'A dream come true': Benoit Pouliot

It's the type of news that any mother longs to hear.

For Diane Pouliot, it happened on an otherwise regular Monday afternoon, last November 23, when there suddenly came a phone call from her youngest son, Hugo, at her office.

"He says, 'Mom, did you hear the news? Ben's coming to Montreal,'" recalls the mother of three, reliving the moment over a cup of coffee last week. "Well, I start to scream and, while talking to him, my cell phone rings... and it's Benoit."

And as his plane landed at Montreal's Trudeau airport the following day, so began the homecoming journey of Benoit Pouliot - until that moment, perhaps best known as the fourth-overall NHL draft pick in 2005 and an Eastern Ontario native who played for the Minnesota Wild.

A professional hockey player, by all standards, yet the 23-year-old from St-Isidore was one virtually unknown in the place that proudly refers to itself as the "city of hockey." For, as anyone who grew up reading Roch Carrier's The Hockey Sweater can attest to, until you're wearing the colours of bleu-blanc-rouge and the CH logo on your jersey, you aren't really playing the game.

News of Pouliot's trade to the Montreal Canadiens, effective November 24, quickly made the airwaves and the word spread across the region like wildfire.

The pressure was on.

He shoots, he scores!

As it turned out, Pouliot wouldn't have to wait very long - in fact, within about three weeks of his official December 23 start - to both reassure his critics and secure a spot in the hearts of Habs fans, far and wide.

In his 20 games since signing with the Canadiens, the left winger has racked up an impressive 11 goals and 3 assists, for a total of 14 points with the team. He is currently ranked 10th in the league among its shooting percentage leaders.

Compare this to two goals and two assists with the Wild, prior to the trade.

Pouliot, who considers himself an offensive player, attributes his success with the Canadiens to increased ice time as well as the support of his new teammates: "I have a few more minutes than I had in Minnesota and I think I've been working pretty hard since I got here. I have to give credit to Scott Gomez and Brian Gionta, who I play with - they make my game a little easier, and I try to do the same thing for them."

His agent, Philippe Lecavalier, agrees that nothing has "changed," but that the offensive opportunity has rejuvenated him.

"Ben is the same player that he was since the beginning of the season," he says, reached by phone in St-Lazare, Quebec. "I think he was given an opportunity to play with offensive players and a regular role on the power play and obviously, that helps tremendously in terms of building confidence and in terms of scoring chances.

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"And, with the chance he's had, he's really been able to get a lot of goals," he adds.

Montreal's latest acquisition is becoming equally popular with the team's head coach, Jacques Martin, who had placed him on a top line alongside the aforementioned veteran players. However, a recent upper-body injury added Pouliot to the injured reserve list on Friday, February 5; he is only expected to return following the Olympic games break.

But perhaps most important, the player himself says he's happy to be in Montreal - at an hour's drive from his hometown and his family - and it's a joy expressed in several interviews this season.

Following the Saturday, January 30 game against the hosting Ottawa Senators, Pouliot threw in one more, saying, "Obviously, it's a dream come true - you want to play for the Habs, put a jersey on and help the team out."

With a smile, perhaps remembering his days as a Canadiens fan, he adds: "But yeah, it's awesome, coming back close to home; you know, not that far from Montreal, so it's really good. I really appreciate it right now."

Close to home - and then some

Back at the café, Diane Pouliot says that she, too, appreciates her son's proximity to home; and it's not only a physical distance, she explains, but a mental one.

"We've been through so much as a family," she continues, "There's always this cloud... but just having him around is such a great feeling. If I can help him in any way, I do."

A younger Benoit first laced up his skates at the age of three, she remembers. His father, Sylvain, "was an athlete - baseball, hockey, golf, you name it - but he saw Benoit growing up as a hockey player."

Sylvain would put in long hours as a coach for his three sons, David, Benoit, and Hugo, at the local arena, and watched them grow up playing hockey for teams like the St-Isidore Eagles. Thus, following a youth marked by the sport, the Sudbury Wolves would draft Benoit in 2002, as an 11th-round pick, after some 200-odd draftees in the Ontario Hockey League.

"When he was picked by Sudbury in 2002, that was the year [his father] got ill," says Diane, discussing her late husband's fight with leukemia. "And he never saw Benoit play in Sudbury... or in any major league."

For the next two seasons, Benoit would play for the Hawkesbury Hawks. Then, in the 2003-2004 season, Sudbury called him up to play three games. It was Valentine's Day weekend, six years ago this week.

"Benoit left Thursday morning by plane to Sudbury," she recalls. "The night before he left, I told Benoit to say goodbye to his father - and his father told him to go, that it would be okay. He left that morning, and Friday night we were listening on the Internet when he scored his first goal with Sudbury.

"When I told him Benoit scored his first goal, I knew... and Sylvain passed away during the night. It's sad to say, but it's as if he waited for that moment to go - to convince himself that Benoit had made it, that he knew Benoit was playing where he deserved to play."

Sylvain Pouliot passed away on February 14, 2004, at the age of 44.

His middle son, in the immediate future, would go on to be chosen both the Ontario Hockey League and the Canadian Hockey League's Rookie of the Year. Suddenly, the tall, skinny boy from St-Isidore was moving his way up the professional ranks.

