It was 14 years ago, less a week, that the Canadiens drafted Tomas Plekanec into the National Hockey League.
“Fourteen years?” the 32-year-old centreman repeated, almost in disbelief.
And then he grinned.
“I’m old, eh?”
That was 1,102 professional games ago – 842 regular-season and playoff matches for the Canadiens, another 260 for their farm club in Hamilton.
Soon, Plekanec will begin his 11th season in Montreal. All things being equal, he will play his 700th regular-season NHL game almost exactly at the midpoint of the 2015-16 campaign.
His next point will be his 500th in scheduled NHL play, parked now at 202 goals and 297 assists in 761 games.
What more do you want as a hockey player than to be part of a place where everybody loves hockey?
It is no small feat in this salary-capped era of free agency, trade-deadline rentals and interchangeable parts that Plekanec has played every pro game of his career for the same organization.
Having outlasted dozens of now-former Montreal teammates and having skated for three general managers and six coaches, he has the second-longest tenure of the Canadiens after defenceman Andrei Markov, who’s heading into his 15th season here.
Related
Plekanec is entering the sixth and final year of a $30-million contract signed in June 2010, again eligible next July to hit the market as an unrestricted free agent.
So it was that he considered his past, present and future in his adopted home of Montreal over lunch at a downtown restaurant on Monday.
“What more do you want as a hockey player than to be part of a place where everybody loves hockey?” Plekanec asked. “Would you rather be where people don’t care and don’t fill the building?
As long as we’re on opposite teams and they hate me, there’s nothing wrong with that.
“I went to the U2 concert (at the Bell Centre) on the weekend. Any time I go to a concert here, it’s a special feeling just walking in. I’ve never been as a hockey spectator, so I don’t know what that feeling is like. But when I go for a concert, right inside the door, I feel, ‘Wow, this is something special. It’s different than anywhere else in the league.’
“I mean, it’s perfect.”
How loud was the crowd for U2, I asked him, compared to a Canadiens game?
“Ours is louder,” he replied brightly.
(And here is this city’s perfection, of which Plekanec speaks: he pulled up to our restaurant on a busy Crescent St. shortly before noon and slipped his SUV into the vacant parking space directly in front of the door – like that ever happens?)
Plekanec wears Montreal as comfortably as he would a favourite turtleneck, delighted that he put down roots between downtown and the team’s Brossard training base when he inked his six-year contract in 2010, signing a week before he could have tested the open market.
It’s here that he and his wife, Lucie, who this week celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary, are raising their son. Matyas, who’s almost 4, loves many sports and, for now, is sleeping with the soccer boots his father bought him last week.
And it’s here that the three will spend most of the summer for the first time, heading back to the Czech Republic in August for a few weeks to visit family and for Plekanec to get in some quality on-ice practice with his old Kladno team to prepare for Canadiens training camp.
With very little fanfare, year in and year out, Plekanec is a consistent, productive, multi-purpose centreman who has been virtually indestructible, a player who has been cast in myriad roles and used between nearly countless linemates to become one of the game’s finest two-way players.
Seven times, he’s scored 20 or more goals. Eight times in the past 10 seasons, he’s finished on the plus side of the plus/minus ledger. His penalty killing is a cornerstone for his team, a vital part of his ice time that averages nearly 20 minutes.
He infuriates the opposition without, he said happily, even trying, getting a kick out of the dislike, with gusts to hatred, felt for him by Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Boston’s Brad Marchand.
“That’s absolutely OK with me,” Plekanec said, rubbing his goatee, his hand not quite disguising a smile. “It would be worse if I was their teammate and they said that, right? But as long as we’re on opposite teams and they hate me, there’s nothing wrong with that.
“The best part is, I don’t do much. When somebody gets me going, I can be really, how do you say it, a p—k? I don’t chirp, really. A slash here and there, but I’m getting it good from them, too. I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. If they say it is, then that’s good.”
And Plekanec’s durability is remarkable. He’s not had a significant injury since a bad knee shelved him in 2005-06; he missed five games in 2010-11, but otherwise has been sidelined for a total of only seven contests over eight seasons.
His career production in the playoffs is an asterisk, and he admitted last month that he could have been better this postseason; he had only one goal and one assist in 12 playoff games this spring, with 15 goals and 26 assists to show for 81 career playoff games.
As a youngster in Kladno, Czech Republic, Plekanec was not dreaming of an NHL career, more a fan of his own national team and the Pittsburgh Penguins, starring countryman Jaromir Jagr, than of the Canadiens.
He said he “vaguely” remembers the Habs’ 1993 Stanley Cup triumph over Los Angeles, won when he was 10.
“And that’s pretty much it,” he said, his first memory of the Canadiens traced to their 24th and most recent championship.
At the 2001 draft in Sunrise, Fla., having been scouted in Kladno and on the national junior-age team by 1986 Canadiens draft pick Antonin Routa, Plekanec remembers his English as being “nothing… zero. I had learned a few words in school, but that was pretty much useless.”
He didn’t rush back to North America, playing generous minutes for Kladno in the top division of the Czech League, having been selected in the third round (71st overall), behind defenceman Mike Komisarek and forwards Alexander Perezhogin and Duncan Milroy.
Plekanec’s first Canadiens camp was in fall 2002, under coach Michel Therrien. Off to Hamilton he went, playing the full season in the minors, before a 2003 two-game call-up to the Habs between Christmas and New Year’s.
With each day, he was learning about pro hockey, life in North America, and how to express himself in English.
Plekanec figured he’d crack the Canadiens’ lineup in 2004-05, but that entire season was torpedoed by a lockout. He entertained notions of returning to Europe to play, but stuck it out and considers the experience he gained in the American league priceless.
Plekanec finally arrived in Montreal for good in 2005-06, missing 14 games that season with a knee injury and one more for a shoulder. He’s sat out only a dozen since and has failed to hit 20 goals just once in the subsequent eight full seasons (2012-13 was abridged by a lockout).
The NHL, he said, has changed dramatically during his hockey lifetime.
When I play ball hockey in my neighbourhood, nobody writes about it.
“The last four, five years, it’s unbelievable how the game has got faster – and maybe I’m getting older, too,” he said, laughing again. “Everybody’s faster, quicker on their skates, quicker with shooting and passing. To me, that’s the biggest change in the NHL – less and less time to make any special plays.”
It’s not as though, like many contemporaries, Plekanec has had the luxury of studying the action from on high, with a press-box perspective that puts the game in a relative slow motion.
“I’ve seen some games in training camp, but you can’t compare that to the regular season or playoffs,” he said. “But you can see from upstairs that it’s easy to play.
“From up there, most people could really play, too, if they knew how to skate,” he added, tongue in cheek. “But when you’re down on the ice, it’s really fast. …
“As I’ve got older, I see and understand more with experience how important it is and what a big deal it is to be in good position, to be where you’re supposed to be. With video now, you get all the information. But at the same time, you have to use your instincts and read the game.”
Where the spotlight will continue to find higher-profile teammates, Plekanec will continue to happily play a little in the shadows, as he has his entire career.
“When I play ball hockey in my neighbourhood, nobody writes about it,” he said with a grin of mischief spreading, quickly adding that there’s no tension between himself and teammate P.K. Subban, all the rumours notwithstanding.
And then, that smile is gone:
“The Stanley Cup is the first thing and the most important thing. It’s hard to control as an individual, you need to have the team to achieve it. But it’s something I’m really looking forward to – being part of a team that goes all the way.”
Related
