By the time you read these lines, the Montreal Canadiens will already have two big matches in their heads: one against the powerful — on paper if not in real life — Toronto Leafs, the other, the next day, against the always solid Bruins, before seeing the representatives of the capital of our favorite post-nation arrive at the Bell Centre, two days later. On Monday, the Crosby gang will show up on our ice, and after this hot start — four games in six days — we should know a little more about… what exactly?
The other day, during one of my many trips soccer dad between the house and the high school stadium, I heard, while tapping on the on-board radio of my car, one of the countless hockey experts in Quebec flatly acknowledge that the Canadian was finally going to “line up”, at almost, at this much-anticipated start to the season, the same team as last year. I almost choked on my eternal ten-day beard.
What ? You mean that after these several million words poured into the media over the last few months to dissect the slightest sign of life from this off-season, the process of reconstruction-which-is-nothing -not one, the amateur draft, the free agent auction, the rookie training camp, the training camp of teams A and B and future deportees in the American League, then this series of meaningless games and nevertheless examined under the magnifying glass we call preseason, and after having passionately scrutinized the slightest movement of the little finger of the general manager of the team and discussed the slightest possibility of hiring the first plumber available, with byzantine projections and with a mastery of the uncertainty principle worthy of quantum physics, we forget everything and return to square one? All that for that?
We still notice a few liters of new blood in this October 2024 edition of the Canadian: Lane Hutson, a 20-year-old defender who is starting his first season in the CH uniform, and Alex-Barré Boulet, a guy from Montmagny who wandered between Tampa and Seattle before landing on the third line of the Glorieux. As for the man named Emil Heineman, unknown to the battalion as far as I am concerned, his promotion is explained by the need to plug the hole left by Joel Armia within the fourth trio, the Finn having been transferred to the second line to plug the gap. much more important – what am I saying, it’s a breach? It’s an abyss!… It’s a pit!… It’s an abyss! — appeared on the attack.
If you haven’t heard of Patrik Laine yet, it’s probably because you were stacking sandbags somewhere in Florida. We probably have to go back to the arrival of Alex Kovalev in Montreal, 20 years ago, to find a hiring as carrying the hopes of an entire people as the recruitment of this fine Finn who was reluctantly promoted to savior of the concession.
He had barely set foot on the airport tarmac when he was already labeled as the Canadian’s first 40-goal scorer since Damphousse. Checked, until 2020, he counted 138 spread over four seasons contested in the Manitoba prairie. Over the next four years, his up-and-down journey between the infirmary, the National League Player Assistance Program and the ice rink caused him to miss about one out of every two games, during which time he recovered. to maintain an average of 0.8 points per game, which, projected over a full season, gives a very honest harvest of 66 points. But the problem is that we, in Montreal, what we need is a messiah (“providential character”).
At the Canadiens’ training complex in Brossard, Laine must have felt like an insect under the lens of an entomologist. As soon as he jumped on the ice, the slightest movement of impatience on his part was found in the newspapers. The coach and his assistants “collected information daily [à son] subject in order to monitor and manage your workload both on the ice and in the gym” (J. Bernier, THE Montreal Journal). The experts barely checked the brand of his bobettes: did they provide him with sufficient support? Did they cause him any irritation in the region that in good Quebec we call “wool”?
During this time, we surveyed the fans, a real survey carried out among 6,417 respondents, from which it emerged, at the dawn of this new campaign, that, in the minds of more than 40% of the club’s supporters, the new acquisition of the Habs would score between 30 and 39 goals. This time, the “mix” – what a brilliant find by the managers of the drop in expectations who, from now on, avoid saying the “s-word” and are content to aim for a place in the game of musical chairs for the month of March –, yes, in truth I tell you, the spring “mix” was within our reach!
The table was set for one of those psychodramas of which our hockey world has the secret, with a little guy from our country in a counter-job: the role of the bad guy.
I will not return to the knee injury of our fragile right winger. Even you, snowbirds from Sarasota, have heard of it. We are now forced to go into battle with, in place of the wonder of Tampere, another Finn who has never scored more than 17 times in a year. At least the first trio is intact, centered around a captain who speaks the language of the tribe that pays his salary as well as the governor general of Trudeau Jr.’s kingdom.
Dixit St-Louis: “The goals and the blue lines are going to be in the same place, we have to play the game. » Translation: that’s what it is.
Novelist, independent writer and atypical sports columnist, Louis Hamelin is the author of a dozen books.