Montreal 1977 Not the Best Ever
November 28, 2008, by Homme De Sept-Iles
Montreal Mystique Numbers; the Charts, Graphs, Standard Deviations, Fractal Points and Icy Conclusions
The greatest ever. Once more (and forever), folks find it necessary to proclaim the greatest ever. Regardless of sport, that usually means the most championship-laden team of the past 12, 15 , maybe 20-25 years. Never mind that teams and leagues have been in existence for decades, sometimes centuries prior to the speaker’s perceived Golden Era; the time from which he was about seven to 23 years of age.
That said, I have noticed a trend to crown the Montreal Canadiens of 1977 as the greatest Montreal team of all time and in some circles, the greatest NHL team of all time. What possesses people with little to no sense of history before their birth year to proclaim a team (or player) as the greatest of all time(s)*? I’ll tell you. A lack of descriptive or comparative ability that leads one to choose from a limited set of emotional magnifiers. The message is; this team moved me. So just say that, then. Now, the Canadiens. That 1976-77 team was great. The greatest of its era, likely. Certainly that team was the team that won four straight to close out the seventies. And won two more besides earlier in the decade.
That historic season saw Montreal win 60 games in an 80-game schedule. With only eight losses. The greatest accomplishment in the post-expansion era to that point. They featured Hall-of-Fame players Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden, Larry Robinson and several others. They were coached by a man (Scotty Bowman) who would go on to win more Stanley Cups (9) than former Montreal head coach Toe Blake (8). All impressive, to be sure. However, if one is going to go ahead and make the rash claims of “greatest ever” one must be prepared to talk about “ever”. In the NHL’s case, “ever” goes back to 1917-18, the league’s inaugural season. And if one is being thorough or fair, it goes back to before then. Because hockey existed before the NHL. And the Stanley Cup existed before 1917.
I wonder how many people have seen film of all the games dating back to that inaugural season. (I sometimes wonder if film even existed back then.) I wonder how many of the people who have seen all these teams actually understand the game as it was back then. Do they understand the differences and what impact those differences (rule, nutrition, work-out techniques, player size, economic and cultural motivation) might make in comparing teams across different eras. I certainly don’t.
Making greatest-ever statements are usually just an exercise in (dis)harmonic diatribe. An opportunity for virtual (and phone-line) cathedrals of verbal torment as large groups of minimally informed zealots gather to voice their simultaneous discord to the tune of local and partisan sports politics. I can’t stop these unholy gaggle and babble occurrences but perhaps I can say one thing I am sure of. The Montreal Canadiens weren’t the greatest team of all time. They’re not even top five. Listed below are the greatest NHL regular season records of all time. Enjoy your theatre. Send me a text.
Link is at beginning of article.
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