Any chance I get to read a book about the Montreal Canadiens, I jump at it.
Brendan Kelly’s new book Habs Nation: A People’s History of The Montreal Canadiens really does cover all of the bases and more. For someone who is not a sports fan and knows little about the franchise, you’ll be well educated after reading these pages. As for the fans, you will get a good recap of the team’s history and what makes the organization tick.
Kelly takes a fresh look at the ups and downs of the Habs since the heyday of the “Flying Frenchmen” in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and shows how the history of the team mirrors the tumultuous changes in Quebec over the past decades. He talks to former Canadiens greats like Serge Savard and Bob Gainey, journalists, politicians, filmmakers and even to Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen, maybe the Canadiens’ most famous fan?and they tell the tale of a team and its unique bond with its local fans.
The Glory Years
The glory years of the Habs in the ’70s reflected the exciting times in Quebec back then. In the ’80s, the team and all of Quebec struggled to regain that former glory. However, in the past 25 years, both the team and Quebec have grappled to find their identity. One conclusion is that when the team’s roster was at its most Québécois it had its greatest success on the ice. Since Montreal’s last Quebec superstar, Patrick Roy, was unceremoniously booted out of town, the franchise has failed to win a Stanley Cup and has rarely been amongst the NHL’s elite squads.
Everything changed for the Habs in 1995 when Serge Savard was fired as general manager and Roy was traded to the Colorado Avalanche
Kelly spoke to Karl Subban, the dad of former Habs favorite PK Subban who told him how he came over from Jamaica to Sudbury, Ontario, aged 11 and quickly understood that the only way to make friends with the French-speaking kids in his neighbourhood was to pick up a hockey stick and play street hockey with them! Playing with them, Karl said he grew to love the Habs—a passion he passed on to PK who’d suit up for the team in the 2010s.
The window at Paragraphe Bookstore and Habs Nation on display.
Language Issues
The language issues in Quebec is always present when it comes to the Habs. Former player and GM Savard and many others expressed disappointment by the lack of francophone players on the Canadiens over the yearsé On one particular night in May 2021, Kelly points out that the lineup didn’t include a single francophone, with Jonathan Drouin out for personal reasons and Phillip Danault absent with a concussion. Even Quebec Premier François Legault has voiced concerns, wishing the team had more Quebec players. Naturally there are French-speaking players on the team, but Kelly says it’s a far cry from the “Flying Frenchmen” of the 1970s, when locker-room discussions were conducted in both of Canada’s official languages.
“The notion that I’m defending in this book is that the Montreal Canadiens should be considered a cultural institution rather than a sports team like any other,” Kelly writes.
Kelly spoke to Gainey, whom he describes as one of the leading lights of the CH’s modern history, first as a player, then as general manager. Viktor Tikhonov, the coach of the Soviet national team, called him “the best player in the world in the technical skills of the game.” Kelly reports how Gainey was seem as the best defensive forward of his era, lifting four straight Frank J. Selke trophies, from 1978 to 1981, while helping the Canadiens win four Stanley Cups, from 1976 to 1979, and another in 1986. He would go on to claim one more Cup as Dallas Stars GM in 1999, before being appointed Canadiens general manager from 2003 to 2010… with mixed results.
Former Quebec Nordiques coach and broadcaster Michel Bergeron told Kelly that the Canadiens have always been about something bigger than hockey. “Even kids could tell it was a big part of their culture,” Bergeron told him. “ Maurice Richard was standing up for all Quebecers. And he was so close to everyday folks. He lived in Ahuntsic. I played baseball back then, and Maurice Richard was chairman of the Ahuntsic Youth Association, which meant he’d come along to the games. I was on the Rosemont team. And we’d see the Rocket in the stands! You could still get close to him for such a big star. I wouldn’t say he was particularly approachable, but he’d choose when and where to put in an appearance. That always impressed me. He never hid behind being a star. After him, Jean Béliveau did the same, and Guy Lafleur followed in their footsteps. Those men left their mark on hockey, for sure, but they left their mark on the people more than anything. I’m fortunate to have known them. It’s huge all the same to have had three people in the same city who left their mark on hockey, each in their own way, and were role models for young people and for everyone in general,” says Bergeron, visibly moved.
