Todd: Canadiens’ old regime nearly derailed Cole Caufield’s rise to stardom
He’s the all-American boy, the kid with the thousand-kilowatt smile.
At a time when Canadian-American relations are at their lowest point since 1812, Cole Caufield and teammate Lane Hutson have done more to restore an old friendship than anyone since Céline Dion packed her bags and moved to Las Vegas.
Caufield is now the face of this beautiful (and beautifully unexpected) season.
But oh, how different it might have been.
While everyone was celebrating Caufield’s 50th goal, I was thinking back to when this was a near-run thing, when the young man’s career might have been destroyed by the inept Dominique Ducharme. On Nov. 1, 2021, not long after a strong performance in the Canadiens’ playoff run, Caufield (then 20 years old) was sent down to Laval while the Canadiens called up (wait for it) Michael Pezzetta. Nothing against the guy they called “Pez,” but he is no Caufield.
At the time, the Canadiens were 10 games into the season and had won two. Caufield, a pre-season favourite for the Calder Trophy, had a paltry two assists. He had been dropped from Nick Suzuki’s line. He was generating shots and chances, but the stats said they weren’t high-danger chances.
It was, in hindsight, a chilling moment. What if Ducharme had remained as coach? What if his confidence was shot? What if Ducharme decided he couldn’t play and the organization gave up on him, as they had given up on Alex Galchenyuk and Jesperi Kotkaniemi (with reason in both cases)?
It is at least possible that Caufield might have ended up traded or playing in Europe, marked forever as a great scorer who was too small to survive the brutality in the NHL.
Mercifully, four weeks later, the Canadiens fired GM Marc Bergevin and brought in Jeff Gorton as executive vice president of hockey operations. On Jan. 18, 2022, Gorton hired Kent Hughes as GM. After briefly trying to make it work with Ducharme, Hughes made the decision that has brought this young club to the current pinnacle: With the club at 8-30-7 following a 7-1 loss to New Jersey, Hughes fired Ducharme and brought in Martin St. Louis, theoretically on an interim basis.
After playing six games in Laval and scoring two goals and adding three assists, Caufield was recalled on Nov. 18, but little had changed.
Over the next 81 games after St. Louis was hired, Caufield would score 48 goals, moving him into the top 10 in the league with names like Connor McDavid, Alexander Ovechkin and Leon Draisaitl.
There Caufield has remained, to the point where he is now only two goals behind Nathan MacKinnon for the NHL lead. As his game has become more well-rounded, he has undertaken more defensive responsibilities and is enough of a playmaker himself to have accumulated 37 assists to go with his 50 goals.
Had St. Louis accomplished nothing but potentially saving Caufield’s career, it would have been worth the hire. Obviously, the coach has done so much more, but it all begins with Caufield. The two are close to being physical clones. Nobody in the game knew better the challenges Caufield faced as a theoretically undersized player, and no other coach was better equipped to rebuild a sniper’s confidence.
There would be a shoulder injury ahead and a period of rehab and doubt — but again, St. Louis was there for him. This is where we stand today, with Caufield having accomplished something that scorers as accomplished as Alexei Kovalev and Max Pacioretty were unable to do — put together a 50-goal season.
For the record, the goal that made the story complete was scored at the 6:30 mark of the second period — with linemates Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky assisting. Slafkovsky got the puck to Suzuki, who burst up the middle with Caufield on his right and timed the pass perfectly and Caufield did what he does, lashing the puck through a mail slot.
There was nothing cheap about this one, from the shot to the team to the goaltender (Andrei Vasilevskiy, once known for outplaying Carey Price during the 2021 Stanley Cup final.)
The first official words from “Goal” Caufield after becoming the first Canadien since Stéphane Richer in 1990 to post a 50-goal season? “Sorry it took so long.”
Yes, it did. It took 36 years, to be exact.
It’s been so long that Richer himself will turn 60 in June. So long that I have only vague memories of driving to Richer’s hometown of Ripon out Ottawa way while working on a profile of the Canadiens’ last 50-goal scorer, and ending up watching the game in a huge, raucous biker bar.
I had visions, based on too many movies, of being beaten with pool cues and left in a dumpster out back — but once they heard I was doing a story on their local hero, the bikers could not have been more gracious.
What did I learn from them that I recall today? Only that, aside from lightning reflexes and hard, accurate shots, Richer and Caufield had nothing whatsoever in common.
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