Former Star's Move Timely

By David Sessions, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1/17/06

Not many assistant coaches have the kind of exhaustive knowledge of their opponents' inner workings that Guy Carbonneau had Monday night, when he watched his former team, the Stars, skate from the bench of his new team, the Canadiens.

Carbonneau was contacted by Montreal general manager Bob Gainey a week before the team announced Saturday that Gainey was taking over for fired coach Claude Julien. Carbonneau was brought in as an assistant and eventual successor next year to Gainey, the former Stars coach and GM.

Carbonneau, who played for both teams and won three Stanley Cups, left his position as an assistant GM for the Stars to get back into coaching, a role he always wanted to return to after holding an assistant coaching position in Montreal from 2000-02.

"Since I was 16 or 17 years old, I always had that coaching mentality," Carbonneau said at Monday's morning skate. "I think it was time ... to decide to take a step forward and put myself in that position and see how far I can go."

Working in the Stars' front office, where he played a key role in the team's professional scouting, helped prepare Carbonneau for the move back to coaching, he said.

"I learned how to draft players, find players, build a team," Carbonneau said. "I had a really good relationship with [GM] Doug [Armstrong] and [assistant GMs] Francois [Giguere] and Les Jackson. Now I understand how it works upstairs, why they make decisions, why they can't trade or why they trade players. It's going to help me at ice level."

So far, Gainey and Carbonneau seem to have re-energized the team, which has scored 10 goals in two games under the new regime.

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