Familiar question mark hangs over Mathieu Darche
Mathieu Darche, BCom'00, smiled when asked about his future with the Canadiens being somewhat a question mark.
"It's been 10 years that I've ended a season with a question mark over my head," the 34-year-old forward said. "Obviously, I want to be back, but at this point it's not entirely in my control.
"I'll see what they have to say and I'm sure we'll talk soon," he added. "That's where it is right now. We'll deal with it as it comes."
The Montreal native is one of nine unrestricted free agents the Canadiens have on their roster. Also on that list are centre Jeff Halpern, defencemen Andrei Markov, Roman Hamrlik, James Wisniewski, Brent Sopel, Hall Gill and Paul Mara, and backup goaltender Alex Auld. Another nine players are restricted free agents, including forwards Andrei Kostitsyn, David Desharnais and Tom Pyatt, and defencemen Josh Gorges and Yannick Weber.
Darche played 59 regularseason games this season, scoring 12 goals and adding 14 assists to finish 10th in team scoring with 26 points. He was also plus-7 and had 10 penalty minutes. He added a goal and an assist in the bestof-seven Eastern Conference quarter-final series against the Boston Bruins, which the Canadiens lost in overtime of Game 7.
The 88 regular-season games Darche has played over the last two seasons with the Canadiens, after being called up from the American Hockey League's Hamilton Bulldogs, are his most with one NHL team since he broke into the league with the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2000-01.
Darche played 24 games with the Blue Jackets until 2003, then played two games with the Nashville Predators in 2003-04 and two with the San Jose Sharks in 2006-2007, before playing a career-high 74 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2007-08.
The left-winger played with seven AHL clubs and also in Germany before joining the Bulldogs for the 2009-10 season under then head coach Guy Boucher and assistant Martin Raymond, both fellow McGill University alumni. Boucher is now head coach of the Lightning with Raymond is his assistant.
Darche and Pyatt were the lowest-paid players on the Canadiens this season, earning $500,000.
That's the same amount the Canadiens paid former enforcer Georges Laraque this season, and they will again next season as part of his buyout last year.
Darche scored five more goals during the regular season than centre Scott Gomez, the Canadiens' highest-paid player at $8 million. Gomez played 21 more games than Darche and was minus-15.
"I hope to be back," Darche said. "I've said several times that it is an honour for me to play for this organization. I grew up in this city, idolizing this team. To put that jersey on every night, it's a dream come true, so hopefully it can keep going."
Looking back on the series with the Bruins, Darche said the hardest part was to deal with the fact the season is over.
"Some can say it was easier to deal with because we know we left everything out there," Darche said. "But it's tougher when you watch games going on or see the highlights of games on the television the next morning and you're not there.
"As much as we can't be satisfied that we lost, this team did leave everything out there," he added. "There were no passengers. It was the greatest series I've seen in a while ... all seven games. Usually in a seven-game series you might have one or two games that are blowouts, but in this case every single game could have gone either way.
"I'm sure for the fans it was a great series. It's just unfortunate we weren't the ones to come out on top."
Read full article: The Gazette, May 3, 2011