Senators HumourMaybe There's A Rivalry Here After All For The Habs

Tobalev astutely pointed out that games with Ottawa are tight matches no matter what now. No matter how good we appear to be, no matter how bad a slump we're in, no matter how much Ottawa is looking for that lottery place.

In the preview for the game, both Sens Chirp and I wondered out loud about the rivalry between these two teams. In the analysis, it seems there is one in its infancy, but by and large Montreal fans have never had a reason to bother with Ottawa (either far too good or far too poor). The time for rivalry looked ripe before the inexplicable implosion in our capital city. Since then, there's been little to despise.

But wait, I think I'm finding some reasons...

1) Senators fans like this guy:

That Olé chant is the homo anthem. Never heard anything so queer in my life.

Or this guy:

That ole ole ole stupid song is making me think Leafs fans are less annoying, and that's saying something.

Both posters on some Sens blogs after the game. Another guy who was at the game, who also detests our cheers, claimed he tried to drown out Ole Ole Ole with the ever-original and ubiquitous Go Sens Go.

This isn't the first wrath the Ole cheer has been showered with. Boston and Toronto fans also hate it, for it is so European. Oh please let us never need prompts from the scoreboards to cheer for our team like the Go ____ Go crew...

What's more, i don't think the Sens really hold the high ground when it comes to musically supporting their heroes. Both the theme tune (drum then trumpet, wait for it in the video) and Ray Emery's rap below are prime examples:





2) No Habs No!
Cleverly based on the only cheer they know, this Sens blogger has started a campaign to donate $1 to every player across the league who can score a GW goal against the Habs.

I'll be honest, I'm posting this bit because it is worth seeing. It is clever, funny and gives a good pretense to express hatred of another team. We'd be patting ourselves on the back too if we had come up with the Wicked Loser Bruins fund too.

It is so well established with a Facebook group, a section of the SensArmy blog, merchandise and coverage on one of the most popular hockey blogs around.


It's clear that hating this fan will be easier as he's already invested so much energy into the belligerence.


3) Car flags
They infected us. Somehow the Sens and their flag-waving fans infiltrated Montreal's best and brightest – now we have to look at flags everywhere, ugh...


I think it's safe to say there's a seed of something to go on here. Be sure the next time you see a Rev Up The Red flag or a No Habs No! T-shirt, to break into a hearty chorus of Ole Ole Ole, it's fun to watch them melt to the tune...

Someone Save Them From Us

Winning the Stanley Cup will take a team at least 98 games, at most 110. We're talking about 100 hours of competitive hockey, 10,000 or so shifts, maybe 3,000 shots for and against.

To earn the right to lift it at the end of all that is even more difficult, a team must win at least 56 of those games, while probably getting to the end of regulation or ahead or even in 70 or more.

In other words, this Stanley Cup thing is not a sprint.

When I was younger, I used to be a runner and a swimmer. I specialised (in both sports) in longer events - all races that took about two to four odd minutes. When you race these kind of races, you quickly learn two things:

1. You cannot go all-out the whole race, sprinting runs out at a minute or sooner
2. Going in with a strategic plan is vitally important


I see the race to the Stanley Cup in those terms sometimes. First, you have the heats (regular season) and the finals (playoffs). Secondly, results show that every year the thing that matters most is finishing strong - and it doesn't matter who leads after the first, second or third laps. All that is forgotten when the tape is broken or the wall is reached.

In the NHL, it is common and, well strategically sound, for teams to cruise for much of the season, winning games with little effort and without much fuss. After all, for 6 months all that matters is that you secure a place in the playoffs. Nothing else. Beat half the teams in the league, and you're there. Last year, we harped on about this (with the 96 point goal) and I still stand by it - set a points goal, achieve it, then worry about the finals.

In other sports, competitors that exert themselves too much in the heats are at a disadvantage, and it is the competitors that can "cruise" into the final that hold the cards. There is something to be said for good lanes (just like good playoff match-ups), but the best still get a decent lane every time, even on half efforts. The parallel is true in the NHL, teams with some kind of strategic plan for the season in mind often progress well in the playoffs.


If it were up to the fans

Many a fan in Montreal will grasp this. Many will proclaim saving energy for the playoffs as gospel truth. The problem seems to be that once we all cross into the Bell Centre, no matter what tie of year, this philosophy and strategy we most often agree would be best to meet our ultimate goal, is completely tossed out the window. If it were up to some of us, 82 wins and 4 playoff series. When we get in that building - it's win, win, win; score, score, score; sprint, sprint, sprint for every minute of every shift in every game.


Well, no Cup recently, no conference finals in ages. It makes me think, is this one of the problems? Well have a look at these quotes and stories from last night:

Fancois Gagnon leads with "Like in the playoffs"

Mike Boone wrote 5 or 6 posts during the exhibition game, as did Gagnon for that matter.

Plekanec had this to say (English from French from English):

"Nowhere but Montreal could a game end like it did tonight in what is the exhibition season."

Lapierre echoed those sentiments:

"It was as loud as if we had won a playoff game in overtime"

A lot of coverage for a game that counts for nothing in two weeks time. I have to admit, I used to be immensely proud of the fact that Montreal fans could get so worked up for a game against Ottawa B, even after years of seeing teams beat others in the exhibition season and then getting clobbered 3 night later when the real line-ups meet.

