ShareThisIt is a mix, part opera, part Allo Police, unique to one team, to one town, to the most important hockey franchise on earth.
Dispute that last part if you like. But given the ways that the Montreal Canadiens have snaked into culture and identity and politics during their 100-year history, it is a stretch to find a team anywhere, in any sport, which matters, in every sense of the word, more.
Books have been written on the subject -- in fact, a couple just this year, a very good Canadiens history by D'Arcy Jenish and more recently a Sports Illustrated collection called "The Canadiens Century,'' filled with beautiful photographs and terrific writing through the ages, for which the estimable Michael Farber has penned a witty forward.
"It just runs deeper," Farber said. "You look around Canada -- I think Edmonton comes closest to Montreal when you talk about the sense of community. There's just a larger emotional stake in the franchise. The depth of that emotional stake, the degree to which it's personal. ... The team is a validation -- an affirmation and a validation -- of French Quebec."
Or, as Mordecai Richler put it in 1975, the Canadiens are for Quebec a "spiritual necessity."
So a Habs' scandal is no ordinary scandal. And a week like the one just past, which included not just tales of booze, drugs, women, luxury cars and at least one bad guy who had befriended a couple of Canadiens players, but also began with the team's greatest star being banished temporarily to the shinny netherworld, is therefore something extraordinary.
Perhaps not quite the stop-the-presses scenario that was suggested the night before the story about the Kostitsyn brothers' dalliances with a low-level mobster was revealed, but still some of the best theatre going.
Alex Kovalev is worth at very least an act unto himself, enigmatic, possessed of an artist's temperament, and mostly loved for it by the locals, who would rather wait for those flashes of genius than get behind a group of aesthetically challenged pluggers. Because of how Kovalev responded on his return last Saturday, clearly trying hard and leading Montreal to a much-needed victory over the Ottawa Senators, Habs general manager Bob Gainey looks like a motivational genius today, perhaps the one person who really understands what makes Kovalev tick.
Still, with a very tough stretch ahead -- Vancouver, Philadelphia and San Jose all this week -- and still, without the guy whose injury began the tailspin, center Robert Lang, it will be interesting to see whether Kovalev's newfound sense of commitment has legs.
On the cop front, all is quiet, though rumors continue to swirl about all sorts of terrible things that various Montreal players may or may not have done, some related to the Kostitsyn story, some completely separate. That's nothing new. There's a deep file of urban legends (not that some of them might not have been true) involving Canadiens players that have been breathlessly repeated over the years, but have never seen the light of day.
As far as the official story goes, the NHL team seems to believe at the moment that there are no other shoes to drop. According to owner George Gillett, it ends here -- with bad judgment, bad taste in social companions, but no actual bad deeds. He doesn't believe there is anything more ominous to come.
"Any time you hear a story like that, you're obviously concerned," Gillett said. "We believe we've got a great group of young men, and we're optimistic about the club for the rest of the season."
Not just any season: The Centennial Season. And not just any franchise. That last Stanley Cup, in 1993, seems nearly as distant now as the 1970s dynasty. The hints earlier this season that another champion might be in the making created expectations that this squad, as currently configured, doesn't seem nearly good enough to fulfill.
But there is a trade deadline looming. There are many Kovalev shifts to analyze. There is the continuing puzzle of goalie Carey Price, whose inevitable march to greatness seems to have been sidetracked this year by long stretches of erratic play.
In Columbus or Phoenix or Carolina, where no one measures their pulse by the local hockey team, someone gets sent home, a couple of the boys get caught hanging out with the wrong crowd, and the local culture barely ripples.
This is different. Always has been. Just a game, just a uniform, but oh, the joy, the agony.
(Contact Stephen Brunt at sbrunt@globeandmail.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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