There's a certain sense of--call it schadenfreude, I suppose--that this lifelong Maple Leafs fan gets when observing the mess in Montreal.
Yes, this from the man who believes schadenfreude--joy at another's pain--vies with jealousy (pain at another's joy) to be the most self-destructive emotion possible. Guilty as charged...all part of being a sports fan, I guess.
That's the downside of fandom. A sports fan--the word is, of course, short for 'fanatic' (which in turn comes from the Latin for 'insanely but divinely inspired')--feels a totally irrational depression when his team loses, a just as irrational joy when her team wins, and a completely indefensible hatred for the opposition. There's something primitive and tribal about being a fan, and I don't mean primitive as in rustic. I mean primitive as in barbaric.
Letting my inner barbarian loose for three hours at a time can be tremendously satisfying. I try to temper him by widening my scope: yes, I am a Leafs fan, but I can recognize and appreciate good hockey no matter who plays it. (Though I hate to admit when a Philadelphia Flyer does anything laudable at all.) I try very hard not to view 'my' team through blue and white glasses, and to maintain something of an even keel through thick and thin.
But Eva can attest that I fail at that last with regularity: I'll snap the TV off in disgust when the Leafs are playing like crap, only to snap it back on in five or ten minutes. When the Red Wings scored last night and a contingent of their fans roared, I let loose with a volley of expletives--"get the eff out of our building" was the mildest of them. Somewhere inside there's my normal, mild-mannered self observing this behaviour with alarm. Fans of any team are welcome in any building, he says, reasonably. Shut up, says Mr. Barbarian. The Air Canada Center is the most expensive place in the NHL to watch a game and it should bloody well be reserved for Leaf fans. Rich Red Wing fans can either go to whatever their building is called these days...or they can blow me.
(Of course, at least half of the Air Canada Center is actually reserved for suited types who are neck-deep in their cellphones to the point they don't even notice, or care, that there's a hockey game going on. Those people piss off the barbarian and the meek man both.)
What's unfolding in Montreal is interesting and a little disquieting,
For non-hockey fans, the Canadiens--called les Habitants, or Habs for short--are the creme de la creme, historically, of the NHL. They've won almost twice as many Stanley Cups as the next-best team (which just happens to be the Toronto Maple Leafs). Their fans are beyond rabid: hockey in Quebec is a sacrament. Many of the Habs fans I know love to lord it over fans of other teams (probably justified says mild-mannered me; buncha snoots oughta have their knocks blocked off says the barbarian).
They've fallen on hard times--for them, at least. Next year will mark their twentieth year without a Cup win (and we won't mention here that the Leafs haven't won since 1967). That said, they've had considerably more playoff success than many other teams over their drought.
After something of a surprise playoff appearance for the Habs last season, they were expected to show, at a minimum, the same compete level this year. Hasn't happened. The Canadiens, as of this writing, rank 24th in a 30 team league, eight spots out of the playoffs and nine slots behind the Maple Leafs (ha-ha). Like many teams not living up to expectations, they've fired their coach, respected hockey journeyman Jacques Martin. He was replaced by Randy Cunneyworth, formerly an assistant coach of the Atlanta Thrashers.
Randy Cunneyworth is an anglophone. This is the culture he finds himself in.
There was a protest last night at the Habs-Lightning tilt (won, incidentally, by Montreal). There were several grievances aired besides the fact that the head coach of les Glorieux does not parle la belle langue. Among them: there's too much English music played at the Bell Centre (sorry: la centre Bell); the announcements are made in both languages (quelle horreur!), and the team has too few francophone players.
It should be noted here that the last unilingual anglophone coach of the Habs won a Cup with them in 1970-71...but was fired nonetheless because he couldn't speak French. The Habs have won sixteen of their 24 Cups guided by anglophone coaches. It seems patently obvious here that this controversy isn't about winning.
I feel bad for Cunneyworth. This is a team, remember, that has fired a head coach for not speaking French, even though the team won a championship. They've come right out and named Cunneyworth the "interim" coach...and his promises to learn French are clearly not good enough. Learn French? Les pures laines don't LEARN French, they are French, and to hell with you English types! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
This is a reminder that people can be fanatical about things much more serious than sports teams. And that fanatics, having only a single track for their mind to run on, are wearisome by definition. Also, on occasion, dangerous. Quebec rejected the Bloc Quebecois last election and found themselves high and dry as the Harper majority took hold. I predicted then that nothing good would come of that, and I'll hold myself to that prediction. I think nationalism is starting to stir again in Quebec. For the sake of my country, I hope I am wrong.
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