MONTREAL — In total, it was five phone calls.
They came from friends and family members throughout the day, all of them inquiring about Ivan Demidov’s status for the rookie showdown at the Bell Centre Saturday night.
“You didn’t know he’s playing?” I asked.
Turns out not everyone in Montreal is as tuned into hockey in September as they are in October.
Then again, if the Bell Centre wasn’t completely sold out for the first Canadiens game in the building since April 27, it wasn’t far from it. You’d have never known there were a few empty seats in the house listening to that crowd over the two-and-a-half hours prospects of the Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets were duking it out.
The fans weren’t exactly sitting on their hands. They weren’t sitting at all when Demidov was within a sniff of having the puck on his stick.
Each time the 19-year-old Russian corralled it to make plays — and he made a lot of plays, including the ones that set up linemates Florian Xhekaj and Oliver Kapanen for goals before scoring a highlight-reel one of his own — they were chanting his name.
“I remember last year was the same,” Demidov said after the game.
When I asked him if he’s getting used to it, he said, “We’ll see.”
Yes, we will. Over, and over, and over again, as the fifth-overall pick in the 2024 Draft sprints towards NHL superstardom.
If that seems hyperbolic to you, go watch the highlights.
Not just the ones from Saturday night, over which Demidov toyed with Jets prospects through the first two periods before embarrassing them in the third. The ones he piled up in the KHL before unexpectedly arriving in Montreal towards the end of last season were telling enough. As were his first ones in a Canadiens uniform last spring.
That’s why my phone was ringing Saturday.
It’s why my ears were ringing by the end Saturday night’s game.
“The crowd’s insane when (Demidov) has the puck,” said Xhekaj.
The anticipation of him getting it creates the kind of buzz that’s been reserved for only the greatest Montreal Canadiens of all time.
That phenomenon is as special from the last row of the Bell Centre as it is from the closest seat to the ice.
“Every time you send (Demidov) on the ice, you get the impression something’s going to happen. And something does happen, and we get a chance to score,” said Laval Rocket head coach Pascal Vincent, who was running the Canadiens’ bench. “We had a lot of chances to score tonight, and he was responsible for the majority of them. What he can do on the ice isn’t luck. He’s a guy who’s worked on his game.
“He’s still young, he’ll continue to improve. But he’s a player who can make the difference on every shift. For a coach, that’s fun to have.”
Moments later, Vincent acknowledged the privilege wouldn’t be his beyond this weekend.
But for fans of the Canadiens, the Demidov show has only just begun.
• All that buzz about Xhekaj gaining 15 pounds over the off-season to set himself up to play the rough-and-tumble game that could earn him an NHL job this fall. Probably not enough of it about his skill and hockey sense.
He was anything but out of place next to Demidov and Kapanen in this game.
In addition to registering a goal and an assist, Xhekaj also threw his big body around plenty.
• Jacob Fowler played half the game, faced 11 shots and stopped 11 shots. The 69th pick in the 2023 Draft and reigning NCAA goaltender of the year couldn’t have asked for a better Bell Centre debut.
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• A lot to like about David Reinbacher’s game, even if it appeared a bit rusty at times. As Vincent said, the fifth-overall pick in 2023 got beat one-on-one a couple of times, which was reflective of him missing as much time as he did with a serious knee injury last season.
But the poise, the skating and the hockey sense stood out regardless.
“He going to be really good,” said one scout we spoke with. “You can just see it in his movement, and in the way he always seems to know what he’s going to do in advance.”
It seems like Reinbacher knows his game is only going to improve with each passing day, too.
“I think I was playing quick,” Reinbacher said. “Did some confident plays, tried to make some plays. And for sure not every play is happening or goes through. For sure there’s stuff that you want to improve. Forget it, it happens. That’s the process. Gotta watch the game and be ready for tomorrow.”
• Pascal Vincent on Owen Beck: “I thought what we saw from Owen Beck tonight was a preview of what he can be in the future. He’s a guy who skates, who goes to the net, who’s physical, who can play on the power play as well as the penalty kill, who can play on the wing or at centre. He’s got a lot of interesting tools, and he’s a cerebral guy. We’ll see where he goes with all that.”
I would call that assessment of the 33rd-overall pick in 2022 bang on.
• This, too, from Vincent, put this weekend’s experience for Canadiens prospects in perfect perspective: “For some guys, unfortunately, it’s the only time they’re going to wear an NHL jersey. Just to experience that is the story you’re going to tell your kids and grandkids. And at the same time, I feel we can evaluate players on how they react when you’re on the big stage. So, there’s a lot of components, but it’s such a privilege for those guys to be there and for them to wear that jersey. When I told Luke Tuch that he was going to be the captain — he’s a very serious guy, by the book, he’s a good influence on everyone — he said, ‘Coach, you have no idea what it means to me to have the ‘C’ on my jersey, wearing the Montreal Canadiens logo.’ I don’t know what it means to him, but I know it’s big. It’s a huge privilege.”
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