NHL Hockey More Than A Typical Sport For Many Fan

My 40th high school reunion occurred last Saturday in the Montreal suburb of Laval the same weekend the local Canadiens defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of their opening round playoff series. 

After spending Saturday night with former classmates eagerly anticipating the next day’s decisive road contest, I found myself at a nearby restaurant Sunday watching Game 7 up on a plethora of TV sets as the place went bonkers. It reminded me of my youth growing up in a hockey Mecca where winning the Stanley Cup seemed possible every spring and the greater meaning such triumph carried throughout the city and the province. 

Kraken fans already got a taste of playoff fever three years ago and it felt for much of this past season as if we’d be repeating that this spring, which, incidentally, would have prevented me from attending the high school reunion. Alas, that playoff berth did not occur.  

But last weekend’s experience got me thinking about why NHL fans by-and-large are often thought of as the most passionate of any throughout North American major professional sports. Sure, the Montreal experience of tens of thousands of fans gathered in the streets outside the Bell Centre is rather unique. But fan bases throughout the NHL are known to be fiercely loyal and engaged, be they supporters of “Original Six” franchises or relatively new ones such as the Kraken.

The history of it all initially seems the obvious explanation, given teams such as the Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and Chicago Blackhawks have been around 100 years or more.  

With that, the game’s tradition easily gets woven within the fabric of communities. In Montreal, given the French language culture and its minority status within North America, the pride of a team representing the community takes on an even more personal, somewhat religious identity.  

My first NHL game attended as a fan was at age 9 at the Montreal Forum. The Hockey Reference website shows it was on Feb. 20, 1978, as Montreal beat the same Buffalo team it’s now playing in the second round of the playoffs by a 4-2 score. 

Montreal lost only 10 games that season in winning their third of four straight championships. Future NHL coach Jacques Lemaire scored twice that night and was one of nine future Hall of Famers in the Canadiens lineup. The Sabres were pretty good as well, entering at 33-11-13 with a lineup that included two thirds of the fabled “French Connection” trio with Gilbert Perreault and Rene Robert – Rick Martin being out that night.  

Not bad for a kid’s first game. What I remembered most, besides the Forum’s shiny seats, was how different the game looked live, being able to watch the entire play unfold and hear the crisp sounds of passes hitting sticks or shots deflecting off the boards. 

I was also somewhat shocked at the sounds of visiting fans far behind me, a loud contingent of Sabres fans in the upper deck shouting, “Lets! Go! Buff-a-lo!” Which is, incidentally, the exact same thing I heard them chanting on TV this week when beating Montreal at home in Game 1. 

Like I said, NHL fan bases have histories. And their behaviors don’t change much from generation to generation. 

Our behaviors growing up were largely modeled on whatever the Canadiens were doing.  

In high school and college in the 1980s, you never went out to bars or restaurants before 11 p.m. on a Saturday night because the lone, weekly televised 8 p.m. game on CBC was still ongoing. As an adult in the 1990s, you didn’t book vacation in May because that’s when the Canadiens might be playing for the title.  

Everything in life seemed to revolve around the NHL. 

My mother’s friend and my longtime bank teller and later branch manager from age 10 onward, Bonnie, was the daughter of former Canadiens forward Ken Mosdell, who played for their five-Cup dynasty of the late 1950s. The mother of longtime Bruins and Rangers defenseman, Carol Vadnais, worked the reservations stand for years at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Our home in Laval was a few blocks from where local junior hockey star and New York Islanders Hall of Famer Mike Bossy lived. We even shared the same orthodontist. The first junior game I attended with standing room tickets at ice level, Mario Lemieux scored six goals and added five assists in a 16-4 win for our Laval Voisins. 

My mother took me to a preseason game where some third stringer named Patrick Roy was suiting up in goal for the Canadiens fresh out of junior hockey before he’d ever played even an AHL contest. My father took me to a game against the Winnipeg Jets where Guy Lafleur notched his 1,000th career point, then saluted the crowd from the bench during a standing ovation and had a photographer snap an iconic photo of him with a 15-year-old Mario Lemieux applauding right behind him as a fan in the stands. 

A few years later, my buddies and I paid our way into standing room for Game 7 of a second-round playoff series where I watched future Kraken coach Lane Lambert skating around as a member of the Quebec Nordiques. Lambert is still upset about the officiating in that series won by Montreal, and I can’t say I blame him.

The prior season, I was getting a Friday night tuxedo fitting for my next-day high school graduation – the class that just had the 40th reunion – when the entire store watched the Canadiens on TV as they closed out Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final against Calgary to go up 3-1. 

Two days later, as we recovered from the prior night’s graduation, my pals and I sat in my basement watching Montreal win its 23rd title and first in seven years. Days after that, a couple of us hopped on the back of an open-air Cadillac convertible carrying Canadiens centerman Bobby Smith in it and rode with him for an hour through downtown streets with more than a half-million people clogging the Stanley Cup parade to a mere crawl amid zero security. In the Caddy behind us, Canadiens defenseman Chris Chelios was drinking out of an open liquor bottle and saluting the crowd in a celebratory, frenzied environment never to be forgotten.

Montreal has won only one Cup since, which explains why you’ve got thousands of people now clogging downtown streets so hungry for another title in their lifetimes. 

Anyhow, these weren’t just on-ice victories for a local pro team. These were events tied to our very lives. Growing up there, you took some of the coolest stuff for granted. And you can hear similar stories about famous games and faces in places such as Toronto, or in American markets where the NHL existed long before live TV.  

It’s only since I’ve come to live in Seattle and met scores of NHL fans that I realize now how special I had it growing up. And how much I want to pass some of those experiences on to others here.

Still, other sports such as baseball also have hundred-year franchises and their own form of lore. What is it that makes the NHL so special? 

Well, I think the very nature of hockey. Unlike baseball, you’re allowed to hit people in a hockey game, even fight them without getting ejected. Even football and basketball, which have plenty of contact, will throw you out for fighting.  

Also, only basketball has the free-flowing feel of hockey’s end-to-end action with few stoppages. Again, minus the level of hockey hitting.  

The surrounding boards, also unique to hockey, literally trap players on the ice surface. There is no escaping, which lends a Roman gladiators feel to the whole thing where pressure and tension build until players and fans erupt. 

There really is no other sport quite like hockey for tradition, emotion and flat-out fury. And hockey’s rougher “edge”, I believe, is what puts so much edge into its fanbases. 

Couple that with the sport’s history, it’s a love story in the making. Kraken fans have already shown an uncanny loyalty to a franchise only five seasons old. And I want to help foster more of that, which is why I share tales of hockey history whenever possible. If you don’t respect the past, it’s tough to appreciate the present. 

Kraken fans will keep growing their own memories as years go by, whether it’s Jordan Eberle’s overtime goal in Game 4 against Colorado in the opening playoff round three years ago, or Brandon Montour last year scoring an OT winner in an NHL record four seconds against the Montreal team I grew up watching.  

The Kraken are my team now and it’s my job to make fans here feel and appreciate the NHL the way I did as a kid.  

Going back home last weekend was a reminder of that. That there is so much more to look forward to in this market as we continue to create and seek out our own memories within a sport where fans are least likely of any other to forget them.