MONTREAL — Brendan Gallagher and Daniel Carr played hockey with and against each other as youngsters in Edmonton. Now teammates with the Montreal Canadiens, they are excited to get a reminder of those early days when the when the Oilers visit the Bell Centre on Saturday night.
"It's cool, but it's a little more special playing in Edmonton," Gallagher said Friday. "Especially when it was Rexall Place because that's what I remember as a kid, going to games and sitting at Rexall.
"Last year playing in the new rink (Rogers Place) was cool. But I have so many family and friends that are still Oilers fans and they always act like they're cheering for us, but they want it to go into overtime and for us to win. So they can't fully cheer for us. But it's always fun when we play Edmonton. You want to play well."
Gallagher has been playing more than well this season.
The pesky right-winger leads the Canadiens with 13 goals and 19 points after 30 games, a big rebound from a disappointing 10 goals and 29 points in 64 games as he battled a hand injury last season. He is on pace to better his career-best 2014-15 campaign of 24 goals and 47 points.
Carr, who has never faced the Oilers, has been on fire since he was called up from Laval of the AHL last week, with two goals and six points in four games. The Canadiens got almost no production at all from their fourth line until putting together a unit of recent call-ups in Carr, Nicolas Deslauriers and Byron Froese.
Gallagher and Carr both thrive on winning puck battles and getting it to the net.
But their careers took decidedly different paths once they departed Edmonton as 12-year-olds, when Gallagher's family moved to Vancouver and Carr went off to a hockey academy in Kelowna, B.C.
Before then, Gallagher said his teams thumped Carr's regularly.
"I'm not even kidding — I don't think they ever beat us," he said.
"Not a chance — he's got a bad memory," replied Carr.
Gallagher was drafted by Montreal in the fifth round from the Vancouver Giants. He spent half of one season in the AHL, when the NHL was in a lockout in 2012-13, before joining the Canadiens to stay. In 2015, he signed a six-year contract worth US$3.75 million per season.
Carr spent four seasons at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. before signing as an undrafted free agent with Montreal in 2014.
He has spent most of his time in the AHL since then, although he had six goals and nine points in 23 NHL games in 2015-16 and added a pair of goals and nine points in 33 games last season. He is on the second year of a two-year deal worth $750,000 per season and can be an unrestricted free agent next summer.
Carr has been piling up points since the start of the current campaign, however. He had 19 points in 20 games in Laval before his call up and has had at least a point in each NHL game.
In a 3-2 overtime loss to Calgary on Thursday night, Carr showed his skill with a clever backhand in off goalie David Rittich from the side of the net.
"He was always good," said Gallagher. "He's the same player.
"People always ask about him and I say he hasn't changed. He's still Carrsy. Every single game he finds a way to make an impact and he usually scores a goal. It's fun to watch the way he's been able to take his game from level to level."
Carr said the biggest change this season was in his head _ learning to deal with the great highs and lows of being called up to the NHL, only to be sent down again. He cleared waivers and was sent down again at the end of training camp.
"I learned a lot," said Carr. "The start of last year was, I think, the only time in my life that I got healthy-scratched.
"You have to learn how to handle that and not let it get to you so that when you come back you're not holding your stick too tight. It's a tough battle. People don't realize how stressful and hard that is, but you have to learn how to deal with it."
He said the key is to relax and enjoy the games.
"It's about finding what works for you as a player in terms of mindset coming to the rink," he said. "Right now I have something going that seems to be working for me and I'll just try to stick with that and hopefully things continue."
Centre Jonathan Drouin was back at practice after missing two games with a lower body injury and another two with an illness. He's ready to return and was lined up with Alex Galchenyuk and Andrew Shaw. That should bump Jacob De La Rose from the lineup.
Bill Beacon, The Canadian Press