Canada’s first shutout came as a shock
Montreal stayed in running until season’s final day
Pete Mahovlich cried.
He teared up after the last game of the 1969-70 season, when the Montreal Canadiens were eliminated from the playoffs. They finished fifth in the NHL’s East Division with 92 points, 21 points up on the sixthplace Maple Leafs, but they lost a tiebreaker with the New York Rangers.
“I was devastated, really, really devastated,” said Mahovlich, a big, scoring winger who is now a scout with the Florida Panthers. “I’ll tell you why I cried. I had been with the Detroit Red Wings for three years, and they had not made the playoffs in those three years.
“So I got traded to Montreal, and in the very first year I got traded there, that was the first time they’d missed the playoffs in 20 years.”
Few, least of all Mahovlich, could have seen it coming then. For the first time in NHL history, no Canadian team would participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
But everyone can see it happening this year, when no Canadian team will see the post-season for the second time. (Heading into Tuesday night’s games, Ottawa was the last hope and that hope was hanging by a thread; the Senators were one loss or one Boston point from elimination.)
It was a development predicted as early as January and feared by Sportsnet, the Canadian rights holder for playoff broadcasts. It became obvious at the trade deadline when the seven Canadian teams were sellers, more interested in high-draft positions than making a desperate run for the last wild-card spot.
The apathy across Canada, a supposedly hockey-mad country, has been palpable. Not only have ratings crashed, but on a recent Saturday night, U.S. college basketball’s March Madness trended on Twitter ahead of anything emanating from the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast.
There is no sense of drama with the Canadian teams, unless your idea of drama is a turtle race to last place. Fans of one team actively cheer for their rival to win. Goodness knows what will happen when Edmonton plays Calgary later this week. Leafs fans were very happy to lose to Ottawa recently.
Back in 1970, the table was set for a dramatic finish with the difference likely to come down to the first tiebreaker: goals scored.
The Rangers needed not only to beat Detroit, but to do so by scoring a lot of goals and hope that Montreal lost to Chicago while scoring only a few.
The Red Wings had clinched third already, and most likely partied hard the night before playing the Rangers. The Rangers were up 9-2 in the afternoon game and pulled their goalie to try to score more.
The Wings scored three times and the final was 9-5.
The Rangers moved into fourth, tied on points with Montreal and ahead on points.
Playing that night in Chicago, Montreal needed one of two things to happen: Get at least a tie, or score five goals in a loss. Down 5-2 with nine minutes to go, coach Claude Ruel pulled his goalie.
“It was: ‘What was our best chance of getting there? Tying the game? Or scoring five goals?’ ” Mahovlich said. “Claude Ruel decided to pull the goalie and not worry about winning the game, and try to score goals.” Montreal lost 9-2. “In essence, (it was) a good strategy. It just didn’t work out,” said Mahovlich.
The weird thing, if you look at the standings then, was that Montreal was the fifth-best team in a 12-team league, the Maple Leafs the seventhbest. But there was no crossing over for a playoff with the West, made up of the six recent expansion teams, inferior but playoff-bound.
Today, with wild cards and the possibility of divisional cross-overs, truly the worst teams miss the playoffs. And seven of them are Canadian.
“Last year, five Canadian teams made (the playoffs),” Mahovlich said.
“It shows you how fragile some of those teams can be when you have that many teams miss the playoffs after making the playoffs. Injuries play a part, there are so many factors that can set an organization back. It doesn’t take much.”