New Faces, New Questions: My "New" Montreal Canadiens Review

Well. Gainey must be sweating right now for two reasons. First, he's never been so active on the free agent market and has to be trying to catch his breath right now. Second, he just took a huge risk by spending 107M$ on four players over five years. So the five year plan is over and failed. Bob Gainey has decided to clean up and change the core of the team. New, younger and hopefully better players have been signed and the aging ones are left to try their luck at free agency. But some players who left town will be hard to replace... The reign of Saku Koivu is over. Koivu will, for the first time in his career, play for a different team than Montreal this fall. He's been the target of lots of criticism in the recent years for dozens of reasons but I hope he can finish his career away from the spotlight. He won't surpass Jean Beliveau as the longest running Montreal Canadiens captain but somehow I think management would not have allowed it... Kovalev, who was one of the only two along with ... (link)