By Rick Stephens, Editor-in-Chief, All Habs Hockey Magazine
MONTREAL, QC. — Every new sports season is filled with hope. Past pain is quickly left behind, although not quite forgotten. When George Parros laid motionless, blood dripping on the Bell Centre ice, many fans instantly recalled the images of Lars Eller just five months earlier. The Canadiens won just one more game after the Eller incident quickly putting an end to their 2012-13 season and leaving fans with a bitter taste.
As hard as it was for Canadiens supporters to accept, given the second-place finish in the Eastern conference, the season could have ended worse. Imagine if their hated rival, the Boston Bruins had won the Stanley Cup? The citizenry of Montreal had become instant, albeit temporary, Blackhawks fans.
Chicago’s championship was celebrated province-wide but I imagine that no one was happier in this area with the Blackhawks win than the Canadiens David Desharnais. You could say that it helped with his job security.
The Hawks win? Desharnais? His job, you say? How does that all piece together?
Let’s come back to that a bit later.
Prior to their Cup win in 2011, the Bruins were riding a 39-year drought, a fact often-quoted gleefully by Habs fans. A second parade in three years would have been too much to bear. Pressure would have increased exponentially on Canadiens ownership to abandon their current business model to make a Stanley Cup win a priority.
But isn’t winning a Cup the goal for every team in the NHL? The answer may be a bit more complicated than that.
After the dismal 2011-12 season, Canadiens team president Geoff Molson recognized that the masses were angry and ready to abandon a sinking ship. In a season-ending news conference, Molson announced the firing of GM Pierre Gauthier who had presided over some of the darkest days in franchise history. Molson was succinct in capturing the mood of supporters of the team, “We need to remember that our fans want us to win, period.”
Molson went further, “Just qualifying for the playoffs cannot be our goal or our standard. Not for our team, not for this organization. This organization going forward must set its sights on competing for the game’s ultimate prize every season. No lesser standard should be accepted. Our fans and our tradition demand nothing less than this.”
The goal seemed clear enough. But recognizing what fans demanded and satisfying company shareholders are often two separate things. For the time being, Molson stopped the bleeding with the fanbase by saying the things they desperately wanted to hear.
But earlier that season, hockey decisions clashed with business decisions. After the firing of head coach Jacques Martin in December 2011, the Canadiens made a hockey decision naming Randy Cunneyworth as their interim head coach. A qualified, experienced assistant coach temporarily taking over the reins of the team wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in most sports towns, but things are different in Montreal.
After a few days of absorbing pressure from a small number of politicians and ultra-nationalist groups, the Canadiens took the unprecedented move of apologizing for Cunneyworth’s promotion effectively undermining his credibility with fans and, most damaging, with the players. One of the radical groups, Imperatif Francais, had urged a boycott of all Molson products.
The remainder of the hockey season could be written off, the price to be paid for protecting the corporate brand.
At season’s end, Molson ensured that the same ‘mistake’ would not be made again. The new general manager and head coach fit the criteria of the fringe groups and the marketing department. That said, they were also seasoned hockey people. Yes, interests are not always mutually exclusive.
But the subsequent appointments in the hockey operations department were convenient for the marketing folks to say the least: Jodoin, Daigneault, Gallant, Waite, Lapointe, Brisebois, Lefebvre, Dufresne, Lebeau, Riendeau. Some arrived with little experience or large gaps in their skill set for the positions hired but they fit the desired narrative.
Is this purely coincidence? Does it just so happen that the very best minds in all of hockey grew up in our own backyard? Or was there a corporate directive that read that the team’s business interests are better served by delivering a familiar product to the Quebec market even if it sometimes ran counter to principles of merit?
To attempt to answer those questions we look to Kevin Gilmore, the Canadiens’ Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. In his role, Gilmore is responsible for executing the corporate philosophy and developing the business model for the organization. What is his secret for ensuring that the Bell Centre is filled with 21,273 passionate fans for each game?
