Béliveau not shocked by Koivu’s exit
Captains Saku Koivu and Jean Béliveau appeared together on a 2006-07 cover of Canadiens magazine, captured by Habs photographer Bob Fisher.
DAVE STUBBS
(from Monday’s Gazette)
The Canadiens’ greatest captain was surprised, and he wasn’t, when it became clear last week that Saku Koivu had played his final game wearing the “C” above his CH crest.
Jean Béliveau has been around hockey a lifetime, long enough to expect the unexpected.
The massive overhaul of the club by general manager Bob Gainey added five players, requiring the departure of others.
Atop the list of the outgoing would be Koivu, the team’s 27th captain and its leader for nine seasons - 10, including the lockout season of 2004-05.
Gainey, the Canadiens’ 20th captain from 1981-89, remains the most recent to retire with the C on his jersey. The seven since have been traded or released, four of them trap-doored during a 26-month period in the mid-1990s.
• Stubbs’s feature column appears here.
Below: Koivu on the cover of Les Canadiens magazine in the fall of 1999, upon being named Habs captain.