Maxim Lapierre's New Year's Eve misadventure
Once again, Quebecers will have to celebrate the New Year in isolation this year. With the meteoric rise of cases caused by the arrival of the Omicron variant and a completely disorganized health system, it is not really surprising!
However, Quebecer Maxim Lapierre experienced a similar New Year's Eve in 2010 when covid did not yet exist. The former CH player was traded after the game between the Tricolore and the Florida Panthers and he would not return to Montreal with his teammates.
"It hurt me. I thought I'd be back home after the game (scheduled for 5 p.m.) for the party on the 31st. Instead, I spent New Year's Eve in a hotel room in Florida," Lapierre said.
"I was sitting on the bus when the secretary came to tell me that Pierre Gauthier wanted to see me in the hotel lobby," he recalled. "That's when he told me that he had traded me in. Plus, he wouldn't even tell me which team," he added.
It was a trade that Lapierre has always struggled with, and you can still feel it today. "You trade a guy for Sidney Crosby. I can understand that you have to settle it quickly and you want to have him for the next game. But in this case, what would it have been like to wait a few days?"
It was Pierre Gauthier who was the Habs general manager at the time. In the history of the Montreal Canadiens, Lapierre was the only player traded on December 31. Especially since Brett Festerling, the 24-year-old left-handed defenseman, never played a single game with the Habs. So there was no sense of urgency behind this transaction.
We can say that Maxim Lapierre will remember for a long time that famous December 31, 2010 that he went through because of Pierre Gauthier...
