The truth is, last night's game was one of the Canadien's most impressive team efforts this season, taking nothing away from the Chicago Blackhawks, who also put on a remarkable display of skill and effort. It was the net-minders who stole the show, with Montreal native Corey Crawford bringing everything he had to the game, and Carey Price somehow bringing that much more.
There was a lot at stake for the Stanley Cup Champion Blackhawks, struggling to make the playoffs, and the Canadiens trying to prove that last year's post-season run was not an enigma.
This is just part of the back story in what turned out to be a very entertaining hockey game. Yet thus far I have written more in this blog than anything that appeared on TSN's NHL webpage last night. In fact, I already surpassed their coverage by the time I had written "Habs fans can be forgiven..."
Despite what some people down the 401 might think, Canadiens fans generally don't mope around with a chip on their shoulder. They are much harsher toward their own team than with their rivals. Nonetheless, there's always been a sense that respect for the Habs in Toronto-based media is grudging at best.
What truly exposed the negative bias was something that should have united fans and the league, the now infamous hit on Max Pacioretty by Zdeno Chara. It should be noted that to a man, all of TSN's Hockey Insiders, and many other analysts and players believed that Chara should have been suspended; if anything for not taking everything he should have learned in his 13 years in the NHL to back off a dangerous play. The league not only did nothing, it went as far as to chide the Canadiens organization for what it perceived as an exaggeration of fact. This left Don Cherry, who's intelligence and charm have decades exceeded their expiration date, to blame the Habs organization and the stanshion for being at fault and Chara's negligence consigned to the annals of great 'hockey plays.'
League officials, it seems, can barely hide their contempt for the team, as evidenced by Colin Campbell's eye rolling treatment of La Presse reporter Richard Labbé. When Labbé questioned the league's inaction on Chara, Campbell all but concluded Pacioretty deserved a face full of stanshion because of his questionable hit on the New York Islanders' Mark Eaton earlier in the year. So much for impartial.
Recently, Team 990 radio host Mitch Melnick noted an interesting omission in one of the NHL's latest 'History Will Be Made' television ads. The commercial, titled simply 'Mess,' is a collection of film footage from decades of Stanley Cup celebrations, replete with flying sticks, gloves, ticker tape parades and spilling champagne. Several teams are represented in the video, most of them American, and none of them include the Habs. The Canadiens have enjoyed the majority of those celebrations (24 of the 94 times it has been awarded).
Even the encyclopedic mind of Pierre McGuire is not immune to reserving his harshest criticisms for the Canadiens organization. As an astute analyst of the game of hockey, Pierre is generally fair and honest when talking about the Habs on local radio. Put him under the studio lights at TSN headquarters and Dr. Hyde emerges, slamming the Habs front office while regularly giving the Leaf's Brian Burke a hall pass.
Further to the head-scratching treatment of the National Hockey League's most successful franchise (that is a fact, not fan interpretation) was last night's inexplicable praise for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In case you haven't heard this one before, the team began the year with great promise before coming apart at the seams as the season progressed. They went on to make a desperate end-of-season run for the last playoff spot, and (stop me if you've heard this before) fell short. The NHL's version of the Dallas Cowboys had praise heaped upon them from Sportsnet's Hockey Central analysts last night for their 'courageous' season-ending desperation, topped off with a delightfully rosy prognosis for next season.
Really? Why exactly should anyone in Leaf nation be celebrating? A season that began with such promise was squandered by poor play, and let's be honest, bad coaching. If I were a fan I'd be thinking that this is worse than deja-vu, it's a nightmare. How could you not wonder aloud why the largest market in professional hockey, and perhaps the largest fan base, can't do anything better than falling a few point short of a playoff birth for the sixth consecutive time?
Yet somehow it makes perfect sense to give the Leafs top coverage.
Am I exaggerating? I invite you to check out both TSN and Sportsnet's NHL pages today, and tell me who dominates the headlines.
Personally, I don't have time for conspiracy theories. Usually they are based on little fact and appeal to an audience ready and willing to cling on to what little information fits their world view.
Besides, Habs fans really shouldn't care. The team's track record speaks for itself. Regardless of how far anyone might think the team will go this year, once again the Habs made the post-season. If my numbers serve me correctly that would be a league-leading 78 playoff appearances.
Still, you have to wonder what a team has to do to get some respect from the league and the media.