But now, I tend to see everything through the guise of the road to the Cup. I guess I'm tired of waiting. In that respect, expectation, encouragement at that level, performance - all of it - it can't be sustained. Not when the teams you are trying to beat cruise through 5 months anonymously before first exerting some effort in April.

I'm not sure myself, and I'm certain someone like Dave Stubbs, Robert L, Dennis Kane, or other knowledgeable readers could confirm, that when the Canadiens were winning Cups, the exhibition games were not this crazy. I am thinking that every year as our desperation creeps ever further that we lose a bit of perspective and control over our emotions and mistake an exhibition win for a meaningful result.

When I was competing, I would often finish a race and tell someone who was very kindly and sincerely cheering their heart out for me on the first lap in the heats to save it for the last length or the finals please. In swimming especially, cheering can give a competitor an idea that they are either right ahead of or right behind someone and need to step up the pace, which is important because of all the blind spots. If the cheering is at its most intense right from the blocks, then any ramping up becomes impossible, any warnings to gear up, ineffectual.

I think the same must be true of a hockey team in a 100 game race. Shouldn't the cheering during Game 5 of the second knockout series be louder. It should if we want a reaction to our roars. I mean everyone talks about the mythical "seventh man", and how at the Bell Centre, it is a constant contributor. I think that if from exhibition game 4 to regular season game 51 to Stanley Cup playoffs game 14 the intensity never changes, there will be desensitization. The crowd becomes the jackhammer outside your front window day after day, it becomes your loud buzzing fridge - it is background noise that is no longer remarkable.

If the Canadiens were the Usain Bolts or the Michael Phelps of their sport, where no matter what they did, they would win, then the argument that cheering too enthusiastically right now would be meaningless. the fact is they are not. For the most part, the NHL could be a dead heat. There are at least 12 teams that could win the Cup if we look now. 12 different ones when we look in April. Come June, there are usually 2 that can't be separated from one another very easily. No, the Canadiens need to be wary of teams that come one or two positions behind them in the standings without trying in the last games of the season, whose players didn't spend all their energy in March. Last year could teach us that much.

As fans, we need to play our part. We need to hold the power to be remarkable. We need to have the ace up the sleeve that helps inject extra energy when it is most needed. To do that, I think we have to learn to hold it back, learn that this is two long sprints, with heats and finals. We need someone to save us from ourselves.

The DeciBell Centre

What made me read an email in my junkbox from Eklund, I'm not sure. Maybe it's the fact he's an unabashed Philly supporter, even through the worst of their delinquencies in the corners and into the boards.

I suppose I wanted to see what ridiculous things he might say about luck and misfortune. He did have a bit of Philly bias, particularly his fix that someone pouring beer on Mike Richards was a huge event. (Did anyone in Montreal even notice? we were busy winning a hockey game...). But, on the whole his note was addressing his love for Montreal and the awe he felt when in the Bell Centre - particularly at how loud it can be:

I was warned by the talented Eric Engels to bring earplugs, but of course I ignored him...A bit of a mistake there.

The crowd is very loud, but a different kind of loud. In cities like Nashville and Washington it is a "party" kind of loud. Here is a loudness from absolute JOY. In a similar way, the quiets when the Habs were down 2-0 were really quiet. not just a sad quiet, but a "concerned" quiet. There is so much passion here. SO much desire to win that these fans aren't having a good time if the Habs are losing. They are devastated in fact.

And then when the Habs tied it and won it in Overtime, the party on the street was louder than I had ever seen following a NON CUP CLINCHING Game. We made a joke about it..."Geez, Only 11 more wins to go!" but please understand that joke is not saying, "these fans are ridiculous to be partying like this" it simply saying, "I can only begin to imagine this place with 10,9,8,7...wins to go.

It made me think of things I have heard in the past and how people who not been there cannot possibly understand what the atmosphere is like when the Montreal crowd gets going.

This all sounds like hyperbole, but believe me it isn't. I can think of three occasions in particular at which I have been in attendance where I have burned out my vocal chords and had ringing in my ears for days following the event (courtesy of the crowd). Montreal does loud like no other North American city, we've upgraded on loud to Loud 2.0:

1) The game that Saku returned.
There's not much point trying to describe it, other than to say that the ovation could have gone another 45 minutes were the NHL not so adamant about playing a game that night.



2) Game 4, Round 1, 2002.
Not so much in excitement, but in disgust - the building was raucous following the despicable hit from McLaren on M. Zed. The range went from claims for penalty to the loudest boos I've ever heard to Go Habs Go.

3) Concert extraordinaire: Arcade Fire & U2.
Some people who know a little bit about loud stood in front of us that night, looked at each other and were dumbfounded. The Montreal crowd consistently astonished Bono and the band. Bono expressed it best when he said: "This is impossible."

(Here's my audio from that night. Blogger forces me to make a video. Connaisseurs (Tobes and Stevens) will recognise the mismatch of picture and audio - sorry boys)



Big game tonight. If you're going to be in the building, blow that "anonymous" blogger Dwayne's ears off...