Carbonneau takes aim at Stars

The Canadian Press, 1/16/06

MONTREAL (CP) - Newly hired Montreal Canadiens associate coach Guy Carbonneau says the relationships he built working with the Dallas Stars over the last three years will never die.

But that doesn't mean he won't try to take advantage of the Stars' weaknesses when they visit the Bell Centre on tonight.

"If you look at their last four or five games, they've had a bad habit of falling behind every game," Carbonneau said Sunday after a brisk one-hour Canadiens practice, his first with his new team. "If we can do that, then we'll be in better shape. That's what we'll have to exploit."

Canadiens general manager and interim head coach Bob Gainey said Carbonneau's knowledge of the Stars could be an asset for him tonight, but Dallas head coach Dave Tippett wasn't overly concerned.

"Everybody in the NHL knows what everybody else does anyway," Tippett said. "There's not a lot of big secrets out there about the game."

Not only will Carbonneau be facing his former employer, but he will also have to coach against son-in-law Brenden Morrow, who is married to Carbonneau's eldest daughter Anne-Marie.

"If we only had him to worry about," Carbonneau said with a laugh, "we'd be OK."

Stars forwards Mike Modano and Jere Lehtinen, who both won a Stanley Cup in Dallas with Carbonneau in 1999, were very happy to see their former teammate land a job they both said he was perfectly suited for.

"His mind for the game and the way he thought the game out, he obviously had those tendencies and you could see it a little bit in the back of his mind that he was kind of leaning towards that after he was done playing," Modano said.

Lehtinen credited much of his success as one of the league's top defensive forwards to Carbonneau's influence over the first five years of his career.

He said that even back then, Carbonneau was able to have a positive affect on the team's game plan with his observations.

"He was good in the locker-room," Lehtinen said. "Between periods, you always knew what was wrong with our game. Whatever happened on the ice, he knew what to do right away. He could analyze the game pretty fast and quick."

The Canadiens will be looking not only to win a big game for their new associate coach, but also to maintain some momentum after Saturday's 6-2 blowout of San Jose in Gainey's debut as head coach.

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