Fans’ attacks on Weber are appalling
Shea Weber reminds me a great deal of my favourite player, No. 19, Larry Robinson, back in the days when I was a fan of the Canadiens, not a newspaper columnist. Weber is even taller than Big Bird, with the same strength, the same ability to start a rush or stop one going the other way, the same utterly professional approach to his job.
Weber is also like Robinson in that he is humble and softspoken, and (at times) visibly uncomfortable under the klieg lights of Montreal. But he has never complained, never tried to pass the blame for a loss to someone else, never embarrassed the uniform. Among all the towering defencemen of this era, there is only one who looms larger than the 6-foot-4 Weber: Boston’s 6-foot-9 Zdeno Chara.
So how does Weber, this classy man mountain who has given so much to the game, become such a target for fan fury that he is attacked for the unforgivable crime of getting himself injured while playing hockey?
Seriously, people. What is wrong with you?
True, Weber’s game is sometimes subtle. He will make one quick, efficient pass to accomplish what P.K. Subban does with three jukes, a shoulder shake and a spinarama — but the end result is the same. Montreal fans, however, will take style over substance every time. They swallow Subban’s act hook, line and sinker while condemning Weber as old, boring and (now that he’s suffered a couple of injuries) fragile.
It’s appalling. If you prefer Subban’s style, that’s your right. If you choose to believe that the trade that sent him to Nashville for Weber was a terrible one, that’s your right also.
What is not right is that you choose to use a very rough stretch in Weber’s life and career to condemn the man in the crudest, most vicious terms. Since the Canadiens announced that Weber had undergone knee surgery and would be out at least until December, I’ve seen him called everything from geriatric to an over-the-hill pylon.
And it doesn’t stop there: when the Canadiens did the absolutely right (if somewhat belated) thing and brought out the distinguished Dr. David Mulder to explain the injury, the diagnosis and the course of treatment chosen, fans who wouldn’t know a meniscus tear from a medulla oblongata questioned Mulder’s medical knowledge. Rest assured: My good and great friend Red Fisher would have biffed you in the nose for that.
The Canadiens themselves are at least partly to blame for this state of affairs. They have been secretive about significant injuries to important players, especially Carey Price, leaving the impression that there is some deep, dark conspiracy afoot. They have made management errors that made the team less competitive.
But today’s toxic atmosphere has made sane discussion of this team almost impossible. Blame management, blame the players, blame the media if you wish, but the fans themselves bear much of the culpability for a vibe that grows uglier by the year.
Mind you, there are still thousands of wonderful hockey fans in Montreal. People who support the Habs but love the game itself, no matter who is playing. People who appreciate the little things that a man like Weber brings to the ice along with his physical presence and that big, booming shot. But from Pierre Gauthier and Jacques Martin to Marc Bergevin and Michel Therrien and then Claude Julien, hating Canadiens management has become an obsession so out-ofcontrol psychiatrists could do a useful study on the deranged fans of Montreal.
My disgust with such fans (and some of the media types who stoke the feeding frenzy out of their own misplaced anger) has never been so complete. The same people who sneer at the Canadiens for their inability to get a meeting with free agent John Tavares feel free to revile a player like Weber, without making the connection. Yes, we have potholes and high taxes and cold weather, but this city also has some of the most vicious fans you can find.
Somehow, fans here can simultaneously blast the Habs for not hiring a unilingual anglo coach like the great Mike Babcock, and ignore the fact that Babcock himself made Weber a captain for Team Canada and trusted the big man implicitly, in every situation.
It has become so absurd that when I wrote a column last week daring to suggest that Bergevin has had a pretty good off-season to date, at least a half-dozen fans wrote to accuse me of being on the Canadiens payroll even though I clearly stated, at season’s end, that I thought the club should make a change and Bergevin should be replaced.
He wasn’t, so we move on. If the man does something you think is an effective move, you say so. If not, you say that, too. But to simply go on yammering, repeating the same boring #FireBergevin nonsense a hundred times a day, is not only counterproductive, it creates a toxic atmosphere for all concerned, management, players, coaches, trainers, equipment managers, radio and television crews, reporters and fans who just want to see a good hockey game. The good old hockey game. Remember that, anyone? Anyone?