The Past Is Always Present

Tradition spurs the Canadiens

In Montreal, it isn't springtime until the Canadiens win the Stanley Cup.

Let the breezes warm; bid the birds return. In the home of the only professional sports team to win championships across seven decades, spring should be a foregone conclusion. This year's Montreal Canadiens are an honor to the team's glorious past and far superior to the National Hockey League's present. As the Canadiens open their defense of the Stanley Cup this week, they are a solid choice to win their third straight Cup. During the past three seasons, the team has lost only 32 of 267 games, and this year it won 28 straight, breaking the old record by five games. No less an expert than Gordie Howe, the enduring right-winger for the New England Whalers, who has seen a full measure of hockey teams in his 50 years, deems the Canadiens beyond challenge: "Comparing the rest of the N.H.L. with Montreal is like comparing the World Hockey Association with the N.H.L. It's almost two different classes."

The Canadiens clearly rank among the finest teams in pro hockey history, the equal of the great Montreal clubs of the dynasty's past. This year's team was born in a spell of rare adversity. When the rough-'em-up Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup in 1974 and 1975, Montreal General Manager Sam Pollock and Coach Scotty Bowman rebuilt their club with canny trades for draft choices (the Canadiens had five first-round picks one year, leaving the other 17 teams to divvy up the rest). The results added size to the already considerable Montreal speed on ice. The current team can outskate anyone in the league and muscle the boards with the best of the backcheckers. Says Flyers' Coach Fred Shero: "A lot of people don't realize it, but the Canadiens are the toughest team in hockey. They don't fight a lot because they don't have to."

Led by Right Wing Guy Lafleur, the N.H.L.'s highest scorer for the past three years, All-Star Goaltender Ken Dryden, and the league's top defenseman, Larry Robinson, the Canadiens are solid on offense and defense. Lafleur, 26, is a scorer of such artistry that defenders often watch his goals with rueful admiration. Fast and agile, he swoops down the ice in an effortless rush, blond hair streaming as he feints, cuts, changes direction, and finally, with a deft, delicately tuned stroke, rifles the puck into the net or feeds a teammate with a radar-accurate pass. "He doesn't just score, he creates," says one fan.

In Quebec, Lafleur has succeeded Richard and Beliveau as a folk hero, the stuff of little boys' dreams. Shy and something of a loner, he is to Coach Bowman "a model of a superstar." Adds Bowman: "Guy never lets up, never tries to pull rank. And, for all his talent, he never stops trying to improve." While other players wait in line during shooting drills, Lafleur circles restlessly beside them, honing his turns, devising a new move, or flicking the occasional errant puck toward the goal. Says Teammate Rick Chartraw, the only Venezuelan-born player in the N.H.L.: "Guy even goofs off hard."

When Lafleur was the hottest 19-year-old prospect in amateur hockey, Montreal General Manager Pollock wheeled and dealed with the lowly Oakland Seals to get the draft rights that brought him to the Canadiens. No one was happier with Pollock's coup than Lafleur. "I watched the Canadiens play on television when I was a kid just five years old. I always dreamed of playing for them. When it is something you have wanted all your life and you walk into the dressing room for the first time as a Montreal Canadien, then you have come home."

The Canadiens' traditional hold on the hopes of young players is strengthened by an audience that is one of the most sophisticated and demanding in sport. Long accustomed to excellence, and aided by the unrelenting scrutiny of six daily newspapers, Forum fans cheer a skillful pass with a connoisseur's appreciation as well as roar for the flashy goal. Says Goaltender Dryden: "They know good hockey, and when they see bad hockey they let you know they know the difference. We play in a very demanding atmosphere."

As Montreal strives to add its 21st Stanley Cup banner to the crowded pantheon in the rafters above the ice, the players will be inspired by a remarkable shrine in the Forum. Along one wall of their locker room, brightly lit and imposing, are portraits of Montreal members of pro hockey's Hall of Fame--Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Jean Beliveau, George Vezina--24 of them in all. Above the determined faces are lines, in both French and English, from John McCrae: "To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high." In 1976, Center Doug Risebrough stood beneath the gallery after Montreal clinched the Cup and shouted: "Hey, you up there! We did it too!" That, says Dryden, is the key to the Canadiens' success: "No matter how great the past, there is always the present, the living example. Richard to Beliveau to Lafleur. Each generation of Canadiens plays with someone who will do it too, someone whose portrait will be on that wall when his career is done."

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