Stu Cowan: Days of long-term roommate relationships in NHL are over (2024)

When the Canadiens were in Arizona last month, TSN hockey analyst Dave Poulin was really looking forward to seeing Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet again.

Poulin and Tocchet were roommates for almost six years during the 1980s with the Philadelphia Flyers and built a special relationship, becoming like brothers.

“I always find him,” Poulin said. “We have a unique relationship.The arguments were constant, but the relationship building I think was so significant.”

Article content

Article content

Those long-term roommate relationships won’t happen any more in the NHL. The collective-bargaining agreement now rules that only players on three-year, entry-level contracts have roommates. After that, every player gets his own room on the road.

Poulin doesn’t think that’s a good thing.

Poulin still remembers the lessons he learned about confidence and the will to succeed early in his NHL career when Flyers captain Bobby Clarke was his roommate. After Clarke retired, Poulin became captain for five seasons and Tocchet — who was six years younger than him — became his new roommate.

“Tocchet was really good for me,” Poulin said. “He could identify issues (within the team), but at that time he couldn’t communicate them as well. He could see them, but he had quite the temper when he came into the league, as you can see in his penalty minutes. He would get emotional and get all wound up about something with a teammate or the coach — he had it going with (Mike) Keenan all the time. We could discuss it and get to a better place. Or he could identify a problem on the team with this guy and this guy and say: ‘You have to handle it.’ We were a really good combination from that standpoint.

Article content

Article content

“Keenan did play roommate games once in a while,” Poulin added. “If he was trying to get somebody going, he would move pieces around … or if he thought someone was too comfortable. But he didn’t change a couple of combinations. He never touched Brad McCrimmon and Mark Howe and he left Tocchet and I pretty much alone right from Day 1.”

Asked if he had a favourite roommate story from his days with Tocchet, Poulin said: “It wasn’t one story so much as it was the growing relationship and the trust we had in each other. We faced some incredibly challenging times — the most challenging you could possibly envision was the death of (goalie) Pelle Lindbergh (who died in a car crash while drunk). We went through it together. That was a bond you can never replace when you go through something like that with someone.”

On a brighter note, Poulin remembered Tocchet’s parents visiting Philadelphia.

“He lived around the corner from me and he would just drop them off at my place and leave,” Poulin said with a chuckle. “I was married with children and he didn’t know what to do with his parents, who were classic Italian parents. He would literally drop them off and say: ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.'”

Article content

The Canadiens recently posted a video on their website of 20-year-old Victor Mete and 18-year-old Jesperi Kotkaniemi — two players on entry-level contracts — that was shot in a hotel room this season with them talking about what it’s like to be roommates. They had brought their PS4 video-game player with them and the loser in NHL 19 had to pay for dinner.

“Usually that’s me,” Kotkaniemi says.

When asked about having a roommate on the road, Mete says: “I wouldn’t say there’s any downside.”

Replies Kotkaniemi with his smile: “I feel there is. You’re listening to so bad music. I hate that. 21 Savage, that’s not even music. …I will play you some Finnish music. You will like that.”

It’s a fun video and the biggest argument between the two young players as roommates seems to be about the room temperature.

“I’m freezing all the time,” Kotkaniemi says.

It seems like a good relationship, but you have to wonder how much better it would be for the young players if they each had a veteran roommate — maybe captain Shea Weber with Mete and Brendan Gallagher with Kotkaniemi.

“I saw the Mete and Kotkaniemi video,” Poulin said over the phone Thursday from Toronto. “It’s the late-night conversations. Those are the things … the impromptu conversations. Not the sitting at the team meal or in the locker room. Those are part of a different conversation. Frankly, the conversation in the hotel room gets to places where it doesn’t in other locales … it simply doesn’t because of the comfort standpoint. And a lot of times it’s post-game, late at night. You can share things in a comfortable manner that you don’t in other places.

“I understand there’s a veteran status involved,” Poulin added about the CBA rule on roommates. “There are guys who might be leaving a hectic household at home with young kids and everything who might prefer their sleep and all that. But I think it’s a huge miss to not be able to pass on the roommate relationship.

“I really do.”

scowan@postmedia.com

twitter.com/StuCowan1

Article content