I became an Oilers fan around about 1980 - all of 6 years old. Had me a little blue and orange Oilers jersey, the kind with no logo on the front - I don't know what's up with that. Wayne Gretzky was my hero - and I'm sure more than a few of those $1000 rookie cards ended up in the front spokes of my bike. In the next few years, Grant Fuhr replaced Wayne as my fovorite player. I had been a goalie, and I had always had that weird "wrong handed" stance, as John Garrett would call it - so Fuhr fit the bill perfectly. I didn't get to see them much, and I always got shuffled off to bed early during Oilers games (damn Newfoundland time zone), but I loved them. I can't remember ever rooting for another team (although I had an NHL coloring book and I thought the Colorado Rockies unis, well, rocked). I was a bit of an oddball in that way - everyone in my family was a Habs fan, except for one Bruins rooting uncle. All my friends were Habs fans - stupid friends. No one ever admitted to being a Leafs fan in the early 80's - although I'm sure they were out there searching for Dougie Gilmore. But Oilers fans in small town Newfoundland in the 80s were hard to come by. I didn't have a second favorite. Never understood the concept - you have a favorite and the others. A second favorite team is like having a partially finished basement - it's finished, or it isn't. So there was no second favorite - but there was a most hated. I can't stand the Montreal Canadiens. I've cheered for the Flames to win a series twice in my life - and then recreated the shower scene from The Crying Game as soon as those series were over, but I didn't want Montreal to win.
A lot of the problems I had with the Habs of course stem from the abuse I took from my family and friends for being an Oilers fan. Now I can understand my older uncles growing up in the 60's in NFLD cheering for the best team in hockey, and the one other guy falling for Bobby Orr. But it's the friends that really stuck in my craw! How could someone my age look me in the eye and say "only 21 more to go" after the Oilers won their first cup? How? How can you cling to something that you've never experienced? I don't even like the Oilers fans "5-1" chirping with regards to Flamers - but at least I lived through that era and witnessed those teams. If my daughter said that to someone, after the initial swell of pride, I'd feel compelled to whack her upside the head. It's like someone arguing a K-Car is better than a Maserati because they sold more of them - it's insane. but it keeps coming back to the same thing with Habs fans - 24 Cups, 24 Cups. As bad as Leafs fans are, I've never, ever, had one throw out the "13 Cups" arguement - ever.
The Canadiens had the French player advantage over the rest of the league, they seemed to always have the officials in their back pockets, and they (not the Devils) were the originators of the score first and quit trying style of hockey that so many people hated - they were Minnesota before Minnesota was Wild so to speak.
So I will not apologize for the fact that I took a great amount of joy in last nights thumping of the Habs. I wish they would have made Price cry - turn him into a blubbering idiot right there on the blue ice. Take out his knee like Plekanic did to Grebs.
Put that in your meat sandwhich and smoke it!
11 comments:
You are a bigot. Just don't pass it onto your kid, OK?
Because I hate the Habs? Lucky I didn't write about the All Blacks:o)
Does the phrase "It's just a game" mean anything to you?
If it was just a game people wouldn't spend so much time obsessing over it.
The Canadiens had the French player advantage over the rest of the league
If you're saying what I think you're saying, you're very, very wrong.
Before the NHL draft was instituted in 1963, Montreal's success made it the favored destination of every French-speaking player. And even afterward, the league allowed Sam Pollock, the Canadiens GM to draft the rules of expansion, which allowed the Canadiens to hold onto players that likely would have been snapped up - he also put in a rule that allowed the Canadiens first claim on two players out of Quebec.
On the other had, during the Oilers dynasty, it seemed the league was constantly instituting rules to limit the dominance of the Oilers - eliminating 4on4 play for a period, introducing waivers on Euro players, etc.
What parts am I very,very wrong about?
First, you've got the timeline off. That rule was initially implemented in the late '30s and early '40s, when the Habs were the worst team in the League and the NHL took pity on them and enacted some extra measures to ensure the team survived in one of the oldest hockey cities in the country, and that the dedicated French team (a concept going back to the NHA days) was alive and kicking. They never got an NHL player out of it, however, and the program was scrapped when they started winning Stanley Cups again.
Second, you're wrong about the program helping them in the late '60s with one big exception. The last year of the program, 1969, was also the last year of the C-form. Prior to this, of course, any French player who could skate and chew gum at the same time was locked up, or so it seemed, but whether it was because the program was ending and teams were stopping the C-forms, or whether a couple of guys just slipped through the cracks, the Habs were able to knock it out of the park, relatively speaking, with Rejean Houle and three years of Marc Tardif. The only other player to come out of that arrangement is unnotable goalie Michel Plasse in 1968.
Robert Lefebvre has more on Eyes on the Prize, but I think that covers most of it. Myth busted.
Finally, you're wrong about the fact that the NHL did nothing but help the Habs during the Selke-Pollock era. The rule that requires a player to come out of the box after a power-play goal -- a fundamental change to the structure of special teams -- was instituted the off-season after Jean Beliveau scored a power-play hat trick in 44 seconds in the late '50s. They had arguably the best power-play in the history of the NHL, with Moore, Richard, Beliveau, Harvey, and Geoffrion, and it was neutered just as the Oilers were in the '80s. Bruce has a great post up on his site about the NHL's history of "clogging the ice," and that's part of it. (If you ask a real old Habs fan, they might have a few allegations to make about how the NHL treated the Rocket when he played, many of which appear in the movie of the same name, but I do wonder how much of that is accurate, and how much is simply Habs fans being hockey fans, and feeling put-upon when things don't go their way.)
Sure, Sam Pollock did get to game the system to help keep his farm clubs together in the big expansion draft, and he got the French reserve clause brought back, for whatever that was worth, but mostly he was just good at swindling other GMs and making smart draft choices. I mean, no sane GM of a last-place team would give up their first-round pick for some random veteran now, right? And yet, that's exactly what the California Golden Seals did in 1971, and that pick became Guy Lafleur. (Sort of explains why the Seals disappeared, doesn't it?) Nothing wrong with that, though: that's just a GM doing his job, as far as I'm concerned.
So are you arguing that the rule was in place but the Canadiens used it poorly?
Besides, my original statement that "they had the French player advantage" and the fact that I said "it was the preferred destination for French players" had nothing to do with these rules - just that being the lone French amongst 6 total teams gave them an advantage when it came to signing french stars, just like New York would have had an advantage with signing all those fantastic players born and raised in Brooklyn and Massapequa!!
BTW...this from the article you linked:
In 1963, the French Canadian rule was brought back for the Montreal Canadiens.
I guess my timeline wasn't that far off:o)
one more thing:
St. Louis Blues traded Keith Tkachuk to the Atlanta Thrashers for Glen Metropolit, a first and third-round draft pick in 2007 and a second-round draft pick in 2008.
At least the old guys traded for players that would be around for more than 20 games or so.
Of course you did say "sane GM" so I'll give you a pass on that one:o)
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