In 2005, the NHL draft comes to the Westin Hotel in Ottawa, where the Minnesota Wild selects Pouliot as the league's fourth overall pick, after Sidney Crosby, Jack Johnson, and Bobby Ryan.

"That day," laughs Diane, "it was a special day. Radio-Canada was following us all day, from the morning up until the draft, and [Benoit] was really nervous; I've never seen him as anxious as that. Because all that time, they were saying he was second after Crosby. It was an emotional day - just the fact that it was a year after he lost his father - so you might say it was a little more emotional because of that."

His mother believes, however, that Benoit's days in Minnesota - and in Houston, playing for the Wild's minor team - were perhaps equally clouded by his father's recent passing.

"It's maybe a reason he felt alone in Minnesota, and Houston: no family," she adds. "We lived our grief together, as a family, but Benoit was alone. I had support around me, my sons did too, but what did he have? So maybe that accounted for some difficult years."

Over the course of the last year, the now six-foot-three, 199-pound player just "came back, transformed into a confident, mature man, like I've never seen him," Diane smiles. "He went through so many things in the last year. He knew it was his last year on contract... so perhaps he told himself, 'Wake up; I might not have another chance.' And when he arrived in Montreal, he jumped on it."

Montreal organization

Back to that phone call on November 23.

"I said, 'Ben is it true?' He says yes. 'And, how do you feel?' He says, 'Mom, I can't say. It's like a shock.'"

Pouliot initially joined Montreal while recovering from a wrist injury he suffered in Minnesota. But when he played his third game alongside his new teammates on Monday, December 28, against the Ottawa Senators, he would score his first goal as a Canadien. He would score his next, the game-winning goal against the Florida Panthers, three nights later.

"When he plays with talented players, he plays at their level," says his mother, who equally attributes his success to the welcoming attitude of the Montreal organization.

"It's so different from how he lived [in Minnesota], it's not comparable. The way he's treated in Montreal, the way they take care of him, he never knew that. The organization is top notch; we couldn't have asked for a better reception."

Lecavalier was quick to highlight the same: "Something very noticeable with Montreal is how well they treat their ex-players, and the players they currently have on their team; they always do a good job of making every member of the organization feel very important and well taken care of - and that's the way Ben feels right now."

A combination of newfound confidence and increased pressure appears to have been his recipe for success. A glance at the statistics shows Pouliot is also averaging about 18 minutes per game in Montreal, compared to about 12 minutes with the Wild.

"He always played like this in the juniors, but we could say that in Minnesota, his confidence was pretty shaken," said his mother, adding: "Jacques [Martin] knew what kind of player he was. Jacques recognized the kind of talent he could have and I think he realized the [Minnesota] environment wasn't a performing environment."

The business aspect and the 'limelight'

Despite being closer to home, the flipside to being a successful player in Montreal is the sudden rise to fame amongst its hockey celebrity-hungry citizens. The status has its privileges, to be sure, but with it comes an almost certain loss of privacy.

Both his mother and his agent agree that Benoit quickly became a recognized face around the city, whether he was eating at a restaurant or playing at the Bell Centre.

"He doesn't mind it, because he's been around for a bit now, but he needs his privacy too," continues Diane. "When he can go without being noticed, he loves it.

"He's always been a very solitary kid, he likes to be in his [own space] and he's always been like that. He likes his moments by himself. And more and more, because he's always in the limelight, he never gets that piece of little quiet time by himself."

She noted, however, that having her son in Montreal makes it easier for her to help him, and allows him to focus on his career - as well as the professional world of sports, where contracts, fame, and money are the name of the game.

"There are little things that I can do that I couldn't do when he was in Minnesota. He's 23 years old and he has no clue how it works," she says, referring to not only an industry, but also life in general.

"They are kids brought up into a man's world and they have to grow up very quickly. That's a big issue for young kids; they come into that world and have no idea how it works, they get thrown tons of money and say, 'What do I do?'

"He was 19 when he signed his first contract; but, you're still a kid. You're not mature enough to realize what it means."

The world of professional sports means the press, and the public, are often watching every move the players make. That rings true for family members, too.

"It's a very different world, it is."

She speaks lovingly of her son, referring to him as a shy but extremely genuine person. "When he says something, it's from here," she says, pointing to her heart.

Diane Pouliot's pride in her son exceeds mere words; she never misses a game. Watching him on the ice, she says, and the feeling of having goose bumps listening to 21,273 fans chant his name at the Bell Centre, is "hard to describe," she laughs. "People tell me he's playing for Montreal and I'm like, 'I know.' But it's funny because, for me, he's just my son, my boy, that I raised and for me he's always played hockey; he's always been a hockey player, you know?

"I don't see him differently... he's my little boy. Yeah, it is special, but it's not ... it's hard to explain. He's my son, and he didn't become my son because he's an NHL player; he was my son before he was an NHL player."

But she stops short of giving credit to anyone else but him.

"Benoit's been through a lot himself; it was his own destiny. Nobody else could have made it for him. And through everything he's been, he's got to be tough."

Growing up as a boy in Eastern Ontario, among thousands of children watching some of the world's best on a television screen or shooting late night pucks at the arena, the end result was definitely a dream come true for Benoit.

"He always, always, said he would play in the NHL," says his mother, adding, with a laugh, "I guess it's that and, he'd rather play hockey than go to school."