Readers who usually tune in to my musings for some kind of insight about foreign wars and military matters might want to change the channel because there is something else I need to get off my chest today. It is about the crumbling of an empire. So, there is a loose association there, but it is tangential at best.
I was initially going to write this blog as a break up letter to the Montreal Canadiens, who've been a somewhat muted passion since I first tentatively clutched a hockey stick and chased either a puck or a street ball. I say muted because I'm not the kind to scream and shout and tear my clothes off in spittle-flinging agony or ecstasy. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate those who do.
The absence of such a display is, I concede, unusual for a fan who cheers for arguably the nation's most passionate hockey city. I say arguably because Vancouver's break with reality last spring following the Stanley Cup loss made even the most die-hard Montreal fan sit up, take notice, and wriggle in their seats with an envious itch. Once upon a time they would have been the ones rioting -- win or lose.
Unlike the fit of fists and jabs of joy from others, my understated passion is the patient kind, one born out of a deep well of appreciation and respect for a team that on the ice has been a touchstone of class, skill, and inspiration for the better part of my life.
But hockey is about so much more than the team today. We are Jumbo-Tronned, merchandized, silent auctioned, kiss-cammed, and concessioned up the ying-yang. No one blinks when you are charged $15 for two small drinks and a small bag of popcorn with a salt content that would set off alarm sirens in the surgeon general's office. There are enough distractions to make you comatose -- or maybe a little punch drunk. It's enough that you could be forgiven for forgetting what you were doing there in the first place.
Make no mistake, friends, this is not a rant about corporate greed. There is so much of that today it's an event to note on the calendar the days when you are not getting fleeced by something or another. Nor is this supposed to be some tired railing about professional sports. There are those out there who would have a more well-informed articulate take on the technical aspects and reasons for the Habs utterly miserable season.
But let's just say it spoke volumes the other night at the Bell Centre when the Timbit junior-junior hockey player on the breakaway got a bigger rise out of the crowd during the intermission skirmish than anything the multi-million salary-capped professionals had gotten. His goal brought most everyone watching to their feet.
It occurred to me at that moment that we had lost something.
When we returned to what we were paying to see, it was almost as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the place. A middle-aged father and his son -- both in Montreal jerseys -- next to me and my son, hung despondently over the steel railing and looked more often at the concrete floor than the ice.
When it was 1-0 and Montreal's defence had totally collapsed in their end, the guy behind us hollered: "I can feel it. Yes, here it comes. 2-0."
And so it was...
At some point in the not-too-distant past that sort of outburst would have ended with the offender being dragged through the streets, tarred and feathered.
There was barely a whimper.
This was the city where the Stanley Cup parade had been as sure a sign of spring as the first tender of shoots green in the garden.
As an Ontario boy, I don't pretend to be a Montrealer, only an ardent admirer of the city, the team, and the passion each have shown for the game -- our game. Yet there was a sense of resignation in the air, the likes of which I'd never felt in some of the other awful seasons that have come since the halcyon days of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
When the crowd poured into the street following the 3-0 utter humiliation I was half prepared for the smell of burning tires and the ping of flying beer bottles.
But there was none of that; only people shuffling quietly along the sidewalks in the darkness. They even obeyed the walk signs. It was the silence that got me.
Is this what it looks like at the end of a dynasty?