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Remembering the Good Friday Massacre. It's been 30 years.

dennilfloss

dennilfloss

Yes I love disco!
Jun 7, 2011
3,940
1
Ottawa
dennilfloss.blogspot.com
In a couple of days but this year's Good Friday is today.

All the hatred/anger that had been boiling up for years between two cities and even split families exploded in one orgy of violence with a former Nordiques (Jean Hamel) getting a concussion as a result of a punch from Louis Sleigher he never saw coming. No game has ever left me angrier at the refs performance than this. Of course I saw the actions that took place with my biased Nordiques fan eyes but the refs seemed to see the whole game with Canadiens fan eyes. Les fantômes du Forum were at full power that day. Tremblay... Lemaire... The Nords losing their top two centres (which would end up costing them the game and the series) as a result of the brawls. Emotions running amok. Bile rising just thinking about it... The benches were really depleted after the two brawls.

Wasn't this Bruce Hood's last game?

 
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dennilfloss said:
In a couple of days but this year's Good Friday is today.

All the hatred/anger that had been boiling up for years between two cities and even split families exploded in one orgy of violence with a former Nordiques (Jean Hamel) getting a concussion as a result of a punch from Louis Sleigher he never saw coming. No game has ever left me angrier at the refs performance than this. Of course I saw the actions that took place with my biased Nordiques fan eyes but the refs seemed to see the whole game with Canadiens fan eyes. Les fantômes du Forum were at full power that day. Tremblay... Lemaire... The Nords losing their top two centres (which would end up costing them the game and the series) as a result of the brawls. Emotions running amok. Bile rising just thinking about it... The benches were really depleted after the two brawls.

Wasn't this Bruce Hood's last game?

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Should Stastny and Hunter not have been thrown out of the game? I'd say their game misconducts were well deserved. That's on them, not Bruce Hood.
 
All Peter Stastny did was fight Tremblay in the first brawl. He should have gotten 5 minutes for fighting and that's it. He did not fight in the second brawl, not for lack of trying to reach a Canadien. Might have gotten another two minutes for roughing but no game misconduct.

The first brawl was reasonably under control, just grabbing, pushing and yapping, until Nilan started throwing. That was like a flash in a powder magazine and it all went to heck from there.
 
I have a copy of Bruce Hood's memoirs "Calling the Shots". In it, he mentions that one main reason the second brawl started was that apparently Marcel Aubut, the Nordiques' owner, came up to the late John McCauley who was on his way to both dressing rooms to tell the teams which players were ejected. Aubut was very upset and kept talking to McCauley until the buzzer sounded to end the intermission that had been longer than the usual fifteen minutes (too late to tell the teams of the ejections), and as a result ones like Nilan and Hunter (who obviously were through for the night after the first episode) came back on at the start of the third period and we all know what fun was had then.
 
dennilfloss said:
All Peter Stastny did was fight Tremblay in the first brawl. He should have gotten 5 minutes for fighting and that's it. He did not fight in the second brawl, not for lack of trying to reach a Canadien. Might have gotten another two minutes for roughing but no game misconduct.

The first brawl was reasonably under control, just grabbing, pushing and yapping, until Nilan started throwing. That was like a flash in a powder magazine and it all went to heck from there.
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You need to watch the 2nd brawl more closely. At the 9:50 mark while Tremblay is being wrestled to the ice by Andre Dore (#24), Stastny very deliberating sheds the mitts and then starts suckerpunching Tremblay, directly in front of Hood. As for Hunter, well Dale got the whole ball rolling cross-checking Carbonneau to the ice and punching him in the back of the head. Did Nilan escalate things? Absolutely, and he was deservedly tossed from the game. But let's not make excuses. The Nords top two centers were well deserving of their game misconducts. Sorry, but you're very wrong here.
 
I see it now. Statsny was a 'third man'. Thanks for pointing it.

A brawl was bound to happen one day as the hatred between the players and cities and reporters even had been brewing like magma rising to the surface until it ruptures and we get a volcano.
 
A brawl was bound to happen one day as the hatred between the players and cities and reporters even had been brewing like magma rising to the surface until it ruptures and we get a volcano.[/QUOTE]

That was the other thing I remember Bruce discussing in his book. He got to referee the first NHL regular season game between Montreal and the Nordiques at Le Colisee in October 1979. The Nordiques won that game and the building absolutely went insane afterwards. Hood remembers about an hour after the game when he and his linesmen had showered and changed into their street clothes and were getting ready to leave the rink, the place was still about half full of fans singing and cheering.
 
I think it was right around this time that Aubut and Serge Savard agreed to take it down a thousand about the rivalry. It was maybe the best rivalry ever for pure white-hot hate, but it was getting over the top. The political situation around this time wasn't helping either.
 
