More than a game

For 100 years, the Montreal Canadiens have secured their position as the NHL's winningist franchise...and made more than a few hopes and dreams come true along the way

Story by Benjamin Pomerance

First came the names. They came chattering out of the speakers in a strange kind of rhythm, not unlike gunfire, and the boy learned every one of them: Geoffrion, Plante, Harvey, Richard. Then came the pictures, images flashed across the family’s television screen or frozen in time on hockey trading cards, and the boy memorized those, too: the way the defensemen lowered their shoulder before delivering a hit, the way the forwards would shift their weight to make the goalie dive on a breakaway, the way they’d all raise their arms in celebration when they scored. Last came the people themselves, the boy’s first trip to the Montreal Forum, the sacred pilgrimage all obsessed with hockey had to make in those days, where those images and names exploded into living color before his wide-opened eyes, the fans chanting and the vendors hawking and the PA announcer booming and the Montreal Canadiens — Les Habitants, or simply "the Habs"to their most loyal fans — vanquishing another foe on the ice sheet below. Nothing, the boy knew, could ever be better than this.

Yet there was something better, and the boy knew it. Even as he watched on TV or listened on the radio or sat in seats high above the ice at the Forum, he knew there was one final step he yearned to take, something he craved so desperately that he refused to acknowledge it might be a possibility. Then, one night, it happened. The crowd was above him now, chanting and cheering as they always did before the game began. The players were next to him now, the legends he had cheered for now welcoming him to the club, their club, the members-only sanctum marked by the time-honored lines emblazoned on the locker room door: "To you from flailing hands we throw the torch/Be it yours to hold high."And that night, as Rejean Houle skated onto the ice with the interlocking C-H logo of the Canadiens on the front of his jersey and his name and number securely on the back, the boy from a small town 400 miles north of Montreal looked above and around him and wondered just how he got where he was.

"More than once I had to shake my head and remind myself that I was really there."

"For me, being able to wear the sweater of the Montreal Canadiens was a dream come true,"says Houle, drafted by the Habs with the first overall pick in the 1969 National Hockey League (NHL) draft. "Just being on the same ice with these players was an honor for me. I had grown up cheering for the Canadiens, and when I played hockey with friends I pretended I was one of the Candiens’ players, but to actually be there takes your breath away. More than once I had to shake my head and remind myself that I was really there."

For a century now, players have experienced this breathless reaction when stepping onto the ice for their first game as a Canadien. Any sportsman stepping into the domicile of the Habs would have reason for pause. Twenty-four Stanley Cup championship banners hang from the rafters in the Bell Center, Montreal’s current hockey home, today, along with a list of retired numbers that reads like a "Who’s Who In Hockey History"list. "The sense of history here is tremendous,"Houle says of the franchise celebrating its 100th anniversary this season, making the Habs the elder statesman of the NHL. "When you put on your uniform, you think about who else wore the uniform of the Candiens before you. You look around and see all the great players around you. And you realize the expectations that are on your shoulders: to keep that tradition alive, to take the flambeau, the torch, that was passed to you from the last generation of players and keep it held high."

Gillett has seen his share of fans throughout his family’s career in sports management, an odyssey that began 41 years ago with the Miami Dolphins and continues today with his ownership of the English soccer club Liverpool and NASCAR’s Gillett-Evernham Motorsports team. Yet no franchise, he insists, has a following quite like the Montreal Canadiens. "You see truly passionate fans in a few places,"he says, citing baseball’s New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox and basketball’s Los Angeles Lakers as examples. "But the fans in Montreal seem to have an extraordinary relationship with their team. It’s a wonderful thing, but a fragile thing, too, one we have to value and protect."

