Article content continued

In this market, it’s exactly what you need. You can’t have your best friend behind the bench letting you turn the puck over to end up in the back of your net because it’s going to make headlines the next day and we’re both going to look dumb because of it.

•And yet Therrien gets a lot of heat in this town for his ice-time management, personnel decisions in certain situations and his line-juggling and combinations …

Canadiens fans express all kinds of opinions because of the passion they have for the game.

There’s never been a coach in the history of hockey, I’m sure, who is loved by everybody in the media and all the fans.

Watch a Chicago Blackhawks game and they don’t hold the same lines for more than five minutes in a game. So I don’t know why we can’t do that here. (Coaching) is a position I’d never want to have because it seems like you never, ever do anything right. We’re in first place now and there’s noise about line changes …

I’m sure it’s like that everywhere for every coach but it’s obviously more magnified in Montreal. I’m sure just like the pressure on the players, Mike enjoys that type of pressure on the coach as well. It’s an adrenalin.

•You’ve flourished this season and last under Michel. How has he contributed to your growth?

Mike demanded the most out of me like everyone else and he knew I had this whole other gear in myself that I didn’t even know existed. Every year we’ve kind of pinpointed how he wants me to improve. It’s almost like one little change in my game that I think about all summer, then I come into camp and work at it.

Two years ago, the lockout year, I was playing a little bit on the perimeter and I didn’t score as many goals. For me, it felt like I should have scored more. Mike said I had to use my body more, take pucks to the net, use my speed a lot more. (Last season) I did that and I had 39 goals. It was a big adjustment in my game. I had a great year but Mike said last summer, “I want to use you a lot more defensively, have you playing more roles and get you involved in games. I want to put you out there with Pleky and be effective on the penalty-kill.”

That also meant holding leads late. I can’t even explain how much better I feel about myself out there, as a teammate and as a player, because of that.

I can’t wait to go into his office this year after we win the Stanley Cup and he’ll tell me the area of my game I have to improve and then go from there. I hope every year we can point to one thing that I can improve because it’s worked so far. You can never stop improving.

•You toughened your own hide during the summertime, and that’s something that can’t be coached. You used to take a lot of things said about you and your teammates very personally, but apparently not so much now.

Once you first come to Montreal, it’s all you think about, it’s all you do, it’s all you hear about, it’s all they talk to you about. You try to tune it out but it’s completely impossible to not know what’s being said about you out there.

I’m briefed some mornings on important situations around the team but I’ve learned just not to be sensitive about what’s being said about me. I try to spin everything into a positive.

When it comes to people judging how you play, you have to realize there will always be someone who has a problem with something. No matter what you hear, whether it’s good or bad, you just take it with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, we care about how our teammates and coaches feel that we play. We know. I know when I play a bad game. I played badly last game and I talked to the coach about it. But I don’t need someone on Twitter to say I actually played well because I’d be lying to myself.

Photo by Dave Stubbs / Montreal Gazette

•Pretty important to be able to look at yourself in the mirror?

I’ve started being so much better about that. If I’ve had a (bad) game and didn’t deserve to play those minutes, I know that. I’m honest with myself. It just motivates me to be better next game.

That’s the best thing for young guys — you have to be completely honest with yourself. Chris Nilan has always told me that.

One time it was late in a period, and obviously I have to get the puck deep. You can’t turn it over on the blue line. Gomer (Scott Gomez) won the draw, I picked it up and went to get it deep and their D-man caught it and put it down.

Gomer said to me, “Get the (expletive) puck deep,” and he’s one of the best vets I’ve ever played with.

I said, “The guy caught it,” and Gomer snapped and broke his stick over the wall and he said, “I don’t give a (expletive) if he caught it, you find a way to do it.”

At the time I was like, “It wasn’t my fault, the guy caught it.” But I could have done something better. Being completely honest with myself has made a big difference in how I perform.

•It’s eight years this coming June that you’ve been in the Canadiens organization. Time flies?

It’s crazy. It’s too fast, and I expect it to go by even faster now that I’ve established myself and Katia and I and our son have made Montreal home and started to love everything about it.

This season, it feels like I was in training camp a week ago. That’s the good thing about a family. You’re able to pump the brakes and take a step back and really enjoy and appreciate every day because this is the highlight of my life right now. I want it to go by a little slower than it has.

Photo by Gregory Shamus / Getty Images

•When did you realize what it meant to be a Canadien?

Not at first. I don’t think I even got it last year. Being that close to the Cup (two wins short of a berth in the final), well, obviously I cared and I wanted to do the best I could.

But to realize how special it was for the city and the fans … even little things like restaurant managers coming up to me and saying, “It’s amazing. When you do well, we do well.”

The Canadiens have an impact on the whole city. And I take it with pride that, when our team is winning, I’m helping everyone else as well, sometimes more than just making them happy.

You can feel the city is just a different place during the playoffs. I wish I could feel that way my whole life, the way the playoffs feel. You feel like you can’t do anything wrong. It’s hard to explain. It’s the best feeling in the world. The playoffs last year, I hope to repeat that every year.

Maybe it’s different now because we’ve had so much more success. To be a big part of that success is such an honour, but now the goal is to continue with it rather than get comfortable. Just like Carey. He won’t get comfortable, he wants to keep getting better. That’s what we have to do as a team.

•You could play hockey 13 months of the year in Montreal and some fans still wouldn’t think it’s enough.

Some people say, “It must be so hard, being such an incredible sports focus for fans in this city.” I used to listen to them and think, “It must be hard, there is a lot of pressure.”

But now I see it like this: You’re forced to play your best every night. You can’t take a night off. Rather than that being hard, it’s easy. It’s easier to be motivated, to have a good game because everyone’s watching every move you make. You can’t hide, you’re not playing for a crowd of 5,000.

