Here’s a guest article by a good friend to All Habs who knows everything there is to know about Mathieu Schneider. She’s also a fan of Brad Richards (if not for the wrist injury, wouldn’t he look good in a Habs uniform!)
Enjoy the article and then visit her excellent blog The Unofficial Mathieu Schneider Home Page
Get to know Mathieu Schneider…again!
by schtimpy27
When Mathieu Schneider last played for the Montreal Canadiens, Jean Chretien was Prime Minister, Bill Clinton was in his first term as President, and Mississippi had just abolished slavery.
A lot has happened in the world since, and a lot has happened in Mathieu Schneider’s career. Now that he’s back in town, here is a quick primer to help catch you up on some things you may have missed. Over the last 14 years, he has
*played with 7 other NHL teams
*suited up for 3 more of the “original six”
*been selected in an expansion draft (but never signed)
*appeared in career NHL regular season game 1,200
*scored career goal #200
*registered career assist #500
*tallied career point #700
*taken his 1,000th career PIM
*represented the U.S. in 2 Olympic games
*been selected to 2 All-Star games
*won a World Cup of Hockey championship
*had 2 fighting majors
*been suspended twice
*served as alternate captain for the New York Islanders, Los Angeles Kings, and Atlanta Thrashers (and as a fill-in with Detroit)
*had groin surgery
*had hernia surgery
*broken a wrist
*broken an ankle
*replaced half of his teeth
*scored two hat tricks
*had a 12 game point streak
*spent at least 10 summers training under the tutelage of renowned trainer T.R. Goodman (most known for his work with Chris Chelios)
*placed as high as 7th in Norris Trophy voting
*served on the NHL’s competition committee
*been appointed an executive vice-president of the NHLPA
*had a 32-game streak of being rated a + or even in the ever controversial +/- statistic
*recorded an assist on Wane Gretzky’s last NHL point
*been inducted into the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
*been married twice
*divorced once
*became a father of 6,
*and has proudly worn both leather pants and zebra print shoes. In public. And not on Halloween.
He returns to his original team as the 6th oldest player in the NHL, one of two remaining 1993 Stanley Cup champions, the only current NHL defenseman with multiple hat tricks, and one of the best power play specialists available. But he doesn’t return to Montreal as a miraculous cure for what ails the Habs. He’s got a set of well noted liabilities (i.e. defensive positioning, speed, injury concerns), and would never conceivably solve many defensive woes. Always a “high-risk / high-reward” player, his value is almost purely offensive, often at the expense of defensiveness.
As someone who has followed Mathieu Schneider for going on 16 years, I am today as I always am when he begins a new chapter: cautiously optimistic. He has proven time and again to have the skill and the will for great things, and he has been blessed with success in La belle province once before. He would love nothing more than to do it again.
It is really a sad commentary on the team, the state of the game, and probably Mathieu Schneider himself that he returns to Montreal at this point. I don’t think he ever was that thrilled to play there in the first place, as one of the few Jewish NHLers in one of the most anti-Semitic cities in North America.
Schneider should have gone gracefully a few years back, alongside his fellow 1987 draft pick Eric Desjardins. But he is still hanging on 10 years past his prime and stealing a ridiculous amount of money from the teams he plays for.
Then Sleepy Eyed Bob compounds the felony by giving up two premium draft picks for a player that the Thrashers should be paying to have taken off their hands.
It is an awful time in Montreal, and Gainey is becoming completely unstrung.
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