Still hard to understand.

I can tell you that media pressure was always very intense and fan interest was huge. For example, downtown Montreal was basically dead Satrday night until after the hockey game. Then it ws alive until 3-4am.

And it sure was the dream of every Quebec kid to play on the Forum ice, for the Habs.

And at work, the day after every game there were heated discussions about almost every play. Especially after a loss by the Habs.

Could the real problem be that they have succeeded in selling virtually all seats as season tickets, mostly to corporations? That's the real problem here, in Toronto.

I do understand its expensive to run a GOOD team these days. But in the Montreal I remember, no team would be considered better than an "average" team. Times sure have changed.


>I'm not a sociologist, but I guess that the fact that the Habs is now the only professional team in Quebec (The Expos and the Nordiques are gone) have to count for something (OK, we also have the Impact and the Als, but they do not create the same interest as the Habs).
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>The media play a lot also. The local sport station had a 30 minutes pre-game last week for the Sens-Ducks game. They talked about the game for the first 5 minutes and spend nearly the rest of the show to talk about the new contract of the Habs defensemen Markov.
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>However, having a winning team today is a very hard task, specially in Canada because of the money exchange rate. With all the teams today, the competition is very rough and you'll have a hard time signing good players. The media pressure here is so hard that many players (specially Quebecers) don't want to play for the Habs :( That's too bad because I would prefer a less competitive team composed in majority of Quebecers than a better team but with players I can't identify myself with.
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>>Wow - what changed to make it that way?
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>>I left Montreal 25 years ago, but until that time there would be no sell-out if the Habs were losing. In those days they basically had to earn every full house they got.
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>>I was always of the opinion that it was exactly that characteristic that made sure they always had winning teams. Given recent history and your statement I am now more sure than ever about that.