For a very long time, Quebecers felt as though the Montreal Canadiens represented Quebec and that in some ways it was Quebec against the rest of the world. And the reason why identifying with the team was so important for French-speaking Quebecers, as Bergeron alluded to, is that the Canadiens players were winners.
Bilingualism
Kelly tells the story how despite leading the Canadiens to a Stanley Cup, Al MacNeil was relieved of his duties as head coach and demoted to the minor league team in Halifax. MacNeil didn’t speak French and had a very public spat with team captain Henri Richard, a French-speaking Quebec legend, who was furious that MacNeil had “forgotten” him at the end of the bench in game five of the final against Chicago, and Richard had made his feelings known in public. Richard had been given a chance to play again and he was the guy who led the comeback against the Black Hawks in game seven, scoring both the equalizer and the game-winner in a 3–2 victory. “And so, after winning the Cup with a team that no one had thought capable of such a feat, MacNeil was out of a job!” Kelly writes. The bilingual Scotty Bowman—born in Verdun— was appointed as his successor and won five more Cups
Kelly does get into politics. The PQ took came to power in 1976 and there was a great deal of concern in English-speaking Canada. The night they were elected the Habs had a home game against at the Forum. “In the middle of the third period, the message board flashed again—‘Un Nouveau Gouvernement.’ No longer afraid to hope, thousands stood up and cheered and the organist played the PQ anthem.,” Kelly writes. “And when they stood and cheered, thousands of others who had always stood and cheered with them stayed seated and did not cheer. At that moment, people who had sat together for many years in the tight community of season-ticket holders learned something about each other that they had not known before. The last few minutes of the game were very difficult. The mood in the Forum had changed.”
Kelly quotes Gainey. “I remember the night and it was one of those games where the people did not participate so much in the game,” he told Kelly. “There was something else that was more important happening. It took some time before it became apparent what that was. And it was that the Parti Québécois was leading in the election. I remember the building being silent. And in the 1970s, if you went to the hockey game, you watched the game because there were no replays and there were no TVs and no big screens. And so, you went there to watch the game, but that night the people were not watching the game. They were more involved with what was happening in the polls and at the election.”
PQ Leader PSPP
Kelly also talked to current PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, whom it turns out is a big hockey fan, “My three-and-a-half-year-old son is called Maurice, Maurice Plamondon,” he told Kelly. “When he was born, his uncle bought him a jersey with number 9 ‘Maurice’ on the back. The Canadiens de Montréal are so firmly anchored in our culture and emotions because the club represents the destiny of a people that didn’t have political, economic or social means, but that thanks to its courage, like Maurice Richard, managed to stay the course, to triumph over adversity.
PSPP in hockey gear.
“The paradox of the Canadiens de Montréal is that the team relies heavily on nostalgia for the past to bind itself to Quebec, a past marked by the word ‘Habitants,’ Habs, Canadiens, meaning French-speaking Quebecers, while at the same time the owners, the organization, act more like holdovers from the federal regime, originally the British colonial regime, than agents of emancipation for those Habitants and Canayens. This tension can still be felt in what the Canadiens de Montréal do and say: everything goes on in both languages, while Quebec’s official language is, and there’s no doubt about this, French. There will always be tensions around the francophone players, with the Canadiens’ commit- ment to developing local players, whether they speak English or French. The place for Quebec culture in the product put forward by the Canadiens de Montréal has dwindled over the years, it’s become standardized to conform more with the image of the National Hockey League than with Quebec’s image. As leader of the Parti Québécois, I’d like to see a team in the image of FC Barcelona, which has taken up the destiny of the local population, and not a team that tries to reconcile the locals to the official message of the federal regime, a team in favour of the North American standard that encroaches on Quebec’s specificity when that specificity could be better put to use. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I don’t want to blame the Canadiens either. I think we need to be nuanced, because that’s a lot for them to wrestle with, but we mustn’t be blind to the fact that owning a sports team like the Canadiens de Montréal is to have a political lever that is used before almost every game to deliver messages that have nothing to do with hockey.”
