Phillip Danault was back at Canadiens practice on Monday, fielding questions about what it was like to arrive in Montreal as a young player, and of all the things he could have reached for, he chose a story about a stationary bike.
The other man in it is Andrei Markov, which is what makes it worth telling, because by Danault’s count, Markov spoke to him exactly once across an entire season, and the bike finally did it.
What did Andrei Markov actually say?
Not much, which was rather the point.
“We have three or four bikes here, and Andrei Markov had his own bike,” Danault said at the club’s media availability. “One day, I was riding the bike in the morning, and it was probably the only words he spoke to me all year, he just goes: ‘My bike’, so I just got off.”
Two words, in a season of near-silence, and Danault was off the bike before Markov needed a third.
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Markov was the most senior man in that room
Markov played his entire 16-year NHL career in Montreal, from 2000 to 2017, finishing with 990 regular-season games and 572 points, 119 goals and 453 assists. That total, as NHL.com set out when it sat down with him, leaves him tied with Guy Lapointe for the second-most points by a Montreal defenceman, behind only Larry Robinson’s 883. He added 89 playoff games across nine trips, was a two-time All-Star, and wore a number 79 that has become one of the more recognizable in club history, with his name sitting high on most of the franchise’s all-time lists.
Danault had arrived from Chicago in February 2016, traded for Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann, and Markov’s last season in Montreal was 2016-17, when he played 62 games before management turned down his request for a two-year deal and offered half of it. The overlap was brief, running from Danault’s first months in the room to Markov’s last.
Markov has admitted he was not a talker
When NHL.com’s Dave Stubbs interviewed him in December 2025, he put the point to him directly: he was known for being careful with his words. Markov agreed in three of them before steering the conversation back to the team. “I think so,” he said. “I just tried to play my game and help our team win.”
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