As we recall, this type of success wasn’t always the case. There were some very lean years for the Canadiens after their move from the Montreal Forum.
“Rational people don’t spend the money they spend on season tickets.”
At an IIHF Conference in Barcelona last year, Gillmore said the following, “We deal with very emotional human beings. Rational people don’t spend the money they spend on season tickets. They are fans, not spectators, who are detached. We are in the business of selling emotions, of selling passion. It’s about creating a strong emotional bond.”
Forget the analytics. Those advanced stats comparisons are meaningless here. The Canadiens want to hook you emotionally.
A four-year contract for the afore-mentioned Desharnais? That’s irrational! Yes, exactly. But, it’s emotional.
Could Gilmore really have been speaking about the on-ice product when describing the approach of the organization? If there was any doubt, Gilmore cleared up the confusion with this statement, saying “It is different from selling a product based on quality.”
Emotion trumps quality.
The notion that sports is one of the last meritocracies left in Western society doesn’t seem to apply in Montreal. And for those who contend that this is a language issue, I suggest that it is deeper. It’s about image and identity.
As No. 51 takes the Bell Centre ice, the synapses fire and memories of Yvan Cournoyer, Jacques Lemaire and Guy Lafleur come flooding back. Merchandise is purchased, seasons tickets are renewed and the combined efforts of the Canadiens marketing/hockey operations staff turn to gold.
David Desharnais has sub-average skating skills, couldn’t break a pane of glass with his shot, and doesn’t have the size, strength or stability on his skates to compete for the puck. As Gilmore said, it’s not rational, but this is the Canadiens formula for success.
When Nashville GM David Poile came looking for Hal Gill in February of 2012, the Canadiens were willing to accept a lesser draft pick than was offered on the condition that Blake Geoffrion was included in the trade. Prior to his career-ending injury, Geoffrion was a marginal NHL prospect but his lineage allowed the organization to market him as a fourth-generation Canadien.
Given that the model does not rely on logic, sometimes the illusion can be perpetuated by the sound of the name even if the birthplace isn’t what the doctor ordered. Enter Gallant, Bourque and Beaulieu.
And when Marc Bergevin went shopping during free agency, what did his ‘must-have’ list look like after the Habs got tossed around like ragdolls in their playoff series with the Senators?
- 35-year-old forward
- 5’9″, 174 lbs.
- A six goal season in 2012-13
Unlikely. Yet Daniel Briere has become the poster boy/elder stateman of the Canadiens. Featured stories. Photoshoots. Prime real estate on the website. And he is the player who accepted the torch from Guy Lafleur during the Habs opening ceremonies.
But this has to be a hockey decision, isn’t it? This is the same Danny Briere who could not crack the top line of the 20th place team in the league last year in Philadelphia. In fact, Briere played so poorly his team executed one of their compliance buyouts to get rid of him.
Like Tomas Kaberle.
And Scott Gomez. Briere had a Gomez-like season tallying just one more point than the former Canadien did last year and had a pitiful minus-13 rating.
But is Briere helping to fill the seats in the Bell Centre? My guess is yes, indeed.
How long can this business model work? When does it start to break down? When do fans tire of “creating a strong emotional bond” with the past?
That’s hard to say. But I have a feeling that one of the factors is the success of the Habs’ two biggest competitors. One of the reasons that the Canadiens organization could engage in their recent profitable dalliance is due to the sheer ineptness (prior to 2011) of their most heated rivals, the Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Boston won a recent Stanley Cup (and came close to a second) and the Maple Leafs are making strides to end their own championship drought (since 1967), the longest active one in the NHL.
“We need to remember that our fans want us to win, period.” Mr. Molson may have been telling fans what they wanted to hear when he spoke those words, but they may begin to become true for a greater number of supporters.
Habs fans should ask themselves: When do the memories of the 24 Cups of the past fade to the point where my primary focus turns towards the next Cup?
That’s rational.