HabsByTheBay said:
I think it was right around this time that Aubut and Serge Savard agreed to take it down a thousand about the rivalry. It was maybe the best rivalry ever for pure white-hot hate, but it was getting over the top. The political situation around this time wasn't helping either.
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You are right about Aubut and Savard trying to tone down the rivalry thing afterward. I can remember the following spring in 1985, they faced off for another series. While that one was good and competitive and the Nordiques won that time around, it was a great deal more subdued if my memory serves me properly.
 
damn, I loved Stastny! Them guys from over there weren't s'possed ta compete like he did.
 
dennilfloss said:
In a couple of days but this year's Good Friday is today.

All the hatred/anger that had been boiling up for years between two cities and even split families exploded in one orgy of violence with a former Nordiques (Jean Hamel) getting a concussion as a result of a punch from Louis Sleigher he never saw coming. No game has ever left me angrier at the refs performance than this. Of course I saw the actions that took place with my biased Nordiques fan eyes but the refs seemed to see the whole game with Canadiens fan eyes. Les fantômes du Forum were at full power that day. Tremblay... Lemaire... The Nords losing their top two centres (which would end up costing them the game and the series) as a result of the brawls. Emotions running amok. Bile rising just thinking about it... The benches were really depleted after the two brawls.

Wasn't this Bruce Hood's last game?

Click to expand...


I remember watching that game live. There is one thing to think about when the fights started at the start of the 3rd period. Several players who had been told they had been given game misconducts still came out off the dressing rooms. Even in the 80's this was unheard of. I remember several flames/oiler battles where massive fights happened at the end of a period--players were tossed and they we not allowed to come out of the dressing room for the next period. for the second fights--team coaches take the blame
 
Ah, the "good old days"...! Not for the brawl, which is embarrassing and awful, but for the rivalry (between teams, cities, fans, political allegiances) of Quebec City and Montreal. The NHL's teams and rivalries were near-perfect in the period roughly 1982 to 1994...

...and then Bettman and his cronies destroyed the league. But don't worry, they've increased revenue to help pay for Bettman's retirement home in Palm Springs. And Quebec City has a minor-league team, so it's all good.
 
It was a great rivalry involving many factions and I loved the violence and atmosphere.Saying all that Jean Hamel retired after the playoffs due to serious eye injury due to being sucker punched also the anti-semite chants by Quebec fans was not called for-In the 70s brofmans owned team till 1978 and later Irv Grundman became Gm and sucked both families were jewish.But overall it was great exciting hockey and I miss it
 
I don't remember any such antisemite chant. Whoever did this was not representative of the vast majority of Nordiques fans in Québec city. Carling O'Keefe was owned by the Rothmans if I remember correctly. And most Nords fans loved the Expos, who were owned by Charles Bronfman.
 
Many articles were wriiten on the story about anti semite chants -Including in the best selling book Lions in winter published in 1986-writers were Chrys Goyens and Allan Turowetz.In the early 1980s CBC NEWS had stories about Quebec City fans anti-jewish comments-all this is 100 percent factual and what I wrote is tip of ice-berg
 
You may be right. I'm just saying this runs counter to my experience growing up in Québec city from 1957 until I left in 1980 at the age of 23. It was quite the contrary in my family and circle of friends where Jews were lauded and Israel was admired for what it had done with basically a desert in just 3 decades. Even when I was in high school at Le Collège Des Jésuites, Israel and the Jewish people were put forth as an example of entrepreneurship, education and confidence.

Edit: OK. Found a recent dissertation detailing what you are mentioning. Will make sure to read it. :)

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...=iBL2BnySv3tve1GHsi92rw&bvm=bv.65058239,d.b2I
 
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Wrestling promoter Gino Brito cashed in on the rivalry by having his two most popular wrestlers, Dino Bravo from Montreal & Rick Martel from Quebec City, feud with each other over the International title belt, with Bravo coming to the ring in a Habs jersey & Martel in a Nords jersey, whipping up the intensity of the rivalry between the two cities in Quebec pop culture.
 
dennilfloss said:
I don't remember any such antisemite chant. Whoever did this was not representative of the vast majority of Nordiques fans in Québec city. Carling O'Keefe was owned by the Rothmans if I remember correctly. And most Nords fans loved the Expos, who were owned by Charles Bronfman.
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Grundman and his wife being verbally abused in the stands at the Colisee definitely happened, I don't know about the rest.

The hockey aspects of the rivalry were fun, like the Nordiques also going for Quebec players, the ex-Habs who got a new lease on life in Quebec, and the exciting hockey the Nordiques played when the Habs were a bit weak.

