Hockey madness

By popular demand (and with people threatening me, merci Mélina!), I realized my blog really needed an update. Jeez, I’ve been a lazy bastard.

First of all, I have to express how I feel about what happened to my favorite hockey team, les Canadiens de Montréal.

After one hell of a season, Montreal finished 1^st in the Eastern conference for the first time since the 1988-89 season, and 3^rd in the NHL with 104 points. Was it a surprise that the Habs had to face the Boston Bruins? Not really. It was actually the 31^st time in NHL history that the two teams met in the playoffs. The series still ended up lasting 7 games as the Bruins proved to have some kind of incredible survival skill. Montreal still managed to win against Boston in the playoffs for the 24^th time with a glorious 5-0 score.

Now, we all know hockey is pretty popular in Canada, even more so for Montreal, since the Canadiens are literally part of our cultural heritage (24 Stanley Cups isn’t nothing). But when a sport becomes almost as important as religion under certain circumstances, things can go horribly wrong. Allow me to explain.

Monday, April 21. The Montreal Canadiens just won the series against Boston. People are so happy about it that they get out and celebrate, screaming and shouting in the town’s streets. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating publically, I did it. I was watching the game with some friends and we all got out, expressing our joy. But here comes the resemblance with what’s wrong with religion. Similar to some religious extremists, some enthusiastic Canadiens fans (one can wonder if they can still be called “fans” at that point) decided to express their joy in a peculiar way, as this photo can show.

Worthy of the 1993 Stanley Cup winning game, this riot was quite impressive, for a first round win. The Police said fans did around $500,000 of damage to the police cars only. That’s not counting all the other cars, the shops’ broken glass showcases, the letter boxes, signs, etc. After looking at all the damage that had been caused, I couldn’t help but to wonder: “What the fuck does that have to do with winning a hockey game?”. Then again, sports aren’t the only place where such things happen. I surprised myself thinking about religion (tied in with politics) and what it causes people to do. The war in Iraq, for instance.

Closer to us, religion ties into hockey in many ways. It goes from praying that your team will win to climbing the St-Joseph’s Oratory’s stairs on your knees.

Yeah, me and my buddies did climb the stairs before and after the game. We had nothing to do and were a bit drunk, actually.

Of course, this meant the Canadiens were going to Round 2 against the Philadelphia Flyers. At that point, everyone thought Montreal had the team to win the Cup. That was about to change. After winning game 1, the Canadiens were to lose the 4 next games, causing fans to react with their usual bipolar disorder: the Canadiens win a game? Stanley Cup! They lose a game? It's all over. I don't think Montreal did a horrible job in that series. Actually, they pretty much dominated all the games, getting beat by the Flyers' unorganized playing style. Counting the amount of posts hit by Montreal’s player, the mediocre referee work and the ugly goals Philly’s players scored, I can clearly say the Flyers were very lucky, 4 straight times. We asked a lot from our rookie goalie Carey Price, and even though he didn’t take us as far as we would’ve hoped, he certainly gained experience, and there’s always next year. I just hope the kind of riot we just had doesn't increase exponentially as the team goes through the rounds, as a Stanley Cup win would probably push the population to burn Montreal down to ashes.

For now, I hope the Pittsburgh Penguins destroy the Flyers in Round 3. My prediction? A Penguins Vs. Red Wings final in which Detroit wins. Hockeytown deserves it this year. May the octopus be with them!