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Allen McInnis / postmedia news archives Habs blue-liner P.K. Subban listens to assistant coach Perry Pearn. (CNS MONTREAL GAZETTE)

IF the players on the Montreal Canadiens didn't have a sense of what they'll face today at the MTS Centre, they figured it out when assistant coach Perry Pearn was surrounded by reporters after practice at home on Saturday.

In media-intense Montreal, assistant coaches rarely do interviews.

"The players were giving me the gears today because the Montreal media wanted to ask me about coming back here," Pearn said Saturday night after arriving in Winnipeg. "So I told them, that's what happens when you kill a franchise -- they never forget."

Pearn's first season as an NHL coach was in Winnipeg in 1995-96 when he was one of Terry Simpson's assistants.

And having lived every moment of the lame-duck, farewell season from the inside, Pearn has kept some indelible memories from that sad ending.

"The first thing was that going to Game 5 in Detroit, it just didn't feel

that's the way it should have ended (the Jets trailed that series 3-1)," he said. "It was almost divine intervention that (Nik) Khabibulin was so good and we got to come back for Game 6.

"But after the final game, I remember having some things to do after the game and some friends who were here from Edmonton were still waiting for me two, two-and-a-half hours after that game. And there were still five or six thousand people hanging around in the building.

"It was like people are sometimes when someone passes away. There were people who had actual tears in their eyes."

Pearn came to a cross-roads at the end of that season and believes today he chose the right path.

"I enjoyed the year so much here," Pearn said. "I had a sense, too, that going forward with the franchise to Phoenix wasn't the best thing to do. That's one of the better decisions I've made in my career, to go in a different direction. I couldn't stay in Winnipeg but I remember talking it over with Zinger and Randy Carlyle, and I had the opportunity to go to Ottawa, it wound up being a much better situation."

He worked in Ottawa for Jacques Martin, his boss today, and also coached with the New York Rangers before joining the Habs staff a little over two years ago.

Fast forwarding to today's game, Pearn has a feeling it will present an unusual atmosphere for October.

"I would think it'll be a pretty crazy building," he said. "I'm thinking I've been in some great playoff atmospheres, to me that's what it'll be like, a playoff game."

He said that the Montreal players have taken notice of the story of the NHL's return to Winnipeg.

"Our guys, they're seeing it on TSN, Sportsnet. CBC was on in the training centre today," he said. "They're watching it. I think the Canadian guys know it's a pretty special thing and it's such a small world, they've heard the players talking about it and they all have somebody they know who's here."

Pearn said that apart from now having a couple of chances this season to visit his daughter who lives here, he sees good news ahead in Winnipeg.

"I think this will create so much more accountability with their players," he said. "They're going to be a handful to play against."

And on whether the Canadiens will step up their game today after losing their season-opener Thursday in Toronto, Pearn said there will be a focus.

"You're always disappointed when you don't win," he said. "I think we're probably a little more disappointed because we had a pretty good start to that game and didn't finish it."

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 9, 2011 B2