MONTREAL — Late Friday night, after making his debut with his childhood team, the team he always dreamed of playing for, Montreal Canadiens defenceman Alexandre Carrier arrived at home, for real. He slept in his own bed in the Pointe St. Charles condo he and his wife bought a few years ago, maybe a 20-minute walk from the Bell Centre, just across the Lachine Canal.
It was a weird feeling being in that bed at this time of year, on the first day of winter, when it’s cold outside, when it gets dark early. This is his summer home, his real home, born in Quebec City but raised in the Montreal suburb of Varennes. Advertisement But it hasn’t been his hockey home.
Usually when a player gets traded to a new team midseason, accommodations in his new city are an issue, and sometimes that player winds up spending the rest of the season living in a hotel because there’s just no time to arrange for anything else. Carrier didn’t have to do that. He got to go home right away.
But it was late at night, and he was about to play at the Bell Centre the next day, a real dream come true. And though he had the luxury of sleeping in his own bed before this momentous occasion, not everything was perfect. “There was a party downstairs,” Carrier said Saturday night after the Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings 5-1 to sweep their home-and-home series.
“I had to go knock on the door. “It wasn’t a good start.” That’s just about the only part of Carrier’s time with the Canadiens .