MONTREAL (AP) -In all of hockey\’s history, there is no team quite like the Montreal Canadiens.
The club in the iconic red, white and blue jerseys with the CH logo is the leader in Stanley Cup victories with 24, trailing only the New York Yankees – 27 World Series titles – for most championships by a franchise in one of the four major sports.
On Friday night, with a game at the Bell Centre against longtime rival Boston Bruins, the Canadiens will celebrate the 100th anniversary of their founding as a French-Canadian professional team at the old Windsor Hotel in Montreal on Dec. 4, 1909.
The Canadiens have sent 44 players to the Hockey Hall of Fame and another 10 have gone in as builders of the sport. There is fiery goal-scorer Maurice “Rocket\’\’ Richard, elegant center Jean Beliveau and dashing winger Guy Lafleur.
They had the player who popularized the slap shot, Bernard “Boom Boom\’\’ Geoffrion, and the one who made wearing a mask standard equipment for goaltenders, Jacques Plante.
um, was said to be haunted by ghosts who would cause the puck to bounce in their favor at critical times in important games.
Most of Montreal\’s mystique springs from a 24-year period from 1956 to 1979 during which they won 15 Stanley Cups, including a record five in a row from 1956 to 1960, four in a five-year stretch from 1965 to 1969 and four straight from 1976 to 1979.
For Rejean Houle, a solid winger who played 11 seasons from 1969 into the early 1980s, later served as general manager and still works for the club in public relations, the Canadiens have been a lifelong obsession.
“I thought I was privileged to play with guys I had seen in the 1960s – Beliveau, Henri Richard, Yvan Cournoyer, Jacques Laperriere, J.C. Tremblay and Gump Worsley,\’\’ he said recently with a big laugh. “That was special to me.\’\’
The Canadiens started a century ago in a dispute between the owners of the Montreal Wanderers and their league at the time, the Eastern Canadian Hockey Association. Frozen out by the other teams, the owners of the Wanderers started a new league, the National Hockey Association, and needed teams to fill it.
The free-spending owner of the Renfrew Creamery Kings, 24-year-old Ambrose O\’Brien, financed a startup team in Montreal, which as a drawing card was made up of players of French-Canadian descent.
red to themselves in French as habitants, or settlers, and the nickname Habs was taken up by some, although that name is almost exclusively used by English-speaking fans now.
Their first game was Jan. 5, 1910, at 3,500-seat Jubilee Arena in Montreal\’s east end. Star scorer Edouard “Newsy\’\’ Lalonde netted the team\’s first goal and Georges Poulin got the overtime winner in a 7-6 victory over the Cobalt Silvers Kings.
The Canadiens finished last with a 2-10 record in their first season.
They were sold the following season to local wrestling promoter George Kennedy, owner of the Club Athletique Canadien. He gave them a CAC crest on their jerseys, moved them to the larger Westmount Arena, and their fortunes turned with the signing of a brilliant goaltender from Chicoutimi, Que. – Georges Vezina, for whom the NHL\’s top goaltender award is named.
It was also when they dropped their French-only rule.
In 1916, at the height of the First World War, the Canadiens won the NHA and then defeated the Portland Rosebuds of the Pacific Coast league to claim their first Stanley Cup.
The Canadiens joined teams in Toronto and Ottawa to form the NHL in 1917, and Kennedy split the team from his other interests and gave them the CH (for Club de Hockey Canadien) crest they still wear.
hat folded after winning two Stanley Cups during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In the 1920s, the NHL found its first superstar in Howie Morenz, who teamed with Aurel Joliat on a line that helped the Canadiens to Stanley Cups in 1924, 1926, 1930 and 1931.
Then came lean years until 1943-44, when a young winger from the city\’s north end, Rocket Richard, made the team and completed the powerful Punch Line with Toe Blake and Elmer Lach, and ended a 14-year Cup drought.
In 1944-45, Richard dazzled the hockey world, becoming the NHL\’s first 50-goal scorer in only 50 games. Another Cup followed in 1946.
The Canadiens of the 1950s were all-but unbeatable, with Blake behind the bench and with Richard, Beliveau, Geoffrion, scoring ace Dickie Moore on the wing, Plante in goal, the dominating Doug Harvey on defense and many other top players. They won in 1953 and then took five in a row to close out the decade.
Beliveau and Henri Richard, who would go on to win a record 11 Cups in his career, continued into the 1960s on another dynastic team with Worsley in goal. A chance for another five in a row was interrupted in 1967 when the Toronto Maple Leafs won their last Stanley Cup.
iveau in the line of French-Canadian stars.
Scotty Bowman, who had grown up in the Montreal system, took over as coach and led a team with Lafleur, Cournoyer, Jacques Lemaire, Pete Mahovlich, Bob Gainey and the Big Three on defense – Serge Savard, Guy Lapointe and Larry Robinson – to five more Cups, the last in 1979.
Savard, who took over as general manager in 1983, rebuilt the Canadiens. Led by goaltender Patrick Roy, they won another Cup in 1986.
In 1993, Roy was unbeatable as an upstart team led by Kirk Muller and Vincent Damphousse won 10 consecutive overtime games en route to its 24th and last Stanley Cup.
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