Season 1: 1976-77
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Season 1: 1976-77 |
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Actually,
in his youth Guy had a knack for all kinds of athletics—baseball,
skiing, even pole vaulting, an event in which he competed at les
Jeux du Québec (the Quebec Games). But his first love,
starting at the age of seven, was hockey, and it didn’t take
him long to figure out he was good at it.
The acquisition of athletic skills was not the only development of Guy’s youth that would prepare him for his future. Just as importantly, he was raised to understand discipline and hard work, and to embrace the values that would serve him as a leader of others. In one of his earliest published photos, as a 10-year-old scout, we can almost see those qualities in his small face.
Guy was a bright enough boy, but he didn’t apply his keen mind to academics the way he did to the game. And while he was often late to mass, he was always early to hockey practice. He had focus all right, but in one particular direction, and we can pretty much figure the young Carbonneau believed that when you got right down to it, nothing else mattered.
So it was probably
no great hardship for him, at the age of 16, to pack his belongings
and journey 300 miles from his family, to live in a strange city
because he could play Junior A hockey there. Being
drafted by the Chicoutimi Saguenéens was thrilling confirmation
that he had a talent for the game—but it was yet to be seen
if he was good enough to justify having committed his whole life
to hockey. While he’d dreamed for years of becoming a Canadien,
of skating with the Cup over his head on the ice of the Montreal
Forum, so had millions of other boys. For now he’d only made
it to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League…and even that
was a bit of a lucky break, as indicated by the paragraph which
appeared in the June 6, 1976 issue of the Progrès-Dimanche:
"Par ailleurs, au cinquième tour, les Saguenéens repêchaient Guy Carbonneau, un centre de 5’9" et 155 livres. Carbonneau est le seul choix, parmi les six premiers des Sags, à chambarder la liste déjà prévue par les dépisteurs du club chicoutimien."
["In addition, in the fifth round, the Saguenéens selected Guy Carbonneau, a 5’9", 155 pound center. Carbonneau was the only choice, among the first six picks of the Sags, to throw into disarray the list envisioned in advance by the Chicoutimi club."]
Yes, the great roulette wheel of the Canadian hockey system had landed Guy in Chicoutimi, a city halfway to Montreal from his home in Sept-Îles. Was he going the right direction? As a rookie in Junior A, Carbo couldn’t possibly know.
But a quarter
century later, we certainly do. This was a marriage that was going
to last.
16-year-old Carbonneau puts
the puck past Laval's netminder, 1/25/77.
See also "The Career that Almost Wasn't" in our Little Known Facts section.
Resources:
Progrès-Dimanche, June 6, 1976
Les Canadiens, Oct-Nov 1986, Jan-Feb 1987, March-April
1987, #5 90-91
Saguenéens
de Chicoutimi
(web site of Guy Villeneuve)
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