Sam Pollock
Kelly brings us back to 1978 when brothers Edward and Peter Bronfman sold the organization to the Molson brewery. Long-time general manager Sam Pollock left shortly after that and Kelly points out quite correctly how the team was never the same again. In his 14 years in charge of the Canadiens, he’d led the team to nine Stanley Cups—the most ever for an NHL general manager. That said, the Habs didn’t just lose Pollock: one year later, it would also lose head coach Scotty Bowman. “Most people will tell you that one of the main reasons Bowman left the Forum was that he thought he was the man to replace Pollock as GM,” Kelly notes.
Montreal businessman Irving Grundman—who had until then managed the Forum’s business operations—became the Canadiens general manager. In the 1980 draft the Habs had the first overall draft pick. They chose Doug Wickenheiser, a centre from Saskatchewan who was a star in the Western Hockey League over hometown hero Denis Savard. Years later Serge Savard tried to make up for this error, trading star defenceman Chris Cherlios for Denis Savard. It was, as the GM admits today, one of his worst moves ever.
The Nordiques
In 1979 the Quebec Nordiques joined the NHL For the first time since the Montreal Maroons’ heyday in the ’30s, Kelly points the Canadiens had a rival in Quebec. Fierce battles between the two teams would forever leave their mark on hockey in the province. In November 1982, Ronald Corey was named team president. He was the one who appointed Serge Savard GM—the first francophone to hold the position since Jules Dugal in 1939–40. They then hired Jacques Lemaire as head coach, and Jean Perron after him. “Suddenly the president, GM, and head coach were all francophones,” Kelly said. “Savard got off to a shaky start as general manager: Guy Lafleur wasn’t dominating the NHL as he had in the 1970s and, to make matters worse, he wasn’t getting on with his new coach, former team- mate Jacques Lemaire. A fed-up Lafleur retired in November 1984. He was just 33 and clearly still capable of playing hockey at a high level.”
Kelly says that nobody in 1993 could have imagined that, 30 years on, the Canadiens would still be waiting for their next Cup. They had won 16 of them in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, one in the ’80s, and another in the ’90s. And as alluded to above, despite the stubborn myth that Roy won the Cup all by himself in 1993, the team was a solid one: “The Canadiens would win a Cup every seven years: 1979, 1986, and 1993,” says Alexandre Pratt, sports columnist for La Presse. “So it was possible that they might win other Cups in short order after that, especially since the club could still count on Patrick Roy and Vincent Damphousse. They had every chance of staying at or near the summit for years to come. No one could ever have imagined that two years later it would all come tumbling down with Patrick Roy being traded to Colorado.”
On October 17, 1995, Corey fired Serge Savard and coach Jacques Demers and replaced them with Rejean Houle and Mario Tremblay, neither of whom had any experience in the roles they were asked to play.
Momesso
We hear about the pride and joy of NDG Sergio Momesso. who confessed that he was actually not a Habs fan growing up. His father had immigrated from Italy and his favourite player was Boston Bruins star Phil Esposito, because of the Italian connection, and father and son loved watching those classic Canadiens-Bruins playoff games. Momesso played double-letter hockey in NDG, playing often against their arch rivals, the team from Ville Émard just down the hill, which included a fellow named Mario Lemieux. Momesso remembers skipping school in the ’70s and going downtown to watch the Cup parades. So he was pretty happy when he got drafted by the Canadiens.
