trade him in the first place.

"When I was told that I was traded, I was - I think the word probably would be devastated. I didn't expect it at all," said Carbonneau. "I didn't expect it at all, even after the picture."

The picture?

Those among you with fairly long memories will remember the Journal de Montreal photo of Carbonneau walking off the golf course, middle finger upraised, only days after the Canadiens fell to the Boston Bruins in the first round of the 1993-94 playoffs. Carbo's gesture was perceived to be an insulting reference to Canadiens fans.

"I think I explained myself well enough to the public," Carbonneau said yesterday. "I don't think that picture was an issue, but from what I heard later, everyone was kind of saying that was the last straw. Even to this point, I still. É I understand - even if I don't understand. É I still don't know why they traded me. If you look at the organization, there's hardly been anybody who stayed for a long period of time, and that's the way they operate.

"I've tried to look for the reason. I've tried to search for it and it just has made things worse. I wanted to know why. A lot of people say it's because of the picture in the paper, because of the finger, you know. To me, I knew it wasn't the reason, and I wanted to know why.

"All my life," said Carbonneau, "all my career, I've never been shy to say what I think. After 12 years with the Canadiens - after 15 years in the organization - I thought I would at least deserve a better explanation. I wish they would have come to me and said: 'All right, you did this or you did that, or you can't play, or you're on the downhill.' I wish they would have done that. In my mind, they never did."

Every day, it seems, Carbonneau is reminded that he's the NHL's oldest player. He reads about it, his colleagues kid him about it, but Carbonneau doesn't buy it.

"Yeah, every day," he said with a laugh. "I think the last two years have been the greatest time for me. After a year and a half with Hitch (Dallas head coach Ken Hitchcock), we sat down one day. We didn't fight or anything. I just explained to him what I felt I can bring, what I can do, but in order to do that, you know, I have to be able to take days off and go at my own pace.

"That's really when everything started to go well. He gave me the days off and let me train my own way. And when I was playing, I gave what he wanted from me. That's when everything changed.

"Old? I wake up in the morning some times feeling my age. It just takes more time to heal than when I was 25 years old. That's the way I think. That's the way I am.

"I don't think of myself as an old player. I think of myself as a player. I think that would be unfair to myself and unfair to my team if I was trying to be different É say I can't do this because I'm old, can't do that because of my age. I mean, I'm part of the team and I'm just one piece of the puzzle. I've got to pull my weight."

"He's Carbonneau," said Brian Skrudland, 36. "He's 75 years old and he keeps on doing it and doing it. He makes us younger guys proud to be part of this team."

So what is it that has been driving him not only in this Stanley Cup final, but all through the playoffs?

"I don't have any secrets," said Carbo. "I enjoy this time of the year. Pride? That's part of it. I think it all comes down to the respect for my teammates. They joke a lot about my age. For me, I never put myself in the position where I'm old. I have to be a part of this team - to be a part of a good team or any team, I have to show them and prove to them that age is irrelevant. I'm playing 19 minutes or 20 minutes or 15 minutes a game because I deserve to. Not because of what I did. It's what I can do now. That's the way I look at things and that's what keeps me going."

"When I get up in the morning and people ask me how I feel, I always tell them I feel good. Feeling bad is out of the question."

Coach Hitchcock said: "It is funny because people are talking about the age of your heart and he just - he really believes in his heart and in his head that he is the best player on the ice. That is what has carried him for his whole career. He wants the challenge of playing against the other team's best player. He wants the challenge of being the go-to-guy all the time and to him age doesn't really matter. I think that he has such fierce pride.

"He is a lot like Skrudland. Brian Skrudland was outstanding for us on Saturday and their fierce pride carries them. I think that is why when you judge people by their age in this league you have to look farther than that.

"Age is nothing. It is the age of your heart."

So what's ahead?

"I think I still want to play one more year," said Carbonneau. "I think I said that five years ago. I still have the desire. Having been in Dallas, having success for the last three, four years enjoying the town - enjoying the surroundings. I just want to keep on going."

The suggestion has been made that coaching is in Carbonneau's future. The game can use his hockey mind.

"Right now," he said, "I'm looking at a lot of unfinished business and a lot of unanswered questions as a human being. I still É when I play - when I'm on the ice - I know I can control a lot of things. When I don't have my skates, there's a lot of things I can't control, and that's scary.

"It's like retiring: it scares the hell out of me. I know one day I'm going to have to retire. It's something I think about all the time. 'What am I gonna do? What am I good at?' I ask myself. I'm good at hockey.

"I think the day I'm gonna decide to quit, I'll explore every option and then I'll make a decision. The toughest part for me now is not to play. I've got a 17-year-old and an 11-year-old. One more year and she'll go to college. That's another thing I have to think about."

"Coaching is worse than playing. I think that if I'm gonna make that decision, I'd have to have the support of my wife and the kids and be damned sure that's what I want to do."

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