How the 1980s Canadiens star became talk of pro hockey … in small-town France
David Winch, Montreal Gazette (October 21 1989)
EPINAL, France – All eyes are on the man at centre ice as the hockey players end their warmup skate and crowd together in a tangle of sticks and skates in the faceoff circle.
The players, sporting a rag-tag collection of Minnesota North Stars, Washington Capitals and French national-team sweaters, huddle attentively as their new coach begins to speak.
As Bob Gainey’s instructions echo throughout Epinal’s cavernous La Patinoire ice palace, only a few garbled phrases about “les trios” – the forward lines – are audible. Finally, as the players start to skate off, he shouts, “Un bon changement volant!” in distinctly Quebecois French, urging his men to try to change lines faster on the fly.
Gainey’s echoing instructions are unclear but once the practice scrimmage begins, everything he does stands out vividly.
“Look at him skate, he never stops. He doesn’t look very fast but he does 30 or 40 metres in the time anyone else does 10,” says Epinal team secretary Jean-Pierre Tenette about his team’s newest acquisition.
Montreal native Michel Celestin, a stocky, hard-skating forward with Epinal, pauses at the bench to slurp down a mouthful of water and catch his breath.
“Gainey? This whole town is excited about him; he’s the talk of hockey all over France,” he says.
In the space of two months, Gainey has emerged as the centre of hockey in this prosperous little city in the Vosges region 300 kilometres east of Paris, and he is quickly gaining a profile throughout the French sports world.
“It’s as if (French soccer star Michel) Platini suddenly signed with a team in some city of 40,000 in North America,” says Pascal Balland, hockey writer for the daily L’Est Republicain. “It’s unbelievable.”
In July, Gainey shocked the North American hockey world by announcing he was leaving the big time, the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadiens, for a position as player-coach of a team called the Squirrels – les Ecureuils – in Epinal.
For a player like Gainey who tasted virtually every top-level honour the NHL offers — Stanley Cup champion, Canadiens captain, all-star, multiple trophy winner, and the epithet “best technical player in the world” — his decision might seem like a big step into the unknown.
After all, the Forum remains the centre of the hockey universe. Gainey was exiling himself to a second-division team in France, hockey’s equivalent of the planet Pluto – invisible to the naked eye.
“I know I needed a change,” says Gainey, still drenched in sweat after the practice. “This gives me a taste of something new.”
Last man off ice
He was the last man off the ice at practice, and he spends a few minutes with his players before coming into the small coach’s room across the hall. A small stack of learning-to-coach manuals sits on the edge of his desk.
“It’s taken some time to adjust; I hadn’t played in months, and I had to learn how to balance coaching with keeping up my skills as a player. For a while I was just watching,” he says.
Epinal’s surprise offer gave Gainey a chance to look to his long- term career.
At 35, his future in hockey depended on getting some coaching experience, mastering French – essential for advancing as a Canadiens executive – and doing it all far from the relentless pressure of fans and media in Montreal. The Ecureuils’ offer seemed to give him all of that.
As a bonus, he’s landed in Epinal, a city that is solid, unpretentious, low-key – in short, a lot like Bob Gainey himself.
Epinal is known as an exceptional sports town, fielding competitive teams in the second divisions of the French national soccer, basketball and volleyball leagues as well as being a traditional stop on cycling’s Tour de France.
Hockey is well established in French terms. The arena was built 25 years ago, and the Epinal Ecureuils attract respectable crowds – 600 to 700 fans – even when the team is doing badly.
It’s a city where competitive kayak runs weave through the 1,000- year-old city’s downtown cafe district on a diverging branch of the Moselle River.
“We’ve been settled here since August, but things have been very busy. The furniture just got here a few days ago,” says Gainey.
The Gaineys – his wife, Cathy, and children, Stephen, 10; Laura, 8; Colleen, 5; and Anna, 11 – now live in suburban Deyvillers. Gainey found that after their arrival in France, his family’s life was being disrupted by “three or four calls a day” from North American reporters. As a result, he instructed club officials that he now will talk to journalists only at La Patinoire, and not at the new family home, and will talk only about hockey.
