Montreal Canadiens: Alexei Kovalev, the Career, the Emotions Behind the Artist

To follow up on our look over the current Montreal Canadiens roster, let's take a look at the one who has been a big piece in the Montreal Canadiens' puzzle.

He has been named the most improved player of the NHL by one of Bleacher Report members. And I agree, he truly is.

Born in 1973, Alexei Kovalev left home at the age of 14 for Moscow to play hockey. Before, when he was about nine years old, Kovalev was so talented that his coach would make him play with 12-year-old players.

He eventually played three years for the HC Dynamo Moscow and then was drafted in the first round by the New York Rangers in 1991.

Kovalev played with the 1992 Olympic Gold Medalist Russian team, with legend Viktor Tikhonov behind the bench. Coach Tykhonov himself explains Kovalev's legendary enigma: "The most talented players are also the most complicated."

Two years after his rookie year, he won his first Stanley Cup with 21 points in 23 playoff games, the third highest record of the team.

During the 1994-95 NHL lockout, he went back to Russia with the Lada Togliatti (his hometown team) where he won the Russian Championship. He eventually went back to New York to play with the Rangers for another five years.

Kovalev was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1998 where he played with Martin Straka and Robert Lang. Then, he was traded back to the Rangers in 2002.

In 2003, it was official: Alexei Kovalev joins the Montreal Canadiens in return of Jozeph Balej and a second-round draft pick. That year, he made his mark especially in the playoffs with 10 points in 11 games.

I guess we all know what happened between Kovalev and Darcy Tucker in 2006!

And then came the whole media controversy in 2007. It had been reported that he criticized his coach and team in an interview with a Russian journalist.

Following the event, his personal stats were not shining either, and Kovalev has been benched several times by rookie coach Guy Carbonneau. By then, the future of Alex Kovalev with the Montreal Canadiens was in question, and his reputation among the fans turned the wrong way.

But what happened during that famous summer 2007?

Kovalev felt the drawbacks of his miserable season and needed some retrospection to figure out what went wrong. At some point, it seemed he could not take it anymore.

"For the first two weeks, I always kept that in my mind. I did not want to go back, I did not want to go through this again. It seemed to me that there was no one who wanted me here, so why would I be wasting my time?"

That is what the Artist confessed to a french journalist who made a documentary about the Russian player, late in the end of the season on the television channel RDI.

But once again, as a true warrior, he stepped up and was determined to prove everyone wrong and pursue the path he determined for himself and Montreal.

"For me as athlete, I want to win. I wanted to win the Russian Championship, I did. I wanted to win the Olympic games, I did. I got the Stanley Cup, what else to win? I want to win the Cup again with Montreal and all its stories."

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