It seems impossible.
I rolled into our fair city in late January 1971 looking like a scarecrow — a tall, gaunt hippie in patched jeans, a Nebraska letter jacket and a floppy black hat with a paisley band, as ignorant of hockey as I was of most things Canadian.
By May 21, 1979 (the date the Canadiens won their fourth consecutive championship with a 4-1 victory over the New York Rangers) I had witnessed six parades in eight years, all along the usual route.
We knew the drill. We would take up our posts around Guy and Ste-Catherine Sts. and follow the team east, across Peel St., where the crowd was thickest and on east until the mob began to break up and we went in search of a likely tavern.
The players, Jean Béliveau and Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson and Guy Lapointe, Bob Gainey and Serge Savard and Yvan Cournoyer and the Pocket Rocket, all looked like aliens. While the faces in the crowd reflected their springtime tans, the Canadiens were pale as ghosts and battered, with welts and bruises and scratches on their faces and necks and arms, reflecting the long, brutal journey they had just survived.
A couple of days later, we would make it a point to have lunch at Toe Blake’s so we could see the heroes of the day file in, headed to lunch with Toe in a back room of his tavern.
Eight years, six times. If I hadn’t witnessed it, I would say it could not have happened. And yet it did. The Canadiens also won six Cups between 1953 and 1960 (including five in a row) and four more between 1965 and 1969 with what Béliveau himself thought was the greatest of their dynasties.
Why mention this tattered tale?
Because there is a special energy in Montreal when spring finally comes slinking in after a long, brutal winter and The team reflects the city and the city reflects the team — and no edition of the bleu-blanc-rouge since 1979 has had quite the aura of this young bunch, with big things ahead in every goal, every save, every penalty kill, every win.
They’re good and they’re going to get better. Six Cups in eight years good? No. There were 14 teams in 1971, there are 32 now. There’s a salary cap and a players’ union. You have to be realistic, but the Habs are way ahead of schedule in a rebuild with a goal: sustained excellence.
Yet if I read the headlines or dive into social media, it’s like we’re talking about a different team.
The Canadiens aren’t big enough.
They aren’t tough enough.
They need that second-line centreman.
They’re missing that big, tough right-shot defenceman. They’ll never win with Martin St. Louis.
Honestly. There are times when the fans and some in the sports media in this city deserve the Toronto Maple Leafs. The whining, moaning, bleating, lamenting, whinging, griping — it’s enough to make an aging journalist yearn for a sane beat like, oh, American politics.
Canadiens defenceman Jayden Struble scores his first goal of the season on Columbus Blue Jackets’ Jet Greaves during first period in Montreal on Thursday. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette
On this sunny March morning, Toronto has 75 points in 73 games. Barring divine intervention, they’ll miss the playoffs. Ten seasons with alleged superstar Auston Matthews and Toronto has won two playoff series
It’s important, therefore, not to be too accepting, not to put up with any old ramshackle mess. If you don’t care, if you fill the lower bowl with guys in suits who spend the game on their phones and barely notice yet another loss, you end up with the Maple Leafs.
Neither do you have to go off the deep end with every loss. The Canadiens, the league’s youngest team, have 90 points in 71 games, good for third in the titanium-tough Atlantic Division. They have won four of their last five games against the Bruins, Islanders, Hurricanes and Blue Jackets — all teams scrapping for a place in the big dance.
Now they have a goaltender in rookie Jakub Dobes and another goalie in rookie Jacob Fowler. They are building momentum. If you have your ear to the ground, you can hear it, that unique Montreal buzz that builds when the Canadiens have any kind of post-season run. You feel it on the street, you hear it in the cafés, you see it in the red jerseys that sprout like spring flowers.
There is something about this team that goes beyond analytics, something the nervous Nellies and caterwauling critics miss entirely. It’s a team, with bonds as strong as the ties that once bound the legends who waltzed into Toe Blake’s every spring. It’s the secret behind their resilience, the determination that turns a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead in a flash of Cole Caufield’s stick.
Do I understand why they have yet to call up David Reinbacher or why the wildly popular Arber Xhekaj has been benched?
Not really. It doesn’t matter, because I trust the people behind this minor miracle. They’re getting it done.
If it feels like it’s 1971 or 1979, 1986 or 1993 all over again, it’s because we are beginning to glimpse what is possible — perhaps sooner than we think.