HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Saku Koivu Turns 47 Today (Nov. 23)
- Thread starter Adam Michaels
- Start date
And what an amazing comback it was 2 pts in 3 games to end the season and then 10 pts in 12 playoff games. Then the next season he has his second most productive year with 21 goals and 71 points in 82 games.
- Aug 22, 2006
- 60,346
- 16,804
One of my all-time favourite players. HBD Saku!
Paddyjack
Registered User
It's great he reached that, if I remember correctly the pronostics was not that good on initial assessment?
He was a warrior! And great at shootouts, too!
Le Tricolore
Boo! BOOOO!
I'd love to see him back in the organization some day. No idea if he has any interest, but it'd be awesome to see as a fan.
He's currently franchise owner and senior advisor for TPS in the Liiga.
Le Tricolore
Boo! BOOOO!
He and Molson should trade franchises.
Doc McKenna
A new era 2021
- Jan 5, 2009
- 11,840
- 11,803
What a player...............heart of a lion!!
Loved Saku...............another great great hab who deserved better....my god the teams he had to captain, at times.....those teams were beyone awful, but had good goaltending at times............interesting....
Loved Saku...............another great great hab who deserved better....my god the teams he had to captain, at times.....those teams were beyone awful, but had good goaltending at times............interesting....
Archijerej
Registered User
montreal
Go Habs Go
I always thought it was crazy how much shit he got on this board from the early days of HF. Was one of my favorite Habs along with Markov and Price from the more recent days. Naslund will always be my favorite all time Hab since he was the main reason why I became such a huge fan of hockey and the Habs.
JianYang
Registered User
- Sep 29, 2017
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He was hyped to the moon before he even played a game, and then he was leading the league in scoring before he got hurt in his 2nd season.
I think those two factors caused a certain level of expectations among a specific crowd that he was just never going to live up to.
Maybe it's a different story if he doesn't suffer that terrible knee injury, but he'll always be a legend in my books.
I was there. He really didn't get that much criticism at all here despite the performance of the team during that time. There were low points and high points.
Personally I always thought that after his injury management wrongly focused of trying to find complimentary players for him at other positions when the truth is that he wasn't performing at as a "true" first line C for much of his later years.
Fun Fact: The Habs never made the playoffs in any season where Saku led the team in points (which happened three times).
Catanddogguitarrr
Registered User
Habs probably picked A Kost to compliment Koivu when the logical choice would have been the BPA : Carter or Getzlaf. There was an hole a #2C. Well, if Carter or Getzlaf would have been Habs, Koivu might have slip to #2C after two years, for the benefit of the team. Same thing if Habs picked Kopitar few years later. Ironicly Koivu ended his carreer second C after Getzlaf in Anaheim.
At the time there was a surge of outrage amongst some on this board when Ribeiro started to get prime offensive icetime and some perceived that he was used as a "no. 1 center" over Koivu, even if that wasn't true at all. Obviously Koivu was a much better all-around player so he got tougher minutes and Ribeiro got mostly offensive deployment. It's just common sense to use players that way but apparently not for everybody. I agree that the fate of the team would have been so much better if they had looked to upgrade at C much earlier than they did.
To a degree this is what happened with Carey Price as well in the past. The Habs have had so many cheap/bad backups because they wanted him to feel secure and in control and whenever he got injured or in a funk the team had no other option. They should have kept Halak and split the games 50/30 every season.
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HabsQC
Registered User
Happy Birthday, Saku! Special player, special person. And before the emergence of Suzuki, we have not had a #1 C since Koivu's prime years.
naslund was my neighbour growing up - he'd join in on street hockey games in the 80s..
boompuffboom
Registered User
- Jul 10, 2007
- 1,101
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