Habs jusqu'au bout!

Habs-crazy, Adam and I arrive way earlier than necessary

The weekend before last Adam and I met up in Montreal to see a couple of Habs games. We stayed with John and his two cats at his apartment near Rue St. Denis. These were the first NHL games Adam had ever attended, and it was a lot of fun for us to finally get to see our team together---Adam is the only person I know well who lives and dies by the Habs as much as I do. For both of us, if the Habs win, elation. If the Habs lose, depression. Whether this is healthy is another matter, but we both bleed le tricolore.

These are from the pre-game intro; the Habs are coming up on their centennial, and they display all their past logos to an instrumental of Coldplay's "Clocks". It gave me the goosebumps and I almost got a little verclempt.

And then the current CH gets bigger and bigger...

Then, something really cool: the 24 number forms on the jumbotron, and you hear Kiefer Sutherland, er, Jack Bauer, say "Previously, in Canadiens history," which leads into a montage of great Habs moments and players through the years, like Henri Richard shown here. When they get to the present, Jack Bauer comes on the jumbotron and says in French "Join us as we continue the pursuit of number 25" (the 25th Stanley Cup). The goosebumps are out of control at this point.

Then, to the tune of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" they introduce the current team, with the biggest cheers coming for Saku Koivu and Sheldon Souray.

Until Saturday's game against the Islanders, I had attended five Habs games in my lifetime (against the Blues, Penguins, Sabres twice and the Wild) and they had won all five. Things looked good after the first period; the Habs had lots of chances and the Islanders were unable to keep up, with only their goalie keeping them in the game. The Habs went ahead in the second period, but slacked off the pace a bit, and upon entering the third the Islanders tied it up and the Habs mailed it in the rest of the way. 4-2 Islanders was the final and the team left the ice to boos. My win streak was over. I never like to see my team lose, but to be the better team at the outset then stop concentrating and coast to a defeat is infuriating. So much for a successful end to Adam's first live NHL game...

That night John met up with us downtown, we had some dinner and then met up with Aura Lea, Bryon and Rachel, who were spending the weekend in Montreal in honour of Rachel's birthday. Before heading out on the town we watched the Leafs squeak out an undeserved shootout win over the Senators, which was really fun for me, a Habs fan in a room full of Leafs lovers. Their taunting almost drove me to violence. And no back up from Adam! Our first stop in the uber cold Montreal night was the Peel Pub. I would only recommend this place if you're a male university "student" who likes to drink till you're sloppy, prefers a wide selection of cheap swill over quality beers, likes the ambience of flashing siren-lights randomly going on and off, and likes bad music played at deafening, and certainly conversation-nullifying, levels. After enduring this place for a pint we took the Metro to John's neighbourhood and Le Diable Vert (The Green Devil), a club with a decidedly red, not green, facade. Whatever, it was hot and crowded and a little difficult to find dancing room, but it was fun and much better than the Peel. A very short, straight girl kept butting into our group and staring at me in a way that was half "I'm gonna kill you", half "Come hither". It was good for a laugh, but man, little people give me the heeby-jeebies.

The next day after poking around the shops near John's place, Adam and I headed downtown for the Penguins game. The Penguins are a hot commodity in NHL arenas because they have the league darling, Sidney Crosby. Just a few days beforehand the Habs and Pens had played in Pittsburgh, in what I'm told was an amazing game that the Pens won in a shootout. This time, it seemed almost conspiratorial in that the referees, or whoever is in charge of them, wanted the Pens to have an easier time of it, as they gave them six straight powerplays through the first two periods, without calling a single penalty against them. The amazingly blatant non-calls and invented calls in the Pens favour had the crowd absolutely livid. However, the Habs were playing much harder than the previous day and did a good job killing penalties, only trailing 2-1 after the second period. In the third the zebras finally called a penalty on the Penguins, and the crowd gave them a standing ovation. There have been plenty of ovations in Montreal, but I've never seen one for the refs. The third period was fantastic---lots of chances for both teams, and the Habs tied it up and then went ahead 3-2. They got a penalty late in the game, though, and the Pens made a nice play to tie it up with very little time remaining. At some point in the third Sidney Crosby felt like someone high-sticked him and he went down in a heap, but didn't get the call and then whined about it. This is what I don't like about Crosby; he's amazingly talented, but he acts like a spoiled brat sometimes.

The third period ended in a tie, so the game went to four-on-four overtime. I had seen the Habs come out victorious in two previous overtimes, against St. Louis and Buffalo, with Russ Courtnall and Alex Kovalev scoring the winners, respectively. The atmosphere was tense; the good guys were playing well, but fewer players on the ice meant more room for Pittsburgh's offensive players like Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. About two minutes in Crosby was looking very dangerous, eluding several Habs as he circled through the their zone. However, just as it looked like he was going to break free and have a golden opportunity on net, Tomas Plekanec, who had been the Habs' best player of late, made a great poke check, relieving Crosby of the puck near the Habs blueline and sparking a two-on-one in the other direction. He carried the puck into the Pens zone and fooled the lone defender into backing up too far, then made a great cross-ice pass to Sheldon Souray, who absolutely wired a slapshot just under the crossbar for the winner. Everyone jumped ten feet out of their seats, of course. It was the perfect ending to a hard game; the Habs had been put at disadvantage after disadvantage, had weathered the storm through hard work, and had come out on top...at the expense of the whiney pretty boy. The next day La Presse had a great picture of the Habs celebrating with Crosby skating off dejectedly in the background.

Back at John's I made a pasta dinner for the three of us with ingredients I got at a nice little organic produce store up the street. We watched the Super Bowl on John's tiny black and white tv---I found the tv more interesting than the game itself. Football is a major snore in my mind, and all the hype and excess around the Super Bowl only makes it worse. But sitting around with buddies, eating good food and jeering the unabashed Americana of it all was fun. A good weekend all around.

Post-script: Since that great win over the Penguins, the Habs have been putrid. Downright awful. They have lost five in a row, including two to the Senators, against whom they usually do well, and one to the Panthers, a perennial non-playoff team the Habs can never beat. In those five games they have only scored seven goals, and their star players like Saku Koivu, Alex Kovalev and Michael Ryder have contributed very little. In fact, the whole team has played like they don't care, and to top things off, Alex Kovalev and Christobal Huet are now injured. The debate around the hockey websites is whether they should make a trade for someone who can help turn things around enough to contend in the playoffs, or start unloading all their underachieving "stars" in return for young prospects. Either way, in this losing streak they went from 4th in the conference to 10th, from a comfortable playoff position, to the outside looking in. All is not well in Habland, and tonight they play the Hurricanes, a team that usually employs a run-the-goalie strategy that works well against the them.

As they might say in Liverpool
(a team now owned by the same guy who owns the Habs):
Come on you reds!