DON’T, HABS, DON’T
The Canadiens are alright, but Habs Nation is simply arrogant
BY Dave Bidini
A lot of my friends are Habs fans. I like them. I like the Habs, too, at least this year’s team. Much of their play in the 2008 playoffs has been thrilling, free and dynamic. I like Bob Gainey and Guy Carboneau. And I like Carey Price, who is unlike any goaltending creature this side of Dominik Hasek.
Still, if I hear one more sporting/cultural/historical pundit wax on about how the Habs and their fans are the most distinguished and dignified in the history of sports, I’m going to become ill and unruly. Last week’s rioting in the shadow of Montreal’s well-played (and long overdue) 5-zip drubbing of Boston in Game 7 exposed Habs Nation as one of the most ill-represented collectives in sports. By standards of class and dignity, surely the Penguins Posse or the Hurricane Gang comport themselves better than the arrogant and aggressive warrior devotees of le bleu, blanc et rouge.
The nation’s sporting media—and sports fans in general—believe that the mere glimmer of Canadiens success evokes the gallant beauty of Jean Beliveau, the keen (and clean) gamesmanship of Guy Lafleur, and the sauve manliness of Larry Robinson, but in 2008, the Habs are no more elevated than any other team. They play the left-wing lock in a brassy new rink scribbled over with corporate slogans selling bad, expensive beer, their fans teased with predictable T-shirt cannon giveaways and in-game entertainment. The way the sporting populous treats Montreal, you’d think their home games took place in a pure white temple silly with gold light, its rafter banners hooked to angels’ flowing undersides. But the Bell Centre—despite its famously raucous and passionate fans; as lively as any in the NHL, and far more voluble than Toronto’s hand-sitters—is no better than the rest of Gary Bettman’s post-Zeigler cookie cutters, and the scene outside the rink is much worse.
After the Habs’ last Stanley Cup victory in 1993, 15 buses and 47 police cars were destroyed, 168 people injured and 115 more arrested. 1,000 troops were deployed and still the riots could not be ebbed (in 1986, 5,000 fans rampaged through streets around the Montreal Forum). Images of this and recent incidents evoke hockey’s most famous public conflagration—the Richard Riots of 1955—establishing a pattern of bad behaviour that’s been occuring for years. At least, in 1955, there was a cultural/political component to the fans’ outcry—many Quebeckers saw Clarence Campbell’s suspension of Maurice Richard as part of an Anglo mandate to supress French expression and cultural emancipation—but what gets lost in this memory is the fact while the sacred Richard was a brave and fearsome player, he was also a blindly violent thug who commited some of the most heinous on-ice crimes of his day. He was suspended, after all, for hitting a referee, and like Eddie Shore—an Anglo defenceman vilified as a poster boy for violence—his temper often resulted in some of the worst, least dignified hockey ever played by an athlete of his calibre.
In this regard, he Habs’ recent on-ice legacy is no more dignified. Even though the team insists on retiring players’ numbers, such sartorial occasions can only temporarily blunt the truth that the Habs’ last two great goalies—Patrick Roy and Jose Theodore—were drummed out of town by the game’s most viperous and distateful media, and that, before them, Doug Harvey, the game’s second greatest defenceman, was left to wallow in the minors before being rescued by the St. Louis Blues. Montreal likes to wheel out their silver heroes whenever convenient, but they were no better than any other team when caring for retired players who were victimized and indentured by arcane and abusive pro contracts. Decades ago, when Harvey was asked by the Habs to appear during a Legends’ Night, he confessed to not owning a suit and living in a rooming house. For the occasion, the Habs’ cleaned him up, got him a suit and, on game night, the crowd saluted the old general. It was a fine event, and a reminder that when the Habs are good, they are very, very good. Still, when they are bad, they are horrid.
