Just when you thought the Canadiens' marketing department couldn't possibly come up with another way to increase revenues during the team's centennial celebrations, Bob Gainey might have helped them out.

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Alex Kovalev was a big offseason addition for the Senators. For some reason, there's a history of former Canadiens performing better once they leave Montreal.

Photograph by : Ottawa Citizen

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Program sales.

With all the changes to the lineup this summer, fans will need to buy a program to figure out who all the new faces are when the Canadiens begin the 2009-10 season. And maybe the Canadiens can sell 50,000 programs if they get the go-ahead for the indoor "Winter Classic" game tentatively slated for Nov. 28 at the Big O against Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. (Obviously, the Habs' marketing department isn't out of ideas after all).

You can't blame general manager Gainey for cleaning house after the disaster of last season - both on and off the ice. But I don't think anyone expected all 10 unrestricted free agents from last year to be gone. In their place are plenty of new faces, including Mike Cammalleri, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta, Travis Moen, Jaroslav Spacek, Hal Gill and Paul Mara.

In the cover story of the latest Issue of The Hockey News, under the headline: "Dawn of an Old Era: Habs radically rebuild to capture glory," Ken Campbell points out that when the dust cleared after the free-agent sweepstakes, Gainey had taken on 24 years' worth of new contracts totalling a whopping $113,960,709.

Campbell noted that nobody knows what to make of the new-look Canadiens, including Gainey.

"Could this team win the Cup?" Gainey told Campbell. "Who knows? Could this team miss the playoffs? Who knows? People saying this and people saying that is very abstract. Let's just get together and play."

While it definitely will be interesting to see how the new-look Canadiens play, it will be just as interesting to watch how some of the former Habs perform with their new teams. For whatever reason, there's a history of former Canadiens performing better once they get out of Montreal. The most recent example is Michael Ryder, who was run out of town after a disappointing 2007-08 season season when he had 14-17-31 totals and was minus-4.

Last season, after signing with the Boston Bruins as a free agent, Ryder scored 27 goals, one more than Alex Kovalev, who led the Canadiens with 26. Ryder finished the season with 27-26-53 totals and was plus-28 (Kovalev was minus-5). Ryder and another former Canadien, Mark Recchi, helped the Bruins sweep the Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs. Recchi finished the season with 23-38-61 totals, which would have ranked him third on the Canadiens in scoring behind Kovalev (26-39-65) and Andrei Markov (12-52-64). Another former Canadien, Mike Ribeiro, posted 22-56-78 totals last season with the Dallas Stars - 13 points more than Kovalev.

It doesn't stop with the skaters.

Two former Canadiens goaltenders posted better goals-against averages than Carey Price's 2.83 - Tomas Vokoun (2.49 with the Florida Panthers) and Cristobal Huet (2.53 with the Chicago Blackhawks). Vokoun's .926 save percentage ranked second in the NHL behind the Bruins' Tim Thomas (.933). Huet (.909) and Yann Danis, another former Canadien (.910 with the New York Islanders) had better save percentages than Price (.905). Those numbers might be interesting to Canadiens backup goalie Jaroslav Halak, who also had a better save percentage than Price (.915), but was slightly worse in goals-against average (2.86).

One of the many burning questions for Habs fans this summer is who will be the next captain? After Saku Koivu's experience wearing the "C", you have to wonder if any unilingual anglophone would want it. And if the franchise decides it needs to have a French captain, the way it decided it had to have a French coach in Jacques Martin, the only remaining candidates are Maxim Lapierre, Georges Laraque and Guillaume Latendresse.

You can almost hear the chants of "Guy! Guy! Guy!" starting for Latendresse.

It was interesting to read the recent comments from Teemu Selanne when he learned that Koivu, his longtime friend and teammate on the Finnish national squad, would be joining him with the Anaheim Ducks after signing as a free agent. Koivu had actually tried to convince Selanne in the past to sign with the Canadiens as a free agent.

"No way I was going to Montreal," Selanne told Randy Youngman of the Orange County Register.

But Selanne is thrilled that Koivu is now joining him in Anaheim.

"This is great for both of us; we're both excited," Selanne told Youngman. "He's a perfect fit for our team. He's a great playmaker, he sees the ice really well, and he's very creative. He fights for the puck and makes the right decisions.

"He has a big heart, and he works so hard. And you talk about leadership? When you've been playing 14 years and you've been captain for 10, you know what kind of leader he is. He's also going to like coming here, where the media attention isn't as great. In Montreal, there are 50 media waiting for you after practice, and sometimes they try to find the negative things."

It will definitely be an interesting season for the new-look Canadiens. And when you're buying that program at the Bell Centre, you might also want to look at the opposing team's roster to see which former Habs are back in town.