Is there a team whose championship has been celebrated more often than the 1993 Canadiens?
No scientific measure exists, obviously, to know the answer. But the fact remains that each year that ends with a 3 or an 8 is an opportunity to celebrate what the team led by Jacques Demers accomplished in 1993.
This year, the celebration takes place this week, and we are taking the opportunity to mark the retirement of Dr. David Mulder.
Guy Carbonneau is well placed to talk about the celebrations. Captain in 1993, he also served as head coach of the Canadian. Apart from a two-year break in Dallas, he has remained in Montreal since he hung up his skates, and he now knows the media apparatus behind the CH, through his role at RDS.
Carbonneau remembers that in 1993, players were reminded that the team had never gone “more than seven years without a Cup.” These people had obviously forgotten the famine of 1931 to 1944, but no matter: since Maurice Duplessis became Prime Minister again, the team had never waited more than seven years.
“So in 2003, 10 years, it was already special. Then it went up: 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, and there, 30 years, said Carbonneau, in a press scrum at the Bell Centre. At first, it felt like a breeze to be the last team to win, but I find that a long time.
“And not just in Montreal. In Canada, it is even more difficult to understand. »
Éric Desjardins, who also lives in the greater Montreal region, added to this double drought: that of the Habs, but also that of the Canadian clubs. A shortage that is all the harder to understand given that the share of Canadian teams in the NHL, without being nearly a third as was the case in 1993, has nevertheless remained at 20% or more throughout this period. All things considered, Canadian teams should have won the Stanley Cup at least six times since Paul DiPietro, Ed Ronan and Gary Leeman did it.
For Patrice Brisebois, the long period without a Cup only proves the “exceptional” side of the CH’s 1993 vintage. “The way we did it, it’s exceptional. Ten victories in overtime, he says. Nobody saw us there. There was Quebec, Boston… Pittsburgh was the team to beat. »
“As a young guy, I found that the more the series went on, the better we got. We reached overtime and I was confident, I knew we were going to win. It’s easy to say after the fact, but we had the best goalkeeper, Patrick got into the heads of the other teams. We never knew who was going to score, but we knew we would win. That’s what was beautiful about 1993.”
A large majority of the members of the edition were there. According to a list provided by the CH, only Jean-Jacques Daigneault, John LeClair, Kirk Muller and Kevin Haller were missing among those who played most of the playoff games. Jacques Demers, whose state of health now complicates such outings, was not there either.
The group met on Wednesday for dinner, and did it again on Thursday. “It doesn’t really change, the characters stay the same, we’re just whiter, older, we have children, grandchildren. The comics remain the comics, the serious ones remain more serious,” describes Desjardins.
We guess, of course, that the fifty-year-olds that most of them have become will celebrate less vigorously than the young adults of the past. Talk to Éric Desjardins, who, as a Quebecer AND hero of Game 2 in the final, had plenty of opportunities to celebrate.
A summer in Quebec, as a Stanley Cup winner with the Canadiens, what was it like? “It’s really tiring! he replies, laughing. They’re talking about the Stanley Cup hangover… I think we got that! »
The Canadian’s three decades without a Stanley Cup may be the talk of the town, but Éric Desjardins also played for the Flyers, who will visibly reach 50 years without a big trophy in 2025. The former defender has not been kind to his old organization. “They don’t get any closer. Danny Brière [the CEO] has a lot of work to do. They made “moves” that disconnected me a little. The exchange of [Claude] Giroux… It may be a joint decision, but there is no longer an identity. It’s hard to watch for an old man. Maybe that will change. They are bringing back veterans, Keith Jones, John LeClair into the organization. And the coach, we can always wonder…” The coach in question being of course John Tortorella.