But the off-ice aspects were just getting too much. The way people used the rivalry as a conduit for their loathing of Montreal and Levesque claiming the Nordiques were the sovereigntist team (which was a total grenade lobbed in the pot by somebody who didn't care about hockey at all) and the general setting-up of the Nordiques as antimatter to all things Canadiens. It had to have affected the players and it couldn't go on forever.

I think making it about the hockey again helped everyone. For one thing, there weren't enough good Quebecers to sustain two contending teams (the Nords never got more than 94 points during that stretch, and the Habs went through a soft spell) so focusing more on getting the best players helped Quebec become a contender in the 90s.
 
HabsByTheBay said:
I think making it about the hockey again helped everyone. For one thing, there weren't enough good Quebecers to sustain two contending teams (the Nords never got more than 94 points during that stretch, and the Habs went through a soft spell) so focusing more on getting the best players helped Quebec become a contender in the 90s.
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Considering the way they got those said best players, the bolded is kindof ironic.

Besides, I think you forgot how 94 points was... actually great in that era. 14 games above .500 with ties counting for a point, all this while playing in what was possibly the most competitive division in the league. We often point at the Whalers as being the weak team of that division, but it was the best of the "weaks", and they actually got pretty good as soon as they got Mike Liut. As for the Habs, well, Robinson and Chelios were great D-Men, but Lafleur was slowing down, and the team lacked firepower as a whole (nobody would confound Bobby Smith with Bryan Trottier or Wayne Gretzky) Blaming the performance of both teams due to increasing emphasis on getting French players is about as clueless as one can get...especially considering the player that was the key for the Habs lone cup during the '80ies.

And it's not even like the Nords were THAT great to begin with (Stastny and Goulet were awesome players; as for other Québecois of the team, they were actually decent for what they were -- think Marois, Rochefort, Côté). The Nordiques certainly had a very underwhelming defense and were average-at-best in the crease (Dan Bouchard being probably the best they had), and always had some problems with it came to depth. Sure, a good team, able to win its division in a given year, but it's not like the best of the Adams was getting out of the Wales Conference anyways against the Isles in the first part of the decade.

The political, off-the-ice stuff was indeed absurd, though. But coming up with the whole "targets only Québecois thus get weaker as a whole" argument reeks of somebody lacking an argument to explain why two teams that were good-but-not-great didn't became dynasties when the era saw two of the best teams ever (Isles and Oilers, obviously).
 
MXD said:
Considering the way they got those said best players, the bolded is kindof ironic.

Besides, I think you forgot how 94 points was... actually great in that era. 14 games above .500 with ties counting for a point, all this while playing in what was possibly the most competitive division in the league. We often point at the Whalers as being the weak team of that division, but it was the best of the "weaks", and they actually got pretty good as soon as they got Mike Liut. As for the Habs, well, Robinson and Chelios were great D-Men, but Lafleur was slowing down, and the team lacked firepower as a whole (nobody would confound Bobby Smith with Bryan Trottier or Wayne Gretzky) Blaming the performance of both teams due to increasing emphasis on getting French players is about as clueless as one can get...especially considering the player that was the key for the Habs lone cup during the '80ies.

And it's not even like the Nords were THAT great to begin with (Stastny and Goulet were awesome players; as for other Québecois of the team, they were actually decent for what they were -- think Marois, Rochefort, Côté). The Nordiques certainly had a very underwhelming defense and were average-at-best in the crease (Dan Bouchard being probably the best they had), and always had some problems with it came to depth. Sure, a good team, able to win its division in a given year, but it's not like the best of the Adams was getting out of the Wales Conference anyways against the Isles in the first part of the decade.

The political, off-the-ice stuff was indeed absurd, though. But coming up with the whole "targets only Québecois thus get weaker as a whole" argument reeks of somebody lacking an argument to explain why two teams that were good-but-not-great didn't became dynasties when the era saw two of the best teams ever (Isles and Oilers, obviously).
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You've totally misunderstood my point. Where did I say the Canadiens had a policy of only going after francophones? They very publicly didn't, which is why Irving Grundman will go to his grave as the guy who drafted Doug Wickenheiser over Denis Savard. Their perceived (and totally mythical) anti-franco leanings was one of the reasons they bled some fans to the Nordiques in the 80s.

The Nordiques weren't that great, hence why I said they never did that great. But they definitely had a policy of going after French players. Marcel Aubut admits as much in Lions of Winter, and talks about what a PR coup it was (also, there was a certain amount of 'who else are we going to get to play here?' - the problem Michael Farber once wrote about in Sports Illustrated). But he also talks about how he felt it became limiting after a while, as you can't just get franco stars on the free agent market, so you're stuck trying to sign every third line franco you can get.
 
I still hate the habs. Nordiques forever.

2 different versions of a great fight.

Dice we're rigged in Montreal favor...
 
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