The Montreal Canadiens’ season of turmoil has some of the devout in one of hockey’s holy cities questioning their faith.
The Canadiens are stumbling toward the end of the National Hockey League season with a temporary coach, an owner who’s exploring a sale of the team and three players who the local media reported were hanging around with a mob-connected man.
This was supposed to be a special time for the “Habs,” as the NHL’s most successful club is nicknamed. It’s the team’s 100th season and a surprise finish with the best record in the Eastern Conference last year had legions of fans in Quebec expecting a chance at winning the Coupe Stanley, or Stanley Cup, for the first time since 1993.
PHOTO: AP
“It’s the most bizarre season I can remember,” said David Kellerman, 32, a Montreal attorney and season-ticket holder. “There is too much going on, both on and off the ice.”
The Canadiens, whose 24 championships are second only to the New York Yankees’ 26 baseball titles in North American sports, are more than just the home team.
Historically led by French-speaking players such as Maurice Richard and Guy Lafleur, they once represented the aspirations of Francophones in Canada. Now they are as much a part of the city as the cross atop Mount Royal that marks the spot where founder Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve placed one in 1643.
“The Canadiens gave French-Canadians something to feel elevated about,” said Kellerman, who spends at least an hour a day writing blogs about the team. “Francophones have always been a minority in North America, and to see the Canadiens competing and winning at the highest level created a window for hope and opportunity for an entire population.”
RELIGION
To some it’s even more, said Olivier Bauer, a Swiss theology professor who was so struck by the team’s followers that he teaches a course at the University of Montreal on the “Religion of the Montreal Canadiens.”
“For a lot of people, the Canadiens truly function like a religion,” said Bauer, 45, co-editor of a book about the Canadiens as religion that shows a giant team jersey draped around the Mount Royal Cross on its cover. “Some fans build their lives around the team. They adopt its values. They recognize that in order to win, you need to suffer.”
Some take that literally. Bauer said fans tell him they climbed the 100 steps at the city’s Saint Joseph’s Oratory on their knees seeking divine intervention on behalf of the Canadiens, just like the pilgrims who do it with hopes of miracles.
When Richard died in 2000, thousands of admirers jammed the cobblestone streets outside Notre Dame Basilica in the city’s old section during his funeral mass. He lay in state at the team’s downtown arena for a day, and 115,000 people filed past his open casket.
Today’s fans may long for the days when Richard helped the team win eight championships from 1943 to 1960. With seven games remaining, the Canadiens still aren’t assured of one of the 16 spots in the NHL playoffs, which start in the middle of next month.
Manager Bob Gainey fired coach Guy Carbonneau, 49, three weeks ago, saying the team’s defense was lacking. Gainey, 55, who played alongside Carbonneau on the Canadiens from 1982 to 1989, took over on an interim basis.
Last week, owner George Gillett, 70, hired Bank of Montreal’s BMO Capital Markets to help him decide whether to sell the team. In its survey of NHL teams last year, Forbes magazine valued the Canadiens at US$334 million, trailing only the the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers.
BAD PRESS
La Presse newspaper reported last month that three players had social ties with a Montreal man linked to organized crime. None have been accused of wrongdoing and they decline to comment.
“It’s not the Hollywood scenario that the fans wanted” for this season, Kellerman said.
Founded in the city that the International Ice Hockey Federation recognizes as the birthplace of organized hockey, the Canadiens won their first NHL title in 1919. The team now is in its longest title drought ever.
Jacques Demers, who coached the Canadiens to their most recent championship, said he could tell from the audiences at his motivational speeches around Quebec that things aren’t right with the team.
“People are restless,” said Demers, a Montreal native. “They have a hard time concentrating.”
Lately, there has been a glimmer of hope. The team has won two of its past three games and the front page of the Montreal Gazette on Friday carried the headline “Bandwagon rolling again,” after the Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2.
The disappointment has yet to show up at the box office: The team has sold out 179 consecutive regular-season home games, stretching back more than four years.
“We want our Canadiens to win so badly,” said Demers, an analyst on Quebec’s RDS sports television network. “Nowhere else in the NHL do you get this kind of passion. It’s all-consuming.”
In NHL action on Sunday:
• Blues 5, Blue Jackets 2
• Predators 4, Red Wings 3
• Bruins 4, Flyers 3
• Senators 3, Lightning 0
• Canucks 4, Blackhawks 0
• Wild 3, Oilers 2
• Ducks 4, Avalanche 1
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