A few years ago I wrote an article on Intersportswire exploring two unlikely sports teams: the Montreal Canadiens of the NHL and soccer club Athletic Bilbao in Spain’s La Liga. The crux of the piece was about how sports and politics collide.
Sports and politics are often intertwined, sometimes unwittingly and sometimes by design. What makes Montreal and Bilbao unique is their conscious effort to maintain identity in a global sports environment. Can a team maintain a local cultural identity and still win on a global scale?
It must be said that Bilbao’s case is more rigid than Montreal’s. Bilbao rarely, if ever, employs anyone outside its Basque heritage. Pragmatically, Montreal doesn’t constrict itself at the player level this way, or else they simply wouldn’t compete – especially considering they don’t have the rights of French-Canadian players through the territorial draft anymore. However, at the coaching and management level it’s a different matter.
Recently, Montreal Canadiens president Pierre Boivin publicly proclaimed the next coach of the fable (but faltering) Canadiens would be a francophone - or at the very least a coach who spoke French. Boivin further stipulated it was the duty of the club to give Quebecers a chance to coach in the NHL.
To some this was an odd (if not discriminatory) assertion to make. The only duty of a sports franchise is to win and make profits.
To others, there was nothing obscure in what he said. In fact, it’s a question of being practical. He was merely stating the reality of the Canadiens being intricately woven into the French-Canadian fabric of Quebec society. They are one and the same, and not to be separated.
I think both arguments are valid. For the most part, the organization does seek a healthy balance but when push comes to making hard decisions that benefits the team will they lead with conviction?
However, there are consequences to both scenarios aforementioned. The first may mean tolerating no French-Canadian representation for a coaching stint, while the second can lead to mediocre results.
Employing a person to lead a great brand like the Canadiens is a serious thing and a question we can ask is, should it come at the expense of a better candidate? If it does, then are the Montreal Canadiens a meritocracy operating in a free market system or are they a provincial operation in a global competitive system?
A blunter question is, are Quebecers willing to accept mediocrity in the name of identity? We often hear about how we Montrealers don’t tolerate losing seasons.
As a prominent member in the community, Boivin should stay clear of cultural nationalist rhetoric and speak as a business leader. In this way, he could help change the public narrative concerning this issue and usher in a fresh way of looking at its hiring practices.
After all, as the greatest hockey franchise in history, isn’t it beholden to the Montreal Canadiens to give its fans nothing but the best?