ELMONT, N.Y. \u2014 It was roughly 6 p.m. when David Reinbacher stepped off the Place Bell ice in Laval on Saturday after a big AHL win for the Rocket, or an hour before the Montreal Canadiens would take the ice against the Columbus Blue Jackets about 20 minutes south at the Bell Centre.<\/p>\n
As he made his way home, Reinbacher spoke to his father, Harald, who was at home in Switzerland. It was around midnight for him, but he never misses one of his two sons\u2019 games, and this one was no different.<\/p>\n
Or at least he thought.<\/p>\n
Harald and David finished their phone call, Harald went to bed, and David settled in on his sofa to watch the Canadiens game.<\/p>\n
When Noah Dobson blocked a shot with his hand midway through the second period, Reinbacher thought nothing of it at first, until he got the call he\u2019s waited for ever since he was selected by the Canadiens with the No. 5 pick at the 2023 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuddenly I get a call, and they just said, \u2018yeah, you\u2019re going up,’\u201d Reinbacher said after collecting his first NHL point in his first NHL game Sunday, a 4-1 win against the New York Islanders. \u201cMy emotions were going like a roller coaster up and down. I just tried to pack, call my family, I was ringing the phone probably like 200 times. Met the team at the airport, and I came right here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harald\u2019s phone rang about 200 times since it was the middle of the night in Switzerland. When he woke up at 7 a.m., or 1 a.m. ET, he had the shock of his life and knew he had to get moving.<\/p>\n
The first flight out of Zurich to New York was at 10:30 a.m. Harald lives about 20 minutes from the airport. He needed to secure the required documentation to enter the United States, and had just woken up. Making all that happen in that time frame was not realistic.<\/p>\n
The next flight to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York wasn\u2019t until 1:30 p.m. local time, with a scheduled arrival of roughly 4:30 p.m. ET, or 90 minutes before the start of Reinbacher\u2019s debut with the Canadiens.<\/p>\n
Harald made sure he was on that plane.<\/p>\n
But as David took the ice for his rookie lap during warmups, Harald was not yet at UBS Arena, and David had no idea whether his father would be able to make it. But Harald arrived at his seat in Section 106, Row 8 at 5:45 p.m. ET, about 15 minutes after that rookie lap and in plenty of time to watch his son take his first NHL shift, record his first NHL shot on goal, and earn his first NHL point, with a secondary assist on Alex Newhook\u2019s goal that made it 3-0 at 16:51 of the second period.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a difficult three years for David since his life changed at the draft in Nashville, Tenn., starting with an outrageously negative reaction from a pocket of Canadiens fans, followed by a series of injuries that stunted his development and allowed for doubt to creep in about whether he would get through it all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s a big part of my journey right now,\u201d David said. \u201cI think he was really good for me, just keeping me calm and a cool head and just telling me to keep going, you\u2019re going to get there one day, it\u2019s just a matter of time. Just believe in yourself. And that\u2019s what I did. Now we\u2019re here, and I don\u2019t know what to say. It\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Harald saw his son take his first NHL shift, everything that had built up over those three years just washed away.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the nervousness, all the stress, all that we had since the draft, it all goes away. Like a big stone from the heart goes away,\u201d Harald said during the first intermission. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been as relaxed during a game as I was after I saw him on his first shift.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid pushed himself really hard by himself. He wants it. So with all this stuff, he wanted to go there, he wanted to play as fast as possible, and then it was the injuries and all this stuff. And now he feels, like, free. Like, \u2018I took a step. I got the game, and I know I can do it,\u2019 and that\u2019s why I think he can play now. There\u2019s confidence and no pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Considering this was David\u2019s third game in three days and he was entering the NHL at the most difficult time of year to do so, he played an excellent game, with an efficient 11:17 of ice time in which he displayed what makes him such an intriguing prospect without trying to overdo it. The two biggest reasons the Canadiens drafted him were his defensive pace and his ability to convert defence into offence by making a strong first pass. That\u2019s what he did against the Islanders.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was great. He played to his identity, kept it simple, made the right plays, good reads, good stick. He looked really good,\u201d said Lane Hutson, who was paired with David at his first development camp after his draft and has been seen as his future partner in the NHL since that day. \u201cHe\u2019s worked his ass off to get to this point. But not surprised, honestly, with the way he plays. Such a sturdy defenceman, really poised. The hard work has paid off, for sure. It\u2019s good to have him up here and see what he\u2019s able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a coincidence to Reinbacher arriving now. When he was drafted, while everyone was comparing him to Detroit Red Wings defenceman Moritz Seider, the Canadiens saw him as a future Dobson, a player they considered impossible to acquire in a trade until they did<\/a>.<\/p>\n But now, with Dobson out for at least two weeks with an upper-body injury, a door has opened for Reinbacher. Reinbacher\u2019s play elevated in Laval this season when another door opened for him after a late-February injury to Adam Engstr\u00f6m, who is also the player Reinbacher replaced in the Canadiens\u2019 lineup Sunday night.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a guy goes down, it brings opportunities for the other ones,\u201d Reinbacher said. \u201cNo one wants to see it, to have a guy like him go down, he\u2019s a big piece down there for us. But yeah, I took advantage and showed them that I\u2019m the guy here. It just brought my confidence back, and I just played really good hockey down there.<\/p>\n \u201cThat boosted my confidence, and since then, yeah, it\u2019s a different game.\u201d<\/p>\n Reinbacher is vital to the Canadiens rebuild, an important, core piece who has taken a bit more time to get to this point because of circumstances out of his control. On a night when captain Nick Suzuki celebrated his 100th point<\/a>, Hutson tied the franchise record for assists by a defenceman and rookie Ivan Demidov scored his 19th goal, Reinbacher\u2019s successful NHL debut might have been the most significant thing to happen from a big-picture standpoint.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that David has poise,\u201d coach Martin St. Louis said. \u201cI feel like the more he plays in this league, the more poise he\u2019s going to have, but I feel he starts with a lot of poise to begin with. I think you saw that tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n When the game ended, after Reinbacher was given his puck for his first NHL game and the puck from his first NHL point, and was named the Canadiens\u2019 player of the game<\/a>, he was led out of the team\u2019s dressing room and into the UBS arena stands, where someone special was waiting for him. It was someone he didn\u2019t even know was there until that moment, someone who had done so much to get him to this moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n As David emerged into the bowl of UBS Arena to see his father, the emotions of the moment overcame Harald.<\/p>\n \u201cI walked out and I had those two pucks in my hand, he just saw me and him having tears in his eyes, I think it was just everything he did for me and my brother, for our whole family, it all just came into one,\u201d David said. \u201cSeeing those pucks and reflecting tonight, it was just pure joy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ELMONT, N.Y. \u2014 It was roughly 6 p.m. when David Reinbacher stepped off the Place Bell ice in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-551737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116396949718558819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}