If public opinion is any indication, Gillett appears to be accomplishing his mission. Stop any person in Montreal, any random selectee of any age, gender, or race, and ask them about the Habs, and chances are, they will have some story to tell of their beloved team. It probably won’t all be gushing praise — Montreal fans, as Gillett aptly acknowledges, know their hockey, and aren’t shy about letting their opinions on the state of their team be heard — but it’s the kind of tough love acquired over generations in an extended family that seems to envelop most of a province.

"I’m more a Canadiens fan than I am Catholic"

For many, like Montrealer Marc-Antoine Laporte, it’s a devotion nurtured practically since birth. Laporte began watching games at a tender age, sitting on his father’s lap while observing his bleu, blanc et rouge-clad heroes skating across the TV screen. When night games ended too late for the young Laplante to see the grand finale, Dad would stay up to watch the ending, then wake up early the next morning so he’d be ready to tell his son the final score as soon as he got out of bed. Today, Laplante tries to catch as many games as he can, even planning the occasional vacation around Canadiens road trips. "I’m more a Canadiens fan than I am Catholic,"he confesses. "I go to the arena more often than I go to church.”

Those who have ever come between a Habs fan and their team know how deep devotion to Les Habitants can run. In 1996, the Canadiens played their final game at the Forum, that ice-lined palace Houle had revered as both a boy and a man, moving down the street to the larger and sleeker Bell Center. Today, the Forum exists as a multiplex cinema and entertainment center, a transformation many Habs die-hards didn’t exactly enjoy. "Moving in here was a real PR nightmare,"says Andre Jude, vice-president/general manager of the Forum in its new entertainment capacity. "I think the Canadiens themselves underestimated the PR furor this caused. When Canadien Arena Corporation (now called Canderel) bought the building, many fans wanted us to turn it into a shrine."He shakes his head. "We’ve done our best to preserve elements of the building’s past (including turning the building’s atrium into a facsimile of center ice at the Forum, complete with one of the original sections of seats behind it). We do consider ourselves caretakers of this important building and its history. But in the end, we are not a museum. We are a commercial enterprise that has chosen to retain a sense of commitment to the building’s past."

"So we saw the success of the Canadiens as the success of the entire province"

Still, Jude says he can understand the initially hostile reaction from Habs fans when they learned the Forum was going to be closed. "The Forum, and the Montreal Canadiens, have a great deal to do with the history of the City of Montreal,"he says. "The connection many of these fans have to their team is a cultural connection, not just a sports connection. For a long time, during the years when the Canadiens were winning all of those Cups, they were the only pro sports franchise in Quebec. So we saw the success of the Canadiens as the success of the entire province.”

The cultural connection began as a cultural war. When the Canadiens were founded by J. Ambrose O’Brien in 1909, they were treading on territory already dominated by another team, the Maroons. When the Forum was built in 1924, it was originally designed with the Maroons, not the Habs, in mind. Throughout their not-so-peaceful co-existence, the Maroons were seen as the Anglophone team, adopted by Montreal’s English-speaking community, while the Habs were the franchise cheered for the city’s French population.

"That division was no joke,"Jude says. "It was real. The owners of both teams really played up the cultural differences between the their fans to attract greater fan support."So when the Maroons folded in 1938, English-speaking fans had a difficult choice to make: cheer for the Habs or abandon Montreal hockey altogether. "For some Maroons fans, it was too much,"Jude chuckles. "They couldn’t tolerate cheering for Les Canadiens. That’s why you still find a few fans of the Boston Bruins (Montreal’s modern-day archrival) in Montreal."Still, Jude continues, many Maroons backers were persuaded to make the switch. "Mostly, you saw a transference of English fans cheering for the Canadiens,"Jude says. "And even though it was about sports, the significance was really much deeper than that. Cheering for the Canadiens helped bring the city’s French- and English-speaking communities closer together."

