"Les Glorieux have become Les Mediocres"
When the Montreal Canadiens sent superstar goaltender Patrick Roy to Colorado in 1995, it wasn't quite the equivalent of the Boston Red Sox trading Babe Ruth.
But it’s hard to overlook the historical significance of the lopsided deal.
The Red Sox sold Ruth to help pay for the Major League Baseball team owner’s Broadway production.
Roy left Montreal after a bit of dramatic theatre at the Montreal Forum, when he defied coach Mario Tremblay and spoke directly to team president Ronald Corey during a lopsided loss to Detroit.
Since St. Patrick departed, the Canadiens haven’t returned to the Stanley Cup final and have reached the semifinals only once.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of Montreal’s last Cup win.
That doesn’t match eight decades of futility for the Red Sox, but it’s the longest stretch the team has ever gone without a Stanley Cup, unless you count the period between Jacques Cartier and the Canadiens’ first Cup in 1916.
Given the disastrous results of the first half of this season, and the debacle of the past few weeks culminating in the trade of Mike Cammalleri, it’s unlikely the famine is about to end this spring.
Roy, meanwhile, didn’t turn the Avalanche into the New York Yankees of hockey, but he did win two Stanley Cups in Denver.
Nevertheless, the Curse of St. Patrick is overrated. The truth is that Montreal’s transformation from glorious to ordinary had already begun before Roy had even joined the Canadiens.
From 1956 to 1979, the Canadiens won 15 Stanley Cups in 24 seasons.
In the 32 years since then, they’ve won just two. And while those wins — both with Roy between the goalposts — gave Montreal fans hope of sustained superiority, they were clearly of a different character from the championships of the previous era.
Unlike the dynasties of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, their wins in 1986 and 1993 were surprises pulled off by underdog Canadiens teams, not at all like the regular-season and playoff dominance of the previous three decades.
What diehard fans and the Montreal media have failed to grasp for 30 years is that the Canadiens are no longer special.
Even worse, they are a team with unique liabilities. Once upon a time, every boy in Quebec dreamt of playing for Montreal.
For the past decade, however, French-speaking free agents have avoided the Canadiens scrupulously and native Quebeckers have led Stanley Cup-winning teams in places like New Jersey and Tampa.
You can hardly blame players for staying away. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to the intense scrutiny and expectations of Montreal fans and media?
The French newspapers devote more pages to the Canadiens than People magazine wastes on Lindsay Lohan.
There was always pressure, but in the Canadiens’ best years there was also the opportunity for glory.
Star players had a chance to join the pantheon of stars like Richard, Beliveau and Lafleur. Now there is only the strain of unrealistic demands and the risk that — like Cammalleri — you can go from fan favourite to outcast in a few weeks, on the basis of a scoring slump and one or two bad quotes uttered in frustration.
Other dynastic teams survive in a media circus, like the Yankees and Manchester United. But the Canadiens have crumbled.
That may be due in part to the pressure on the Canadiens to not just be a winning hockey team, but a cultural symbol.
In today’s international era of the NHL, there are only two native sons playing for Montreal.
But a media firestorm provoked official apologies from management and ownership when the Canadiens appointed a unilingual anglophone as interim head coach.
Only in Montreal would language matter whatsoever, let alone for a position with a three-month term. Such is the crazy balance of having to manage a hockey team that is also a national institution.
The Canadiens are by no means a struggling business. Montreal is still third in the league in attendance this year, with more than 20,000 fans per home game. But that’s down 1,000 fans per game from their average last season. And the Habs are no longer selling out every game at the Bell Centre.
Compare that to when there was a waiting list for season tickets at the Forum. The days when the Habs were a special sports franchise are long gone.
Even the Forum is now a shopping mall. Les Glorieux have become Les Mediocres, and, three decades on, it can hardly be viewed as a blip. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as saying they are just another hockey franchise.
The Canadiens remain unique in the NHL because of the unrealistic expectations of fans and the media, and the unique pressures of language and culture.
Rather than make Montreal a desired place to play hockey, as it once was, those dynamics have made it even more difficult for the team to win.
Read more:
http://www.canada.com/sports/Glory+days+long+gone+Habs/5997576/story.html#ixzz1jg1jpj5h
