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It’s not every day that you care this much about a player the Canadiens drafted 147th overall.

That part of the draft is usually where names disappear. Where teams take flyers. Where prospects become trivia answers, development camp memories, or names you stumble across years later and barely remember.

And in the 2010 draft, the Canadiens gave us plenty of those. Oh, how can I forget …

Jarred Tinordi. Morgan Ellis. Mark MacMillan. Another one of those Trevor Timmins drafts where, looking back, you can almost hear Habs fans convincing themselves the organization saw something no one else did.

Yes, one could write a book about the Cory Urquharts of this world. About the times Montreal stared right at a Patrice Bergeron and still came away with someone else. About an era where the draft often felt less like a science and more like someone scratching a lottery ticket.

But this isn’t that article.

Because sometimes, even in those years, they won.

Brendan Gallagher was one of those wins.

Not the kind you can properly measure with scouting reports, draft rankings, or combine numbers. The kind you understand only after watching a player get cross-checked in front of the net, lose a tooth, get back up, and return to the exact same spot as if pain was simply part of the job.

Gallagher was never supposed to become this.

When he broke into the league, he wasn’t even the “Gally” everyone expected to shine. That was supposed to be Alex Galchenyuk. Chucky was the talent, the third overall pick, the promise that Montreal had finally found the offensive star it had been chasing for years.

But while all eyes were on Galchenyuk, Gallagher became something much harder to find.

He became the soul.

Not the most talented player. Not the biggest. Not the fastest. But the one who seemed to understand something very basic about Montreal: effort is not optional here.

This city can forgive a missed shot. It can forgive a bad bounce. It can even forgive a slump.

It cannot forgive indifference.

And Gallagher never gave us that.

He played every shift as if it had been stolen from him. Every puck looked like it had his name written on it. Every battle around the crease felt personal. Every shove, every hack, every cross-check to the back, he took it all and came back for more.

There was something almost ridiculous about it. A player his size standing in front of NHL goaltenders, getting punished by defencemen twice his width, smiling through bloody lips and broken hands, then doing it again the next night.

That was Gallagher.

He was not built to survive the way he played, and somehow that made him even more ours.

There was a bit of Claude Lemieux in him. That bite. That refusal to be liked by the opposition. That gift for making everyone on the other side hate him while everyone on your side would run through a wall for him.

There was a bit of Lyle Odelein too. That old-school, unpolished, unapologetic FU that Habs fans have always romanticized because, deep down, we know the Canadiens have not always had enough of it.

Maybe that is why he mattered so much.

For too much of the last 30 years, the Canadiens have lived off goaltending. Patrick Roy, then the long search after him, then Carey Price carrying entire rosters on his back. So many Habs teams were structured, respectable, sometimes even dangerous, but they did not always feel alive.

Gallagher made them feel alive.

He gave rosters short on identity an identity. He gave teams that lacked bite a mouthpiece. He gave fans something to recognize. In a city still trying to reconcile its glorious past with its frustrating present, Gallagher was not a link to the dynasty years. No one player can be that. But he was a reminder of what the jersey is supposed to demand.

Pride. Annoyance. Relentlessness. A refusal to die quietly.

That was his game.

That was his gift.

Montreal does not only cheer talent. It cheers struggle. It loves the player who looks like he has to earn every inch, because in some ways, that is how the city sees itself.

Gallagher did not glide through games. He scraped through them. He clawed through them. He dragged himself to the places where goals hurt and paid the bill every night.

And somehow, a fifth-round pick became one of the defining Canadiens of his generation.

Now, as strange as it feels to write, he gets to do it somewhere else.

In a Vancouver Canucks jersey.

There is something poetic about that too. Gallagher going back west, closer to where his hockey story took shape before Montreal made him one of its own. The Vancouver Giants kid. The undersized winger. The player who had to convince people at every level that whatever he lacked in size, he made up for in motor, heart, fire, rage, pride, or whatever the hell you want to call that thing inside him.

But let’s not pretend this will be easy to see.

Some players leave and you understand it immediately. The cap needed space. The roster needed change. The window shifted. The contract aged. The player aged. The business of hockey did what it always does.

Understanding it does not make it feel better.

Gallagher leaving Montreal feels like one of those moments where a chapter closes and you realize only then how long you had been reading it. He was just always there. In front of the net. In the corners. In the handshake line. In the post-game scrum. In the games where the Canadiens had no business still being alive, but somehow were because someone like him refused to let them go quietly.

And now he is not.

That is the part that stings.

Gallagher was more than a player fans liked. He was a player fans trusted. You knew the game might not always be pretty. You knew the body was wearing down. You knew the hands would not always finish what the heart started.

But you also knew he would show up.

Every time.

In a market that has seen so many rebuilds, resets, retools, and five-year plans that somehow always needed another five years, Gallagher never felt like a plan.

He felt like a promise.

A promise that no matter how strange the roster looked, no matter how often the Canadiens were carried by goaltending, no matter how many first-round picks arrived with more hype and left with less meaning, there would still be someone wearing the CH like it weighed something.

And he wore number 11.

That number already meant something here. Saku Koivu wore it with grace, courage, and dignity. So when Gallagher made it his own, it never felt like theft. It felt like succession.

Different player. Different story. Same emotional weight.

Who would have thought, just a few years after Koivu, that another number 11 would make us feel that way again?

Not because he was the same.

Because he cared in a way that made the jersey feel alive.

That is what Brendan Gallagher gave Montreal.

Not just goals. Not just net-front chaos. Not just penalties drawn, goalies annoyed, defencemen enraged, and microphones filled with honest answers.

He gave the Canadiens a pulse.

And now Vancouver gets him.

Maybe not the young Gallagher. Maybe not the 30-goal Gallagher. Maybe not the player who could take over a series by making life miserable in front of the net until everyone on the other side wanted to murder him.

But they are still getting Brendan Gallagher.

A warrior. A pest. A leader. A fifth-round miracle.

A player who carried the soul of the Canadiens through years when the team sometimes had very little of it to spare.

So take good care of our boy, Vancouver.

He is difficult. He is stubborn. He will drive your opponents insane, keep your trainers busy, and probably pull your fans into the same emotional trap we fell into years ago.

You will start by admiring the effort.

Then you will respect the sacrifice.

And before long, without even realizing it, you will care.

Because that is what happened here.

We cared.

And now that he is gone, we will miss him dearly.