Since then, the Habs have yet to win another Stanley Cup. Their last Cup win happened at the Forum on June 9, 1993, with the Canadiens beating the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 in Game 5 of the final to take home their 24th Cup. Of course, it\u2019s not the Bell Centre\u2019s fault they\u2019ve never won another championship \u2014 the simple truth is that the team has often been rather badly managed during the last three decades. It isn\u2019t more complicated than that.<\/p>\n
There is no question that fans of a certain age still feel great nostalgia for the old Forum. I remember joining friends on many nights to buy standing-room tickets and racing up when the doors opened at 6:30 to get the best spots, right behind the reds. Later, during the early 1990s, my old friend, Richard Sweret, and I bought seats from ticket resellers. We\u2019d always wait until the national anthems were being sung inside, and then we\u2019d be able to negotiate a much better price for a seat in the reds because the resellers knew if they didn\u2019t sell to us, they wouldn\u2019t be selling to anyone.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Canadiens legend Maurice (Rocket) Richard receives a standing ovation after the last game at the Forum on March 11, 1996.<\/p>\n
When the Molson Centre opened its doors on March 16, 1996, there was no shortage of grumbling. People said the corridors were too narrow \u2014 which they still are! \u2014 and many complained about the higher bowl seats being so far removed from the ice. That\u2019s what happens when you go from a barn with a capacity of 17,959, including standing room, to one that holds 21,105.<\/p>\n
It took years for hockey fans to warm up to the Molson Centre, and part of that was due to the fact that those Habs teams during the second half of the \u201990s were pretty brutal. You have to keep in mind that before the opening of the Molson Centre, team president Ronald Corey had fired general manager Serge Savard (just four games into the season!) and then, on Dec. 6, 1995, new GM R\u00e9jean Houle traded away superstar goalie Patrick Roy to the brand-new Colorado Avalanche for three minor players. It was arguably the worst trade in the history of the Canadiens, and the team is only now beginning to recover from the bad karma produced by it.<\/p>\n
Was it a mistake to leave the Forum for the Molson Centre? Justin Kingsley thinks so. I interviewed him for my book, titled Habs Nation: A People\u2019s History of the Montreal Canadiens, and Kingsley, a sports branding expert, told an incredible story of sharing a couple of rum and cokes with Maurice Richard the day the Molson Centre was officially unveiled. He told me the Rocket, who\u2019d elicited a huge standing ovation just days earlier after the final game at the Forum, was despondent.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was heartbroken,\u201d Kingsley told me. \u201cHe didn\u2019t see the need to leave the Forum.\u201d<\/p>\n
But sports is big business and Molson Brewery, which owned the Canadiens at the time, simply felt the only way to make money was to have a bigger barn with lots of luxury corporate boxes. It\u2019s nutty to think that the Canadiens and the Molson Centre were not regarded as successful investments at the time.<\/p>\n
When Molson put the team and the arena up for sale in 2000, there wasn\u2019t a single Quebec or Canadian bidder interested in buying them, which is why American entrepreneur George Gillett ended up scooping up both in 2001<\/a> for a bargain-basement price of $275 million (which gave him 80.1 percent ownership). Gillett then sold the team and the rink to a consortium led by current owner Geoff Molson for $575 million in 2009. In December, Forbes estimated that the Canadiens are worth US$3.4 billion<\/a>, which ain\u2019t a bad return on Molson\u2019s 2009 investment.<\/p>\n In the years since that first hockey game, fans have warmed up big-time to the arena that was renamed the Bell Centre in 2002. It\u2019s the fans who make a building and Canadiens followers are nothing if not enthused, especially now that president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton and general manager Kent Hughes have constructed the most exciting team since Roy was summarily kicked out of town.<\/p>\n The Molson Centre under construction on July 11, 1995.<\/p>\n Players from opposing teams always say that the Bell Centre is one of the most exciting rinks in the league to play in, and the raucous atmosphere is often contrasted with the dull corporate mood that accompanies a Maple Leafs game at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.<\/p>\n And along the way, it became a pretty great place to see shows. Like any discerning music fan, I prefer to see artists in small theatres and clubs. But if you want to see Bruce Springsteen or The Cure or Radiohead, it\u2019s not going to be at Casa del Popolo, and all three have headlined inspirational concerts at the Bell Centre in recent years. The sight lines for hockey games and shows are as good as in any bowl in North America.<\/p>\n But, and it\u2019s a gigantic but, ghosts or no ghosts, the Canadiens have yet to bring home hockey\u2019s ultimate trophy since making that fateful move from the Forum to the Molson\/Bell Centre. However, fans are more hopeful about that now than at any other time since the first game at the Molson Centre on March 16, 1996.<\/p>\n bkelly@postmedia.com<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The crazy thing is that 30 years after the Bell Centre opened, it\u2019s still not clear that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,144,31520,5,145,20,59430,264,21,5147,35,4,66],"class_list":["post-506083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal-canadiens","tag-canadiens","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-geoff-molson","tag-hockey","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-maple-leafs","tag-molson-centre","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-montrealcanadiens","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-toronto"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116238568427781327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/634180b898c585885711283c85a75fa0.jpeg\"\/)
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