And it brings the best out of you. It’s hard to have bad games at the Bell Centre. I feel I can count my bad games at home on the fingers of one hand. Maybe it’s easy to have bad games on the road after being spoiled by the building that we play in at home.

It’s crazy. It just feels that, in Montreal, you’re in a bigger rink and on bigger ice than anywhere else. (Smiles) The playoffs are the best.

My mom wants to sit up at the top of the Bell Centre and watch a game. She says to me, “You always give me seats that are too nice, I want to go up with Sue (Susan Cryans), Berge’s assistant. Sue’s grown pretty close to my mom. She’s told me, “Your mom’s goal is to watch a game up there so I’m going to do it with her one day.”

•Your son, Enzo, looks like a handful at 15 months. And you and Katia have another son on the way in early June. If you’re not still playing hockey, are you going to be in the delivery room?

(Laughs) Enzo’s a great kid. He’s hilarious. And no, I can’t do the delivery room. I can’t even see a cut on my own face.

•Seriously? After all you’ve been through?

It’s pretty funny, some of that, but I hate seeing the spotlight on me with pretty much everybody dealing with stuff. There’s so many injuries that nobody has any idea about, even if they seem harmless.

I had a separated shoulder in the Olympics last year (in Sochi) and I didn’t even know it. (Laughs) I think it was Emmy (Canadiens teammate Alexei Emelin, playing for Russia) who did it. I finished the game perfectly fine, but after the game, when the adrenalin stopped, it was like, “Oh my God, my shoulder is killing me.”

People think I was a healthy scratch the next game. I was cleared by doctors to keep playing (he took part in Team USA’s three final games). I was getting shot up before every game for the rest of the Olympics.

So many guys play hurt. I can’t take credit for doing that myself. … The Canadiens have hired the right (medical and athletic therapy) people to keep players off the table and to make sure everyone feels as good as they can every night. It’s an underrated thing in the league and I feel we have the best crew that I’ve seen at making sure guys feel good and healthy.

Photo by Courtesy Katia Pacioretty

•Do you give even a fraction of the thought that fans do of your pursuit of 40 goals this season, as they did last year?

I know the fans get a lot of joy out of it but I don’t feel that it’s relevant at all beyond making them happy and giving them something to talk about. I’m just trying to do the best I can to help the team win, whether that’s to score goals on a certain night or play strong on the PK on another night.

There’s satisfaction in goal-scoring but I’m capable of doing the best I’ve ever done in all areas of my game. Being able to contribute offensively and in other areas is the best feeling in the world.

It’s so cliché to talk about team stats — we’re in first place, but it’s nice to know I’m getting better every year and it gives me confidence that my ceiling is even higher than what I’m showing right now. My goal as a player is to get better every year. And if my numbers get better every year, then that just shows I have a lot of room for improvement. I’m happy about that.

•Your increased defensive role this season, especially with Plekanec on the penalty-kill, gives you great pride …

It’s a great feeling, especially when you don’t contribute offensively, that you can help the team win in other areas. Pleky and I have a really good thing going right now. We have great chemistry, especially on the PK. We sort of have set roles on PK and you don’t really see that with too many guys. The coaching staff has kept us together the whole year on PK and it’s made it really easy for us to kill with each other. (Laughs) But he’s had a lot of success before me. I can’t take much credit for that. But I feel we help each other out a lot.

•The playoffs are on the horizon, a few weeks away. You have only 21 post-season games under your belt. We always hear how different they are compared to the regular season. How different are the playoffs to you?

For a player like me, very different. I step on the ice and I look at their bench and here comes Chara. Here comes McDonagh. Obviously it’s a compliment to me that it’s like that but there’s no time and space out there. If you thought there was no time and space in the regular season, the playoffs are a whole other animal.

It just shows you have to play a certain way to have success. You’re not going to score many nice goals in the playoffs. It’s all about getting your nose dirty, getting to the net, second and third chances. It’s tough to score a nice goal in the playoffs when some of these guys’ jobs is literally to make sure that you don’t score a goal. And nothing else.

It was really tough for me to figure that out but I feel as playoffs went on (last season), I got a lot better at it. Yes, my playoff experience is very small, so toward the end of the playoffs I started to figure it out. I hope it can carry over to this year.

But there’s more hockey to play first. We have an obligation to our teammates, coaches and fans to go 100 per cent every shift. If you don’t, I feel it goes against me.

I’m very excited about the playoffs but I’m trying not to change my game now. When I get too antsy or too hyped up, I run into problems. Same thing if I get too relaxed. I’ve found a nice medium, I’ve had success when I have the right mindset — staying even keel, I don’t think it should be any different for the playoffs.

Once the nerves were gone last year, I started to perform. If I can play like that throughout the whole playoffs, I could have a ton of success. It’s my goal and my job to do that.

Photo by John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

•This June will be 22 years since Montreal has experienced a Stanley Cup parade. That’s a whole generation of fans who haven’t witnessed one in a city where it used to be almost a rite of spring. Have you ever once fantasized about holding that trophy over your head?

(Grins) That’s all I ever think about. As a Rangers fan growing up, I saw them win it in 1994 and I thought it was cool that they had won a Cup. Then you come here and it’s 24. Twenty-four.

I was thinking at the time, “I’ll probably win one before I retire,” and then you see how hard it is. It’s by far the hardest trophy to win in sports: the grind of 82 games and then four rounds that could go seven games each.

I just want to be in absolute pain, be not able to feel my legs, be just so exhausted — and lift the Cup. It’s got to be the biggest feeling of relief that you’ve ever had in your life. That’s what I want to feel.

(Pause)

Can you imagine now what it would be like in Montreal? It would be legendary. There would be nothing like it.

dstubbs@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/dave_stubbs