There Is Quit to This Team

You have to thank St-Patrick's festivities for giving Montreal the only real downtown celebration this city will see this spring. Hours after one of the emptiest performances the Habs displayed this season, fans eagerly traded the bleu-blanc-rouge gear for vert-vert-vert cheer. No mournful tears at McKibbins Irish Pub yesterday, one of the best places to take in the city's beat on this particular Sunday. My nod to "Alex" the gigantic doorman for allowing this 30-something guy the pleasure to bypass the lines he used to stand in when he was 16,er...18.

Anyone guilty of believing that the Canadiens' tilt against the Maple Leafs could afford them an opportunity to serve notice on the rest of the Conference that a surge was on the horizon can now sit back and ponder.

Any Habs' hopeful caught thinking that a Saturday night matchup in Montreal, viewed nation-wide, in the hyper-charged setting that always accompanies the Leafs to Montreal, would send the team's pulse throbbing with excitement and motivation, is left to believe that reality refuses to acquiesce to the pull of this dramatic script.

You have to wonder. Not that the Habs-Leafs games today need to mean as much as they once did in view of the fact Toronto's struggles have left them out of the playoff equation for a few years now. But this is a rivalry that means something and on most nights serves as a compelling enough reminder, at least to Toronto, that it should bring the best out of the players.

Habs-Leafs on Saturday night with 11 games remaining in the regular season and Montreal a single point out of a playoff spot in this Centennial year?

The Habs weren't in the mood.

To steal a page from Thomas Friedman, if I had to write a book about the team's Centennial, I'd call it The Habs Are Flat. It's impossibly confusing to understand why.

I have tremendous difficulty in giving any credence to the argument that says the huge pressure to win leaves Montreal off the destination list for today's players. That assessment, in my view, is easily dispelled by Ken Dryden's intuitive insight on what it means to play in Montreal. Dryden says that Montreal actually provided one of the easiest platforms to play professional hockey because of the enormous natural advantage it has to offer; knowledge of the sport, love for the athletes, a deep understanding of the cultural significance the Canadiens have on this city. Win here and you may come as high as it may emotionally get to feel what it's like to be on top of the world.

But it does require winning. Wanting to win. Loving to win. Commitment to winning. It's about making winning a lifestyle. There was nothing of the sort on display at the Bell Centre on Saturday night, save of course for Maxim Lapierre, Guillaume Latendresse and Tom Kostopoulos.

What is disheartening is the candid interview Georges Laraque gave to the media yesterday in which he confided that he spoke to the players about the importance of winning. It sounds like the right angle for a pep-talk, but the direction Laraque chose is startling. Ten games, he said, ten games, you unrestricted free-agents to play out your contracts and vie for negotiating power on your next one. You can even assume he said "Look, if you want to get out of here and make some good money elsewhere, you have 10 games to show what you're made of."

Not the speech you would expect with 10 crucial games remaining in the Centennial season, not the one you would center your Habs documentary around. Do it for the money guys, do it for your contracts. Don't quit now, because what you're doing is quitting on your own pockets.

It's actually quite disgusting to hear, this, while the entire city has been holding a collective breath for a year, waiting for its local heroes to give it the cathartic release only this type of fan base can enjoy.

Laraque couldn't appeal to them on a passionate level, on a cultural level. He couldn't say "hey guys, that's the CH on your sweaters and you need to tap into what that means to you".

Because it's now obvious that to many of these players it means absolutely nothing. At this point of the season, team chemistry should be at its highest. You know your teammates, you care for them, and you play for one another. You don't want to let anyone down and you'll do whatever is physically possible to succeed. It's not even supposed to be a concerted effort. At this point you're in automatic mode, with the desire burning so feverishly that it's really about containing the emotion and channeling it with the proper methods.

There was nothing to channel on Saturday. There's been nothing to contain in several weeks. Most players seem to have quietly responded to their internal mantras, "let's get this over with as soon as possible."

The fans are left with this unfortunate reality. It took 100 years to make the last ten games of the season feel like a bloody eternity.