A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Home Again in the Heart of Habs Country

Last Thursday Ann and I boarded a train at Quebec City’s lovely and historic Gare du Palais and journeyed upriver, arriving at Montreal’s Central Station three hours later but on time. Our hotel was just a few blocks away on Mountain Street. I figured I was a logistical genius. However I neglected to account for the fact that we’d be grappling with three bags, about 100 pounds of luggage, and that two solid days of walking the winding, hilly streets of Vieux-Quebec would exact a toll on Ann’s new titanium hip.

As I hauled our belongings from the taxi’s trunk in front of our hotel, I glanced across the street into the window of a Scotia Bank branch. The décor was a massive black and white hockey mural which led the eye to a framed and autographed Carey Price sweater. Across Rene-Levesque Boulevard, a little further down the hill, three Montreal Canadiens flags drooped from the brick façade of a pub. Even the weariest and most discombobulated traveller knows where they are once they arrive in my hometown. Our hotel’s lobby featured a portrait gallery of Canadiens players from the 70s, consistent winners, hall of famers.

Though the team has been mediocre for a quarter century, it is omnipresent in the Montreal region. The club has a ten-per-cent stake in a condominium tower which abuts the Bell Centre, the home rink constructed without a dime of taxpayer money. The organization operates a restaurant called Taverne 1909, named for year one, and a boutique and a world-wide digital fan club. A downtown street has been renamed in honour of the team. The club’s elaborate practice complex is located in Brossard on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River. The farm team laces up in Laval, Montreal’s off-island sister city to the north. There is an Avenue des Canadiens inside Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport. Every souvenir-tourist joint and currency exchange outlet sells Canadiens merchandise. Standard bar and pub décor requires Montreal hockey memorabilia, even in the Irish ones. The Rolling Stones have lifted the iconic bleu, blanc et rouge home sweater design to sell ‘lolling tongue’ t-shirts. Hell, even my older sister is aware of the Montreal Canadiens’ existence – that, friends, is market penetration.

Despite such a public presence, the Montreal Canadiens are an incredibly secretive entity, corporate and conservative. For lifelong Habs fans, interpreting press releases issued by the brains trust is a lot like decoding diplomatic signals from Pyongyang or the Kremlin. We do know that the club tends to trade away its best and most dynamic players for committing thoughtcrime. We do know that any skater designated as ‘captain’ is doomed to depart.

During the summer news from the ivory bunker was not promising. The Canadiens were looking to trade captain Max Pacioretty, a ten-year veteran who’s generally reliable for 30 goals a season, a key attribute for a team with a chronic inability to score. Both the player and his agent repeatedly reiterated Max’s desire to remain in Montreal. There were the usual platitudes about pro hockey being business, but didn’t Max refuse a trade to Los Angeles? And didn’t Max and General Manager Marc Bergevin whose five-year rebuilding plan isn’t running as smoothly as a train between Quebec and Montreal, shake hands at the Canadiens’ annual charity golf tournament?

Late Sunday morning Ann and I crossed Mountain Street for brunch at Ye Olde Orchard pub. The waiter actually knew that ‘ye’ is pronounced ‘the’ because the letter ‘y’ is the modern and inadequate typographer’s equivalent of the old English letter thorn which was phonetically rendered as ‘th.’ Week one of American football was on every TV. My eye kept wandering over to a life-sized painting of legendary Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden, more than six feet of crucial saves. He had presented me with a Most Valuable Player award in 1972. I still have his autograph somewhere (I think) on a rectangle of graph paper. I don’t know what happened to the trophy. I do know Dryden’s ‘The Game’ is still in my library. It is the best hockey book ever written by an insider, possibly the best hockey book ever written by anybody. Winners write history.

When we returned to our hotel room, housekeeping was still at it. We decided to stroll down the hill to the Bell Centre and examine the hockey plaques and statues. I was lucky enough to see and marvel at the skills of many of the bronze figures. We purposely avoided the souvenir store because I’ve got seven or eight sweaters, two caps, three beer steins, two coffee mugs, salt and pepper shakers, two DVD sets, a shot glass, a toque and Christ knows what else. I pointed to a giant banner of Max Pacioretty hanging from the Bell Centre bricks and said to Ann, “Well, they haven’t banished him yet. They’re as good as the Soviets when it comes to erasing and rewriting history, Stalinesque. His picture’s still here.”

Hours later, as we slept, the Canadiens announced the trade of Pacioretty to the Vegas Golden Knights at one o’clock in the morning; breaking news too late to make the morning papers, a dusty media strategy too because very few people actually read actual newsprint these days. The club then followed up, insisting its captain had wanted out since last season and that management was simply being accommodating and gracious. Spin for another idiotic misstep?

The Canadiens might be the post-truth era’s ultimate franchise because winning is everything except during the season. There are real estate holdings, restaurants and stores to be overseen. Players who refuse to fully embrace the hockey team’s secret and unknowable code are dealt to other clubs in exchange for potential inductees to the cult of the CH. All I know is the current system is not clicking on the ice and that Habs fans, me especially, are about to experience another long and frustrating winter.   

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