It helped that the fans had plenty to cheer about. From the "Punch Line"of Maurice "Rocket Richard, Hector "Toe"Blake and Elmer Lach in the ‘40s to Jean Beliveau, Bernie "Boom-Boom"Geoffrion and Jacques Plante dominating the ‘60s to men like Ken Dryden, Serge Savard and Guy Lafleur conquering the league in the ‘70s, the success of the Habs proved more important than any linguistic barrier. Twenty-four times Lord Stanley’s immense trophy returned to the city of Montreal, an astounding rate of success which prompted then-mayor Jean Drapeau, when asked about logistics for one of team’s ticker tape parades, to respond, "Oh — just take the usual route."For Houle, who helped the Habs hoist five of those Stanley Cups in the ‘70s, there was nothing usual about it. "It’s a sensation you can’t describe in words,"he says of skating around the ice with the Cup clasped in his arms. "When you’re growing up and playing hockey with your friends, that’s what you always play — Game 7, Stanley Cup final. But to actually be in the Stanley Cup final, and then to win and bring the Cup to our fans in Montreal…"He stops. "No,"he finally decides, "there really is no way to describe that feeling.”

Adding another Cup to their trophy case in 1986 and still another in 1993 gave the Habs the distinction of being the only franchise to win at least one championship every decade since the ‘40s, a streak that will come to an end unless the Habs win it all this year or the next. No Cup has come home to roost in the domain of hockey’s oldest franchise since 1993, the year goaltender Patrick Roy turned every game into a miracle on ice with his collections of circus-trick saves. Yet following a bitter dispute with coach Mario Tremblay and an ugly incident when Roy was jeered by the crowd during an 11-1 loss to Detroit, Roy was traded to the Colorado Avalanche, one of the early moves during Houle’s tenure as the team’s general manager, a position he assumed after his playing days had come to an end. Writers have speculated ever since about the "Curse of St. Patrick", deeming the goaltender’s departure the reason for Montreal’s Cup-less spell. Others blame the closing of the Forum for the team’s dry run. "If they never win a Cup in the Bell Center,"Jude says, "then moving them out of the Forum will be seen as the worst PR move in franchise history."He pauses. No Habs fan, certainly not one who grew up with Blake as his neighbor and stalwart defenseman Doug Harvey as an alderman in his church, can let this go. "But I’m confident,"he finally continues, "that this team will win another one."

With the city already rejoicing over the Habs’ centennial season, a year in which Montreal will host both the NHL All-Star Game and the NHL Entry Draft, wouldn’t it be fitting for the team to bring the Cup back home this spring? Gillett refuses to speculate on such a prospect. "I’m very pleased with what our team has done this year,"he says. "We’ve had an astounding number of injuries, but the boys had continued to play well. We’re finding out this year that our commitment to our youth programs is really paying off."But the Cup? "No,"Gillett laughs. "Can’t speculate on that now. We’ve put ourselves in a good position, but there’s too much season left to be played. We all know that in sports, anything can happen.”

"The team, the organization, is part of my blood"

Anything — even a city putting aside cultural differences to unite in love of one team. Even a fan base supporting a franchise for 100 years — and many more years, Gillett says, to come. Even a young boy who dreamed a dream he never thought would come true stepping out onto the holy frozen water one night and joining his heroes in their quest for the Cup. "The Canadiens are part of me,"says Houle, who still remains with his boyhood favorites in an ambassador’s role. "The team, the organization, is part of my blood. I can’t imagine going somewhere else. I’ve always felt, and I still feel ,that this is the best place to be."

For 100 years, a team, a city, a province, a culture, has agreed with him. Which is why, somewhere, another young boy is listening to a radio, catching that rapid-fire cadence of names he will memorize and idolize throughout his youth. Somewhere, a young boy is studying the players on TV and on their trading cards, mimicking their poses, imitating their moves. Somewhere, a boy is attending a game at the Bell Center for the first time, the names and pictures coming to life before his eyes. And somewhere, sometime, that young boy will skate onto the Montreal ice wearing the colors of his favorite franchise for the first time, and look above and around him with awe, and wonder just how he got there.

What are your favorite Canadiens memories?