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November 22, 2003:
Carbo in the Heritage Hockey Classic

On Saturday, November 22, 2003, Guy Carbonneau returned to the ice in professional competition for the first time since his retirement. He played for the Montreal Canadiens alumni team in the Heritage Classic MegaStars game versus a team of former Edmonton Oilers. The game was played before a capacity crowd of 57,000 at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium, on a specially created outdoor rink.

The old rival teams exchanged more than one barb before the contest. Carbo himself joked to the Dallas Morning News that the Oilers brought in Mark Messier at the last minute so Wayne Gretzky wouldn't have to go against him in faceoffs.

As it turned out, the Oilers won the contest, which was played in two 15-minute halves, by a 2-0 score. With minus-2 degrees Fahrenheit the temperature on the ice, the 30 minute contest was plenty long. As it was, players avoided icing so as to keep the game moving, and at one point it went more than five minutes without a whistle.

Guy seemed to enjoy the competition immensely and played wonderfully. Both NHL.com correspondent Shawn P. Roarke and Sports Illustrated writer Jon Dolezar called Guy's line, which also included Stephane Richer and Benoit Brunet, the most impressive of the Habs' Carbonneau's best scoring chance occurred when Richer left him a drop pass and Guy forced Oilers goalie Bill Ranford to make a spectacular save.

Carbo was interviewed on French Canadian TV station RDS between periods of the game, thereby avoiding sharing the task of "scraping" the excess snow. A thousand thanks to the webmaster's dear friend and correspondent in Montreal, Pierre Chastenais, for providing a copy of the broadcast tape which yielded these photos.

Guy is introduced on the ice.
Bundled up for play.	Facing off against Mark Messier.
Reviewing the ice conditions for RDS reporter.