Carbo's exit was graceful

by Jack Todd for The Montreal Gazette, May 29, 2002

Hey, look on the bright side - at least Guy Carbonneau's departure this time did not include the middle-finger salute.

Carbonneau's decision to accept a liaison job with the Dallas Stars was handled with courtesy and genuine respect on all sides. The Stars wanted to add Carbonneau to their organization, he wanted front-office experience - and there was that nagging problem of Carbonneau's teenage daughter and the language of her education.

The lunatic fringe represented by Brent Tyler and his ilk, however, would not want to make a poster boy out of Carbonneau. Like most of us here, he is a moderate on the language question - which means by definition that you get it from both sides.

As Carbonneau made clear to my friend Red Fisher, difficulties with the unbending language laws were a factor, but only a factor in his departure. Money and a three-year deal in Dallas no doubt meant more.

There is no getting around the fact that Carbonneau's decision to return to Dallas is a big loss. Most people had him ticketed for the head coach's job here sooner or later - and many more were calling for his immediate elevation after Michel Therrien's hot temper helped cost the Canadiens a game and a series against the Hurricanes.

The way things were handled this time, at least, the door was left open for the return of one of the smartest, classiest men ever to wear the uniform. They don't grow Guy Carbonneau's on trees in this world, not even in Texas. You would hope that some day, the Canadiens are able to get him back into the organization.

His stint as an assistant coach, however, at least helped to make up for the way his playing career ended in Montreal. You remember how it went down: the Canadiens lost a first-round series to the Bruins back in '94, and a couple of days after they were eliminated a Journal photographer snapped Carbonneau and the rest of his foursome on the green at a local golf course.

Carbonneau, irked that his privacy had been invaded, flipped the photog the bird. The image made the front page of the newspaper. Ronald Corey, always hypersensitive to the image of the organization even as he was pulling the house down around his ears, wanted Carbonneau gone. In August, Serge Savard dealt his captain to the St. Louis Blues for the eminently forgettable Jim Montgomery.

Blunder? This one was a full-scale header off the diving board into an empty pool. Someone in the Canadiens brain trust may have thought Carbo was approaching the end of his career at that point, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. He became a key part of a Dallas Stars team that would contend year after year and win one Stanley Cup before calling it a career.

What is unfortunate is that to some degree, this latest departure will be blamed on the language zealots. When he first returned from Dallas, Carbonneau - like Jacques Villeneuve last June - was mildly critical of some of the more restrictive language policies in the province and hinted that it might be good if some of the more stiff-necked and parochial of the local purveyors of paranoia got out and had a look about in other places.

Predictably, Carbonneau was savagely attacked almost before the words were out of his mouth. One junior columnist at Le Journal sniffed that if Carbonneau was not thoroughly grounded in Quebec's history of real and imaginary slights, he had no right to speak at all. If you can't persuade them, in other words, tape their mouths shut.

To Carbonneau, the politics of humiliation hardly mattered. After his years in St. Louis and Dallas, Carbonneau knew all he needed to know about the politics of reality. In a competitive and rapidly changing world, a multilingual individual with a wide perspective has a better chance to succeed, period.

None of that matters now. Carbonneau is gone, and the Canadiens will be beating the bushes for his successor. If they took a vote today, the answer would be Danny Dube (aigu). Dube is young, energetic, personable and popular on both sides of the linguistic divide. He goes back to the QMJHL with Michel Therrien and if he doesn't have NHL experience, he was an assistant coach when Team Canada won the world championships in Italy.

Dube, however, has become a popular figure in the local media. If the Canadiens want him, they may have to make an offer and make it now. You don't want to make a habit of letting the good ones get away.