La Ville Est Hockey?

That’s this season’s Montreal Canadiens slogan, and you could almost believe it. Every game is sold out, the atmosphere is always electric, and the television networks (particularly the French language channels) are filled with coverage. So of course it made total sense when we went to La Cage Aux Sports in the Bell Centre on Saturday night after the Habs shootout win over the Bruins and found not a single television showing the late Hockey Night In Canada game.

Montreal, it’s quite a city of contradictions, isn’t it?

HBO’s Boxing After Dark was the viewing of choice accompanied by loud, throbbing dance music. I had forgotten what a weird place Montreal could be. Is there really that much of a boxing crowd in Montreal that putting that on in a sports bar in the arena of the most storied team in hockey history makes any kind of sense? Or were they just trying to drive out the hockey crowd so they could go home? The funny thing was is the fights were pretty darn good, so good we actually stayed longer than anticipated.

Some time later I thought that maybe it wasn’t so weird that the late game wasn’t on. Maybe the attitude is “The Habs have already played today and the Western Conference doesn’t matter, let’s watch something else”. Or maybe they’re not so attached to the game as they like to think. They did turn the Forum into a soft-drink sponsored shopping mall after all. Who knows?

I still love the city, but I have a hard time figuring it out sometimes. Maybe that’s why I still love it.

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