Gainey has become an instant local notable – being welcomed in a ceremony at Deyvillers town hall by the mayor on an early October evening, for example – and a big PR plus for the team.
But Gainey hasn’t been an instant savior on the ice.
The club has a history of shaky management – it went bankrupt and dropped to the bottom division in the mid-1980s – and has had to shake an image as a loser.
By all accounts, Epinal looked wobbly and ineffective in the first two games of the season, getting shelled 5-0 by Angers and 14-3 by Chamonix.
“It took a while to get used to the players. We had about five days’ preparation. We were moved up to the second division, where the season begins earlier, while we’d been expecting an October season opener,” says Gainey.
“We’ve got a group of young players. Some fit in while others didn’t, and as coach I had to make some changes.”
These changes included emphasizing the basics. “The players have to be coached to make the proper play at the proper time, to make and receive passes well,” he says.
In the third game of the season Gainey played well over 40 minutes, and Epinal beat formerly undefeated Anglet 11-6 before a packed house of 1,600 at the Patinoire.
For Balland of the L’Est Republicain, the reason for the sudden turnaround was obvious.
“Gainey grand seigneur,” read the banner headline over the paper’s game report. The “phenomene Gainey,” wrote Balland breathlessly, was now demonstrably more than just a media blitz or an old pro coasting through semi-retirement.
“The most talked-about star of French hockey isn’t content to rest on his laurels … the five-time winner of the Stanley Cup hasn’t come (to Epinal) just to spend a quiet time with his family.
“No more nonsense – the team now has a coach who has banned complacency from its vocabulary.”
As for Gainey’s playing: “His performance on the ice is revolutionary.”
Back at his office, Balland says he thinks Gainey spent the first two games getting a feel for the team.
“He had all sorts of chances to score in those two games the team lost; he had open shots on net he passed up. Instead, he held back, feeding passes, playing defensively, setting everything up. He played for the team.”
Not end-to-end rusher
Gainey agrees he held back. “I was never an end-to-end rusher, either in Canada or here; that’s what they expect from Canadian players, though.
“It just took time to get to know the players.”
Michel Latour, a colorful local cable-TV executive, is the man directly responsible for approaching Gainey to come to France last summer. He sits chain-smoking Marlboros in his company’s high-tech headquarters overlooking the Moselle.
He has the satisfied look of the cat who’s caught the mouse.
“When you look at the level of hockey we’ve had here, Gainey looks like a magician,” he says.
“We had clear goals for this team,” says Latour, who became president of the Renouveau Epinal club shortly after his arrival in town June 1.
Latour, a former hockey player with the Grenoble team in the 1960s, is a veteran of the French hockey scene. He played against Canadian Forces teams in Baden-Baden, Soviet squads and touring North American pros.
Now, backed by Epinal’s high-powered mayor, Philippe Seguin – a former Gaullist cabinet minister and a national political figure – Latour aims to rebuild the city’s hockey tradition.
“We wanted someone to improve the physical training of the team as well as its morale, to fill them with fighting spirit.
“We wanted to send out a message to the players: No more Club Med!
“Gainey’s working well and fast,” says Latour. “He’s building a team through young players. That is the way this team can rise (into the French first division).”
As Gainey prepares for the team’s seven-hour bus trip for a weekend game in Clermont-Ferrand, he gives scarcely a moment to reminiscences of his past glories with the Canadiens.
“We miss Montreal; we have a lot of friends there. In some ways we appreciate it more now that we’re gone.”
But new horizons beckoned, and Gainey took the challenge. Even if it means riding the bus again for seven-hour road trips.
“You’re not catered to here: No one sharpens your skates, you sharpen them yourself. You carry your own luggage.
“This is back to basic hockey.”
It’s hard not to feel Bob Gainey likes it that way.
Published September 1989, all rights reserved, Montreal Gazette
