Brendan Gallagher credits Michel Therrien for giving him a chance with Canadiens
As a fifth-round pick (147th overall) at the 2010 NHL Draft, the odds were against Brendan Gallagher ever playing for the Canadiens.
Gallagher was the fourth player the Canadiens drafted that year after taking defenceman Jarred Tinordi in the first round (22nd overall) and centre Mark MacMillan (113th overall) and defenceman Morgan Ellis (117th overall) in the fourth round. Tinordi played 205 games in the NHL (including 46 with the Canadiens), MacMillan never played in the NHL and Ellis played three games with the Canadiens.
Gallagher played 911 games with the Canadiens, to rank 13th on the team’s all-time list, while posting 246-241-487 totals. He ranks 10th in career goals among all the players selected at the 2010 NHL Draft.
After 14 seasons with the Canadiens, Gallagher’s time in Montreal has come to an end and the team has given his agent, Gerry Johansson, permission to facilitate a trade to another team with one season left on his contract and a US$6.5 million salary-cap hit.
Gallagher was honoured Sunday as the Sports Personality of the Year at the 22nd annual Montreal Sports Celebrity Evening, which raised $1 million for senior services and programs at the Cummings Centre. Michel Therrien, who was Gallagher’s first coach with the Canadiens, was there to see him receive the award.
It was Therrien who saw something special in the 5-foot-9 Gallagher, which led to him getting a chance to play in the NHL. When the start of the 2012-13 NHL season was delayed because of a lockout, Therrien had a chance to watch Gallagher play regularly as an AHL rookie with the Hamilton Bulldogs, posting 10-10-20 totals in 36 games.
“I’m going to be honest with you, when I saw the roster of the players we had (in Hamilton) he wasn’t a priority for me,” Therrien said Sunday. “Five-foot-9, he was probably about 175 pounds at the time. But every time I was going to see Hamilton play with (former general manager) Marc Bergevin, the best player was Brendan Gallagher. Usually you go there to watch your top prospects — first-round picks, second-round picks — but every weekend I went there, the guy who stood out was Gally.”
After the lockout ended in January, Gallagher was invited to the Canadiens’ training camp and he ended up making the team as a 20-year-old.
“That was against the odds, but I liked to bring some new blood to our team and he certainly deserved it,” Therrien said.
Therrien made Gallagher a healthy scratch for the season opener, a 2-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Bell Centre.
“I can’t be too mad — there’s not a lot of coaches who would have dressed me the second game, either,” Gallagher said with a chuckle Sunday when reminded about being scratched for that season opener.
Gallagher played in the second game that season and picked up an assist in a 4-1 win over the Florida Panthers at the Bell Centre. The next time Gallagher was made a healthy scratch was this season, when he was left out of the lineup for a 4-2 loss to the San Jose Sharks on March 14 at the Bell Centre. It was the first of five regular-season games Gallagher was scratched from before being left out of the lineup for 16 of 19 playoff games.
“I can honestly say I’m not the player I am without Coach,” Gallagher said about Therrien. “He’ll always be Coach. He right away gave me an opportunity. It took one game for him to give me a chance and I just wanted to take advantage of it. He really understood what I was as a player, understood how I could help the team, and there’s not a lot of coaches that were willing to give me that opportunity.”
Therrien said Gallagher hated to lose as much as he did, which he appreciated.
“One of my bad decisions that I made is I didn’t play him the first game,” Therrien said. “But game No. 2, he was back in the lineup and I never regretted my decision. He earned everything that he got. He was a real warrior and he came from a great family.”
Therrien was thrilled to see Gallagher score a goal in Game 5 of the first-round playoff series this year against the Tampa Bay Lightning when head coach Martin St. Louis put him in the lineup for the first time in the playoffs. It ended up being Gallagher’s last goal with the Canadiens.
“He knew where his bread and butter was,” Therrien said. “You knew exactly what he’s going to give you game after game. He was going hard to the net, and this is the way he scored his last goal against Tampa Bay. He got back in the lineup, first shift, creates a turnover and where’s he going? He’s going where his bread and butter was, and he scored that goal.
“Me and my wife were excited because we love the team, we love the Canadiens,” Therrien added. “But when you see your old player getting rewarded and he went through some tough times — not only this year, but in the last couple of years in his personal life (with the death of his mother last year following a long battle with brain cancer) — I was so pleased with the way that he scored that goal. It means a lot to me.”
Therrien believes Gallagher can still contribute to a new team.
“Incredible career he had with the Canadiens and there’s going to be a next chapter for him, and good things are going to happen for him because he’s a good person,” Therrien said.
