Thumbs up: Don Cherry says having Kirk Muller as an assistant coach with the Canadiens has softened his attitude. Photograph by : PHIL CARPENTER, THE GAZETTE Grapes closet Habs fan - sorta Don Cherry says now that Kirk Muller is an assistant coach with the Canadiens, he'll change the habits of a lifetime and root for Montreal - at least sometimes DAVE STUBBS, The GazettePublished: Monday, October 30, 2006

Don Cherry joined the Kirk Muller Fan Club on Jan. 29, 1997, just about the time Muller returned to the Toronto Maple Leafs bench with dried blood caked on a brow zippered with 25 stitches and his right eye swelling tightly shut.

Muller, back in the Canadiens family this season as an assistant coach, had accidentally been drilled by a shot from Leafs teammate Doug Gilmour.

"I thought it cracked the sinuses," Muller said the following morning, "but I guess Dougie's shot wasn't hard enough. ...

"The first guy I saw after the game was Bobby Hull. I said to him: 'I'm glad it wasn't your shot, or I probably wouldn't be alive.'

"Yeah, Dougie dinged me," Muller said Saturday at the Bell Centre, the shot also having severed a few nerves. "I said I was going to sue him for it, but I never did."

It was Muller's blue-collar work ethic that appealed most to the high-blue-collared Cherry, who has shown the battered player on Hockey Night in Canada so often in the past decade that he says he's now barred from using the clip on his Coach's Corner segment.

It is not a coincidence that Muller, Gilmour and Cherry all hail from Kingston, Ont. - where Cherry seems to recall having first met Muller in a bar.

Within minutes of being felled and stitched, Muller was back on the Toronto bench, his team well on its way to a 4-0 home-ice loss to the St. Louis Blues. There was no need for him to return.

Except ...

"That's the kind of player Kirk was," Cherry said Saturday.

"The Leafs doctor said Kirk was tellin' him: 'Get me out there, get me out there.' And then I think he almost got into a fight."

Cherry eyeballed Muller, who now was laughing at the memory, and said: "We're brave in Kingston, but not too smart."

As the current NHL season began, Cherry said that he'd now be cheering for the Canadiens for the first time in his life, solely because the club's erstwhile Captain Kirk, a Stanley Cup winner here in 1993, had returned to Montreal.

(Muller was traded to the Canadiens by New Jersey on Sept. 21, 1991 with goalie Rollie Melanson for Stephane Richer and Tom Chorske, surely marking the first time in NHL history that two future assistant coaches for the same club were packaged in a deal. "Rollie got shutouts in his first two games in Montreal," Muller recalled. "I told him I was the throw-in.")

Indeed, Cherry had a video montage of Muller behind the Canadiens bench ready for telecast Saturday, but overtime and the ensuing shootout killed it.

The 72-year-old former Boston Bruins coach qualified his allegiances, his bluff called when he would not be photographed with Muller and a Canadiens sweater.

"When Toronto plays, I cheer for Toronto," he said, "and I cheer for Boston for obvious reasons. But after that, I cheer for Montreal because of Kirk."

"If you look at him and Dougie, you see quality guys with courage, crowd favourites wherever they played."

Muller, 40, didn't spend a long time in Toronto, though he loved playing with Gilmour - apart from one shift. He was with the Maple Leafs for 108 of his 1,476-game, six-team NHL career, or 7.5 per cent of it. With Toronto, he scored 29 of his 390 career goals - 7.5 per cent.

"People think there are a lot of Leafs and Habs fans in Kingston," Muller said. "But the city had a great relationship with the Bruins. Growing up, I was a Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers fan. A lot of guys came out of Kingston with the style of the Bruins."

Fifty to 70 Kingstonians have made the NHL, depending on your source, and four of its natives have scored Stanley Cup-winning goals: Muller, for the Canadiens in '93; Gilmour, for Calgary against Montreal in '89; Ken Linseman, for the Edmonton Oilers in '84; and Bill Cook, for the New York Rangers in '33.

"It was a great move, coming to Montreal (in '91)," Muller said. "The first call I made was to my dad, who was a huge Leafs fan.

"I said: 'You're not going to believe this, but I'm going to Montreal.' He said: 'Well, if you're going to win the Cup, you can't go to a better place.' He caught me off-guard pretty big with that. I thought: 'Who the heck am I talking to here?' "

Two seasons later, Muller, his father, Ed, and Cherry celebrated the Canadiens' most recent Stanley Cup in a Forum bar as a victory riot unfurled outside.

"That was my Stanley Cup - drinking beer and eating hot dogs," Muller said, laughing. "We were stuck inside, so we spent the evening sharing it."

Said Cherry, as two old Kingston friends were heading out into a Montreal Saturday night for another pop: "We had a fire going inside the Forum for a l-o-n-g time that night."

Muller was a Canadien for 31/2 seasons, scoring 104 goals in 267 games, adding 20 more in 38 playoff matches. He was named captain in 1994, following the offseason trade to St. Louis of Guy Carbonneau, now his boss.

As happy as Cherry is that Muller has landed again in Montreal, he discounts this city's claim of being the birthplace of hockey in Canada, saying that British soldiers were first playing on Kingston's harbour.

"And we've got the International Hockey Hall of Fame, so somebody must know something," he said.

In 1927, Cherry was told, Elizabeth Graham of Queen's University - where Muller coached last year - was the first goaltender in hockey known to have worn a mask.

"Interesting, but that's college," Cherry said, arching an eyebrow. "And I don't know anything about college."

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-- Edited by Fatherhab at 15:53, 2006-10-30