Anybody paying even an iota of consideration proper now is aware of that Montréal is (once more) a hotbed of hockey motion, and never simply courtesy of the smokin’ season-opening play of the Montreal Canadiens. Although that, too.
The upcoming World Junior Hockey Championship, the 100th anniversary celebrations of the NHL, and the approaching arrival of the favored Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour (November 12-13) are all a part of the equation. And so is that this metropolis’s supersized love of the game and their workforce, which may maybe be higher understood by visiting most of the locations the place Montréal’s loopy hockey coronary heart beats, each traditionally and as trendy monuments to the sport. So let’s start firstly…
The very first recorded hockey recreation (i.e., one which had guidelines that gamers more-or-less caught to) on an indoor rink was performed in downtown Montréal in 1875 on the Victoria Skating Rink. Although the rink, as soon as situated between Drummond and Stanley streets south of Sainte-Catherine Road, is now a parking storage, its former 10,00Zero-square-foot ice floor turned the usual for hockey rinks.
Additionally in 1875, only one block over and some blocks south of the Victoria Rink, development was starting on the Windsor Lodge (now Le Windsor Ballrooms), thought-about to be the primary “grand lodge” in Canada. It was right here, in one among its eating places, that the skilled Nationwide Hockey League (NHL) was based 100 years in the past in 1917.
The Montréal Forum was the epicentre of the town’s hockey historical past for 70 years, from 1926-’96. Known as “probably the most storied constructing in hockey,” the town’s beloved Montréal Canadiens (or “Habs”) gained 24 Stanley Cups there. It’s been repurposed as an leisure complicated that pays tribute to its earlier life: followers can sit in unique Discussion board seats and have their image taken with a statue of hockey hero Maurice “The Rocket” Richard. And if there’s one factor there’s no scarcity of in Montréal, it’s statues of Rocket Richard.
In Montréal, hockey is a faith and the legendary #9, Maurice Richard, is for all intents and functions a deity. Richard performed for the Habs from 1942-’60, was the primary participant within the NHL to pot 500 objectives and gained eight Stanley Cups. The larger-than-life bronze statue Hommage à Maurice Richard pays tribute to the larger-than-life participant on the entrance to the Maurice-Richard Arena within the metropolis’s Olympic Park.
A good larger-than-larger-than-life monument to The Rocket, appropriately titled By no means Give Up, could be discovered tucked away within the Complexe Les Ailes purchasing centre on Ste. Catherine Road within the coronary heart of downtown Montréal.
The Rocket has additionally been celebrated just lately in a mural on the aspect of Italian restaurant La Molisana within the Ahuntsic district of Montréal, near his childhood house on Rue Péloquin. It depicts a street hockey recreation (The Rocket liked his shinny) and was created by the A’Store graf and road artwork workforce, whose work can be seen on the MURAL city artwork pageant.
If anybody deserves an enormous statue, an enormous amongst males like Jean Béliveau does. The Habs captain (a staff report 10 occasions) and 17-time Stanley Cup winner is taken into account one of many biggest gamers of all time. “Gentleman Jean” is memorialized in fashion on the Colisée Jean-Béliveau in Longueuil on Montréal’s South Shore close to the place he grew up.
To not be outdone, Habs goaltending nice and Hockey Corridor of Famer Ken Dryden (with six of Lord Stanley’s Cups) has been immortalized with a sculpture in his honour on the metro degree of the Ste. Catherine Road buying centre Place Montréal Trust. It's, fittingly, titled The Goalie.
Mile End makes bagels, Little Italy makes espresso and apparently southwest Montréal neighbourhood Ville-Émard makes professional hockey gamers and managers. Mario Lemieux, Jean-Jacques Daigneault and present Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin all performed collectively on the Ville- Émard Hurricanes within the late-’70s. In the event you’re in any respect curious to know what that period was like, go no additional than Dilallo Burger, which is as loaded with wall-hung hockey nostalgia as its burgers are with juicy beefy goodness.
On the subject of shrines, the old-school Salon Barbier Ménick within the Rosemont district has performed barbershop to the hockey stars for generations, counting icons like Man Lafleur as regulars. The beloved barbershop establishment, with its reams of baseball and hockey memorabilia and photographs – its flooring is designed to resemble a hockey rink – is a veritable temple to Montréal sports activities.
And the heads of hockey gods weren’t solely given the royal remedy at Ménick’s. From 1950-’70, Ste. Catherine Road East hat makers Henri Henri bestowed a free hat on gamers who scored three or extra objectives in a recreation on the Discussion board, thus inspiring the expression “hat trick.” The expression and the shop are nonetheless very a lot alive.
And simply in case you hadn’t had fairly sufficient of Habs statues but, in the course of the Canadiens 100th anniversary celebrations in 2008-’09, 4 extra of them have been put in outdoors the hockey membership’s house ice, the Bell Centre. Represented are aforementioned legends Béliveau and Lafleur, Howie Morenz… and, sure, Rocket Richard.
Up subsequent:10 things you need to know about the World Juniors
The submit Scoring with Montréal’s historic hockey hotspots appeared first on Tourisme Montréal Blog.
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