Losing to Winners: Me versus the Montreal Canadiens

One Christmas, the Wood family received a table hockey set. It took hours to construct, the half-foot long stickers of the 21 NHL teams pasted on each side were slanted, and the miniature scoreboard attached on top soon fell off and disappeared within a matter of weeks. The best part about the construction was peeling the stickers of the smiling, sparkly toothed, helmet-less, hockey players, attaching the stickers to the plastic wafers, and sticking them onto the metal pegs that danced in their saw-cut groves. Once pucks when behind the net, they stayed there until you called a faceoff next to the mask-less, smiling goalkeeper. The puck would also fly out of the arena causing another stoppage, and another faceoff at center 'ice'.

As months and years passed, I took over that table hockey set. I would broadcast games, and imagine NHLers were playing for the Stanley Cup every night on my kitchen table. In the imagination, however, there was one hindrance: The teams of stickers featured two teams from the same country, two teams with long and storied histories, and while one was my favourite the other was a winner. That favourite team was the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the winning team was the Montreal Canadiens.

Whenever I played table hockey with my older sister, two things always happened:

1. She was always Montreal.
2. She always won.

It was "death and taxes" to me, and as her center scored goal after goal against my "Johnny Bower", and then "Felix Potvin" who played without a mask, I could never figure out why my Leafs were always so...bad! The history books I read, as I grew in interest for the game of hockey, told a similar story in the list of Stanley Cup Champions printed near the back of those books. The Toronto Maple Leafs were winners, and so was Montreal; I liked knowing the Leafs were a good team, and won plenty of Stanley Cups in their history. Then, however, the words "Toronto Maple Leafs" stopped appearing in the column of more recent winners. Words like "Boston Bruins", "Philadelphia Flyers", "New York Islanders", and "Edmonton Oilers" filled the column of Cup champions. However, two words persisted and remained a fixture on that list: Those "Montreal Canadiens".

I wasn't losing to my sister Grace-Anne, I was losing the puck to Larry Robinson, who passed to Jean Beliveau as he breezed over the line. He would pass to Rocket Richard as he blazed down the wing with that trademark glare, and make an unbelievable pass to Guy Lafleur, who won score before my plastic Leaf players could do anything - except smile -_-. On the odd offensive chance, I would be stonewalled by Patrick Roy one game, Jacques Plante the next game, maybe Georges Vezina the week after! My vision of a two-inch tall plastic version of Ken Dryden standing over his goal stick on the table hockey set before me also angered me to no end. Perhaps Les Habs' success on the ice reached my table hockey set as well? I didn't know for sure, because I always played as the Leafs, and I could never turn my back on my team.


With a new computer came NHL 97 by EA Sports, and I could play as any team and any player in any type of game I desired. Of course, the memories of that old table hockey set still linger whenever those Montreal Canadiens do something related to victory, or my Canadiens-loving friends remind me that their most recent Cup Memories are preserved on colour film, and not on black-and-white 8mm reels (they include cigarette commercials! o_O). As I get older, I look for any reason to get excited about my Leafs; any victory is the victory of me. I was that loser by the water cooler at the paint store, where I worked for eight years, and would get hit day after day by my Habs-loving co-worker about how my Leafs stink (Hi Michael). Younger kids in my church, who love the Canadiens, can relive the 1993 Stanley Cup moments on DVD and Blu-Ray discs, unfortunately. Over the years, however, the hatred I should feel for Les Habitants developed into acceptance and respect.


I don't know the moment it happened, but as the Leafs continued to lose and the Canadiens continued to find victory in improbable situations I discovered I liked them, and had brief moments where I cheered for them (Blasphemy, I know). In time, I found a new team to loathe and despise: The Scum from Ottawa with their pink satin and white lace jerseys. A collection of low-blow all-stars, who think 2-on-1 fights and powerplays are the only times they can score, supported by former Leaf fans that grew impatient with the losing but were too proud to join the ranks of "Les Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge". Evil Alfie running Darcy Tucker, the most gentlemanly player in the game, from behind and not getting a penalty because the Scum paid off the referees like they always do...! To them I say: 1927.

Oops, tangent...where was I? Oh yea, Canadiens.

In the opening NHL regular season game in Toronto, my Leafs defeated the visiting Montreal Canadiens 2-0 at the Air Canada Center. The victory did not set off a firestorm of street dancing, confetti tossing, and the Cup parading down Yonge Street Torontonians usually do after every win, but this does add another chapter to the already storied history between these two great teams in the storied history of Canada. It also adds give me bragging rights for at least one hour to all my friends who support the Canadiens; too bad they can't see me gloating behind all their Stanley Cup banners :(