Kelly: 30 years after torch passed to Bell Centre, Canadiens await Forum ghosts
The crazy thing is that 30 years after the Bell Centre opened, it’s still not clear that the infamous Forum ghosts have followed the Canadiens eastward to set up residence in the team’s current rink.
The ghosts of Habs legends of yesteryear looked out for the bleu-blanc-rouge for decades at the Forum, and those ghosts helped the team win 22 of its 24 championships at the legendary arena at the corner of Atwater Ave. and Ste-Catherine St. March 16 is the 30th anniversary of the first game at what was then called the Molson Centre, a win for the good guys, with the Canadiens beating the New York Rangers 4-2.
Since then, the Habs have yet to win another Stanley Cup. Their last Cup win happened at the Forum on June 9, 1993, with the Canadiens beating the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 in Game 5 of the final to take home their 24th Cup. Of course, it’s not the Bell Centre’s fault they’ve never won another championship — the simple truth is that the team has often been rather badly managed during the last three decades. It isn’t more complicated than that.
There is no question that fans of a certain age still feel great nostalgia for the old Forum. I remember joining friends on many nights to buy standing-room tickets and racing up when the doors opened at 6:30 to get the best spots, right behind the reds. Later, during the early 1990s, my old friend, Richard Sweret, and I bought seats from ticket resellers. We’d always wait until the national anthems were being sung inside, and then we’d be able to negotiate a much better price for a seat in the reds because the resellers knew if they didn’t sell to us, they wouldn’t be selling to anyone.
Canadiens legend Maurice (Rocket) Richard receives a standing ovation after the last game at the Forum on March 11, 1996.
When the Molson Centre opened its doors on March 16, 1996, there was no shortage of grumbling. People said the corridors were too narrow — which they still are! — and many complained about the higher bowl seats being so far removed from the ice. That’s what happens when you go from a barn with a capacity of 17,959, including standing room, to one that holds 21,105.
It took years for hockey fans to warm up to the Molson Centre, and part of that was due to the fact that those Habs teams during the second half of the ’90s were pretty brutal. You have to keep in mind that before the opening of the Molson Centre, team president Ronald Corey had fired general manager Serge Savard (just four games into the season!) and then, on Dec. 6, 1995, new GM Réjean Houle traded away superstar goalie Patrick Roy to the brand-new Colorado Avalanche for three minor players. It was arguably the worst trade in the history of the Canadiens, and the team is only now beginning to recover from the bad karma produced by it.
Was it a mistake to leave the Forum for the Molson Centre? Justin Kingsley thinks so. I interviewed him for my book, titled Habs Nation: A People’s History of the Montreal Canadiens, and Kingsley, a sports branding expert, told an incredible story of sharing a couple of rum and cokes with Maurice Richard the day the Molson Centre was officially unveiled. He told me the Rocket, who’d elicited a huge standing ovation just days earlier after the final game at the Forum, was despondent.
“He was heartbroken,” Kingsley told me. “He didn’t see the need to leave the Forum.”
But sports is big business and Molson Brewery, which owned the Canadiens at the time, simply felt the only way to make money was to have a bigger barn with lots of luxury corporate boxes. It’s nutty to think that the Canadiens and the Molson Centre were not regarded as successful investments at the time.
When Molson put the team and the arena up for sale in 2000, there wasn’t a single Quebec or Canadian bidder interested in buying them, which is why American entrepreneur George Gillett ended up scooping up both in 2001 for a bargain-basement price of $275 million (which gave him 80.1 percent ownership). Gillett then sold the team and the rink to a consortium led by current owner Geoff Molson for $575 million in 2009. In December, Forbes estimated that the Canadiens are worth US$3.4 billion, which ain’t a bad return on Molson’s 2009 investment.
In the years since that first hockey game, fans have warmed up big-time to the arena that was renamed the Bell Centre in 2002. It’s the fans who make a building and Canadiens followers are nothing if not enthused, especially now that president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton and general manager Kent Hughes have constructed the most exciting team since Roy was summarily kicked out of town.
The Molson Centre under construction on July 11, 1995.
Players from opposing teams always say that the Bell Centre is one of the most exciting rinks in the league to play in, and the raucous atmosphere is often contrasted with the dull corporate mood that accompanies a Maple Leafs game at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
And along the way, it became a pretty great place to see shows. Like any discerning music fan, I prefer to see artists in small theatres and clubs. But if you want to see Bruce Springsteen or The Cure or Radiohead, it’s not going to be at Casa del Popolo, and all three have headlined inspirational concerts at the Bell Centre in recent years. The sight lines for hockey games and shows are as good as in any bowl in North America.
But, and it’s a gigantic but, ghosts or no ghosts, the Canadiens have yet to bring home hockey’s ultimate trophy since making that fateful move from the Forum to the Molson/Bell Centre. However, fans are more hopeful about that now than at any other time since the first game at the Molson Centre on March 16, 1996.
