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When Gazette sports and culture writer Brendan Kelly was growing up in Montreal, the Canadiens were in the midst of their golden era. In those days, “if you didn’t win the cup, it was a failure,” he said.
Times have certainly changed. Three decades after the Habs’ last win, the question is now whether the team can remain “in the mix,” Kelly said. “They’re saying, basically, we want to be in the discussion for the playoffs, but not even in the playoffs.”
Kelly’s new book, Le CH et son peuple (the CH and its people), comes out Oct. 9 in French. Kelly said he’s still looking for an English-language publisher, but that he expects to find one.
The book charts the decline of the team from its “Flying Frenchmen” glory days to now.
That decline isn’t just measured in wins and losses, Kelly said, but also in terms of the Canadiens’ place in Quebec society. “There is a cultural decline, too, there is no question.”
The book argues that, in many ways, the history of the Habs has been the history of Quebec.
The 1970s saw a proud and nationalist Quebec and six Stanley Cup wins for the team. Kelly quotes Ken Dryden’s The Game, recounting the night in 1976 when René Lévesque’s Parti Québécois won a majority government. As the news spread to the arena, the organist struck up the PQ anthem and, while many in the crowd stood to cheer, others remained in their seats. Kelly compares those years to the 1980s, when sovereignists mourned a painful referendum defeat and the Canadiens lost much of their vigour.
“The Canadiens are a reflection of Quebec society; they reflect things that happen, but they also influence things that happen,” Kelly said.
The 1955 suspension of Maurice Richard by commissioner Clarence Campbell was seen by many Quebecers not just as an affront to the team, but as yet another degradation of French Canadians. Many consider the riots that ensued as a factor in the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s.
While Quebec and the Habs have long influenced one another, Kelly suggests the team was most successful when Quebecers filled its ranks. “When you have Quebec players on your team, they step up more.”
When the Canadiens won last, in 1993, the team counted 14 Quebec players. It hasn’t come close to those numbers since.
With today’s Habs including fewer Quebecers, Kelly argues players today also make far less of an effort to engage with Montreal and Quebec than they did before. There was a time when anglophone players, including Dryden and Bob Gainey, learned French to communicate with teammates and fans. No longer, Kelly said.
Today, not even the team’s captain, Nick Suzuki, can be heard speaking French to supporters. “I think he should speak French,” Kelly said. “I don’t think he has to be perfectly bilingual.” But hockey players are millionaires, he argued, who should have the resources to learn a bit of the language.
Alongside Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky are the team’s young stars and have signed long-term contracts that will see them stay in Quebec for years. None of them speak French.
Broader involvement in the community is also at a low, Kelly said. While Maurice Richard was president of the Association des jeunes d’Ahuntsic and Bob Gainey was often spotted riding the 24 bus down Sherbrooke Street, Kelly said today’s players are seldom seen in public.
“Carey Price is the perfect example, he just never connected to Montreal,” Kelly said. “I’m not saying he disliked Montreal, but he was never in the community.”
A rare player to make such connections in recent years was P.K. Subban, Kelly said. “This guy came here, and he embraced the community.” Subban raised money for the Montreal Children’s Hospital and played ball hockey with local kids. “The Canadiens haven’t had players like that since Guy Lafleur.”
In 2016, then-GM Marc Bergevin traded Subban to the Nashville Predators in exchange for Shea Weber. That was a mistake, Kelly said. “I’m bitter that he was traded.”
Kelly said the team has always been about more than just hockey. “The Canadiens have this francophone, Québécois heritage.” That history makes the Habs unique and requires its players to embrace Quebec, its language and the Montreal community, he argued. “There’s nowhere (else) that has those demands.”
“The Canadiens are still hugely important,” to Quebec society, Kelly said. But its place in the province’s future isn’t guaranteed. The team’s popularity has already slipped, he said. “I have lots of friends who have season tickets and they’re calling around and no one wants to go.” Management should be thinking about that, Kelly said, and encourage players to learn French and connect with Quebecers.
But just as the team has reflected Quebec in past decades, Kelly said the parallels have yet to go away. “The team is searching for its identity. And maybe, in a way, Quebec is, too.”