It isn’t often that top-5 picks find themselves in their third organization at just 24 years of age, but Benoit Pouliot is making his latest leap to a new organization. Coming from the Canadiens, it’s a leap some (including Stanley Cup champion Michael Ryder) have taken before him, but an odd one at that. 

Chosen fourth overall by the Wild in the 2005 draft after scoring 35 goals in 51 games in his final OHL season, Pouliot hasn’t put up the numbers he once did with the Sudbury Wolves and  after parts of two seasons in Montreal is now in Boston on a one-year, $1.1 million deal.

“It's business. Things happen. I control my own fate,” Pouliot said of how well-traveled he’s been in his career despite his age and status as a top pick. “The way I play is going to bring me somewhere, and now I'm in Boston. I've just got to play what I'm capable of, and what I'm capable of doing. I've got a couple strengths for shooting and skating and stuff, and I'm a big guy. I can go in the corners pretty easily, and that's what I’ve got to do when I bring it to Boston.”

Pouliot totaled just nine goals in 65 games over parts of four seasons with the Wild before being shipped to Montreal in a straight-up deal for Guillaume Latendresse in November of 2009. There, he got off to a good start, scoring 15 goals in 39 games in the 2009-10 season. His second season in Montreal featured both good and bad. 

The good was that he stayed both healthy and in the NHL in the entire season for the first time in his career. He missed only three games last season for the Habs, surpassing his previous career high of 53 games. It’s something he hopes to repeat, as Ryder, whose spot he figures to take on the third line, was durable, even if he wasn’t consistent. 

“I had never really played a full season before,” Pouliot said. “I was injured my first year in Montreal [a right shoulder injury], and then last year I played I think I played [79] games, which for me was a first. There's a lot of games in the year, but I felt great the whole year, I felt good, and I'm excited for this year again.” 

While his games played provided the positive for his second year in Montreal, the negatives were obvious. His 13 goals were a step back for the big winger, and Jacques Martin ended up scratching him for the last four games of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Bruins.

As a result, Pouliot doesn’t need to have met Claude Julien in for him to have a better relationship with his current coach than he did with his last one.

“I think there was maybe a lack of trust between me and the coach,” Pouliot said of his relationship with Martin. “At first when I got there, I think he played me 17, 18 minutes a game. Things went well, and then it kind of went downhill after that.”

Overall, Pouliot reflects on his time in Montreal as having “more positives than negatives.” His last game as a Hab is certainly a memorable one for Bruins fans. It was Game 3, when he tried to hit Johnny Boychuk, squared off with Andrew Ference and was called  “one of the greatest disappointments of talent in National Hockey League history” by Jack Edwards. 

That isn’t the extent of Pouliot’s memorable moments as villain in bleu, blanc et rouge. He fought David Krejci on Feb. 9, and shied away from Milan Lucic’s invitations to tango in the next meeting between the teams. A former OHL teammate of Adam McQuaid, Pouliot is confident he can win over his teammates. The fans might be a different story. 

“I'm a Bruin now. They can't see me as a Canadien,” Pouliot said of his new fanbase. “I'm a Bruin and that's all that matters. I don't really care what people say about the rivalry and everything, but hey, I'm with the Bruins. I'm on the right side of the rivalry now. They won the Cup last year, so I'm excited.” 

The Canadiens were not interested in retaining Pouliot, as they elected not to tender the forward following the season. He said Wednesday that he did not want to return to the team either given the way things went last season. Now, he’ll have the opportunity to take it out on his former team by finding success with their biggest rivals. 

“It's always like that, eh?” quipped Pouliot while discussing the tendency for things to escalate quickly in the rivalry. “It was good. Every time we played the Bruins, we always marked it down on the calendar, and now it's going to be the other way around. You're going to have to look at the Canadiens, and it's going to be good. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun going back there, it's going to be fun when they come here, and hey, it's a new year. I'm really, really excited to be here.”