Momesso joined the team amd made it into the line-up of the 1985–86 team that would go on to win the Cup, but he suffered a major knee injury in Boston in December and didn’t play again that season. His name was not engraved on the Cup but he did still get a Stanley Cup ring!
“It was bittersweet obviously since I wasn’t playing,” Momesso told Kelly. “But I got a ring.”
The Nordiques leaving Quebec for Colorado placed less pressure on the Canadiens to include francophones in their lineup, Kelly writes. The teams, Kelly reports, had been aggressively bidding for francophone players since the Nordiques were breathing down the Canadiens’ necks. Since the Second World War, the Habs never had more French-speaking players than in the 15-odd years the Nordiques were in Quebec City.
Partrick Roy
Kelly called the Habs trade of legendary goalie Patrick Roy as a turning point for the franchise. On Saturday, December 2, 1995, rookie coach Trembla left Roy in the crease for nine of the goals that came in an 11–1 thrashing at the hands of the Detroit Red Wings. Roy demanded that he traded. He was sent to Colorado and led his new franchise to a Stanley Cup.
The big news of the 1995-96 season, Kelly notes, was the team moving into the brand-new Molson (now Bell) Centre. Back then, the organization saw the move as a big step forward, ushering the club into the modern era. Three decades on, the sad truth of the matter is that the Habs’ new home never brought the success the team had enjoyed at its old home, the Forum. When the building opened, the reaction from media and fans was overwhelmingly negative. However, folks warmed up to the place.
In January 2001, the Molson Brewery sold the Canadiens and the Molson Centre to American businessman George Gillett, the first non-Canadian to own the storied franchise. Daniel O’Neill, then Molson chief executive, said at the time: “We did not receive one single offer from one Canadian company or one Canadian individual.”
The new owner created the Gillett Entertainment Group, the forerunner to Evenko, the entertainment company owned by Groupe CH, now one of the organization’s economic mainstays.
Of course, the June 2005 decision by Bob Gainey to make goalie Carey Price the team’s first draft choice turned out to be a game changer.
The Geoff Molson Era
Geoff Molson and his consortium bought the club in June 2009 for the US$575 million. The franchise is now worth more than US$2 billion, Kelly reports,.
There is space devoted to the Marc Bergervin era as GM. Kelly points to Bergevin’s good moves, such as getting defenceman Jeff Petry in return for two draft picks, bringing Nick Suzuki, the veteran Tomas Tatar, and a second-round pick from Vegas in return for Max Pacioretty. But Kelly laments the trade of promising defenceman Mikhail Sergachev to the Tampa Bay Lightning for Jonathan Drouin,
While Bergevin guided the team to Stanley Cup final in spring 2021, he was fired the following fall. The Habs had started the season in dreadful fashion, Kelly reminds us they were 6-15-2 when he was let go. Molson hired former Rangers GM Jeff Gorton to occupy the newly created position of executive vice-president of hockey operations. Early in 2022, Gorton reached out to Kent Hughes, a Montreal-born player agent, to become general manager, and just like that the club was being run by a team of two, which many of us had been suà gesting for years. Less than a month later, Gorton and Hughes gave coach Dominique Ducharme his walking papers and hired Martin St. Louis as interim coach, despite his lack of experience. The ex-NHL star was secure in the job by season’s end, signing a three-year contract.
And that brings us to present day, where the Habs rebuild is showing true promise.
I asked Kelly to join me at Marymount Academy International in NDG to talk to students about the book. He was accompanied by Karine Hains, who covers the Canadiens for the Hockey News. She commented that books like Kelly’s make her think that the story of the Montreal Canadiens goes so beyond hockey that it should be in the school curriculum. Since Kelly is so tight with Plamondon, the presumed next Quebec premier, that could very well happen. “It would be a good way to have kids love history,” added Hains.
You can buy the book at Paragraphe Bookstore downtown and on Amazon.