BORN TO LOVE THE HABS
Actor Jay Baruchel is a lifelong Canadiens fan living in the heart of Maple Leaf country
Jay Baruchel is an actor (This is the End, Tropic Thunder) and co-writer of the two Goon movies, the second of which he also directed. He’s also an unabashed Montreal Canadiens fan, a part of his life that is the subject of his new book, Born Into It. He talks to Scott Stinson in this edited transcript about the horror of the P.K. Subban trade, how he isn’t afraid of the Maple Leafs, and St. Hubert versus Swiss Chalet.
Q You call this a hockey book, but it reads like more of a life story, with hockey as the through line. Was that the plan?
A Having never played a single shift in the NHL, I can’t do anything like that, and Lord knows the world doesn’t need another Habs historian. But one kind of experience I felt hadn’t been articulated all that much was what it feels like to be a fan, so much that you’re born into it. To say I’m a fan almost felt like damning it with faint praise. Because it’s beyond that. It’s how we remember other events: You watch a game, and it reminds you of a memory of some other game and what you were doing then. Hockey is the board that all these things bounce off. I tried to encapsulate the Canadian fan experience in a book, and to me, it’s kind of hard to do that, to separate that from my life. Because I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t part of me.
Q How are you feeling about the current edition of the Montreal Canadiens?
A Oh, fantastic. It’s terrific. I think I say in the book, in order for us to be good and competitive again, we sort of have to be ignorant of our history. That sounds anathema to all of Habs culture, but the weight of expectations hasn’t yielded great results for us. Look what happens when you take that away. Look what happens when you skate out and everyone expects you to tank the entire season, and nobody’s expecting you to do anything. Without that weight, the kids are able to play hockey.
Q It would surprise me if you were to say: ‘I wish we were tanking.’ That doesn’t seem to come out.
A Oh, god no. I (bleep)ing hate that ( bleep), man. Now, maybe this is why I’m not a hockey commentator. I would rather bust our asses to get into eighth and at least ( bleep)ing die on our feet than to just ( bleep)ing give up for an entire season. You know, I understand the thinking behind that, but it seems extremely antithetical. The experience of being a hockey fan is incredibly simple and binary: I want my team to win. The entire thing is a symbiotic relationship and requires us to give a ( bleep) and buy in and believe. And when the actual team itself is telling you not to do those things, I think that’s profoundly wrong.
Q So you’re not looking forward at all to the possibility of a Carey Price trade.
A Oh, Jesus Christ. No, no, I’m not at all. Because I know that if he puts on any other sweater, he wins a ( bleep)ing Vezina.
Q In your writing about the P.K. Subban trade, you noted the emotional attachment part, but you also mentioned the contract reasons to be against the trade.
A I feel like the ins and outs of hockey contracts and hockey budgets and salary cap ( bleep) — all serious fans know that it has relevance now. In the salary cap era, it’s made us all bankers to some degree. We all have to think of this nonsense. I’d rather not, because to me it has nothing to do with hockey, it’s not pure hockey at all, but we have no choice.
Q You live in Toronto now. Has the team becoming good made living here worse?
A Yes and no. It has vulcanized my Habs fandom. It has only forced me to double down. But I also like having front-row seats for the inevitable collapse of almost every Toronto sports franchise. So, yeah, I’m psyched about it. My fiancee is from here and she has a whole family of Leafs fans, so I get all manner of chirping. But I’m not afraid of the new Maple Leafs. They’re fun and exciting and entertaining, and I’m glad, and it’s exactly what the city and the league needs. But as a Habs fan, I’m not really that threatened by them.
Q On fighting, you acknowledge that there are sound reasons for eliminating it, but you also say that you miss it. Not many people will say that publicly.
A Yeah. It would be incredibly disingenuous and hypocritical of me to pretend like I didn’t love it all my life. And I’m not going to shirk responsibility and say: ‘This is how I was raised.’ My experience, growing up watching hockey with my parents, and watching it myself, I cannot deny the excitement and adrenalin and elation you would feel when your guy would lay out one of the other guys. To me, it was just the pure distillation of the game that I was watching. And I can say, as a former season ticket holder at the Bell Centre, it got the crowd on its feet like nothing else. Now, are all these reasons to keep it in the game? No. Who am I to say? I’m not a hockey player and I’m not a neurosurgeon. So if people that do the thing and know the thing say it’s bad, then who am I to say, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.’ My own feelings, and I’m glad I get to share them, are almost irrelevant, because history has already decided where fighting is in hockey. It’s already in the rear view.
Q You’re commissioner of the NHL, and you’re all powerful. What’s the first thing you do? A I would get rid of the salary cap. I would get one, if not two or three, more teams in Canada. Q Would you relocate those? A (Bleep) yeah, man. I think so. I don’t know how much longer fans of teams with a ( bleep) load of fans have to suffer the teams that don’t have many fans. In this league, how many teams are profitable? It’s like a third, right? If you’re a fan of one of those teams, it’s frustrating to see your entire operation hindered by the existence of teams that just don’t have it. The Arizona Coyotes, their very existence hinders the Montreal Canadiens. And the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings. So, I definitely think that the league and the game itself would be better served by taking a team out of a city that doesn’t really give a ( bleep) about it and putting it in Quebec City, or the 905 or the Maritimes.
Q You touch on the idea of the fatalism of being a fan. In the end, is it worth it?
A Oh, definitely. There are times when I catch myself and say, ‘Why do I care about this the way I do? How is this able to piss me off the way very few things do?’ And, you know the P.K. trade left an incredibly sour taste in my mouth. It made the entire thing seem kind of, um, horse ( bleep) to me. It goes back to that thing: I put my trust in this team. My part of the deal is, I believe in you guys, I believe that you know what you’re doing and that you want the same thing that I want, which is for the team to win. And you tell me that these are the guys, put my faith and trust in these guys, and this is who is going to do it. And then … to just destroy it in a really kind of an inane bit of business … it’s just, like, well what the ( bleep) is the point of watching any of it, then? If a guy like P.K. Subban can get traded from this team, then it means that anybody can. Like, it is an incredibly tenuous relationship, no matter if you grew up with it and it’s been there your whole life, it is constantly one bad trade away from being completely ruined. I go back and forth at times where I think it’s incredibly silly and preposterous, and there are times where I thank God every day to be part of a sincere tradition and history and culture. I could have been born in Anaheim.
Q Last thing: The book includes a blistering take on Swiss Chalet, which has a sauce “that tastes like soap and throw up.”
A (Laughs) That part isn’t going to do me any favours. I still eat it. I know the delivery guys in my neighbourhood really well. There’s just no version of things where Swiss Chalet wins that taste test (against St. Hubert). Put the two plates next to each other in a blindfold Pepsi Challenge, and everybody is taking St. Hubert’s. I would bet everything I have on that fact.