Eight years ago, Christopher Curtis covered the Canadiens’ golf tournament in Laval-sur-le-Lac on his first day as a Montreal Gazette sports writer covering the team after spending the previous three years working as a city reporter.
Curtis wrote that the whole thing was overwhelming, adding: “There’s no other way to describe the scene outside the club.”
It was a fantastic and funny piece of writing and that heartbreaking scene in Laval-sur-le-Lac will be back on Monday when the Canadians host their golf tournament with players, coaches, management, fans and big-money sponsors. played in charity. event. Due to COVID-19, the last time the Canadians held the full tournament, including players, was in 2019.
“Charity of the Montreal Canadiens
golf tournament
it’s not just a day for the players to get together and have a round with some of the club’s financial backers,” wrote Curtis, who spent one season covering the Canadiens and left the Gazette in 2020 to launch The Rover, a mob of financed. investigative journalism project. “It’s the start of a campaign that, under the best of circumstances, will end 10 months from now with a Stanley Cup in hand and a city on fire.
“Everything starts with this carnival
madness
on the golf course,” Curtis wrote, describing golfers and other golfers walking past a brass band playing ragtime jazz and entering the clubhouse.
Curtis added: “Picture an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, but less subtle.”
He also wondered why he bothered to lock the doors of his Toyota Echo in the parking lot, which was full of BMWs, Ferraris and other luxury sports cars.
In 2014, when Curtis covered the tournament, the big news was that former GM Marc Bergevin announced that the team would not have a captain for the upcoming season, instead using four alternate captains after the departure of Brian Gionta.
Much of the focus in that year’s tournament was on PK Subban.
Bergevin and Subban are both gone from the Canadiens now, and the only players still on the team who were there in 2014 are Brendan Gallagher and Carey Price, who is now on long-term injured reserve.
There have also been many changes since the Canadians’ last golf tournament in 2019. The only players remaining from that tournament are Gallagher, Price, Nick Suzuki, Jonathan Drouin, Paul Byron and Joel Armia.
Monday’s tournament will be the first for Jeff Gorton, new vice president of hockey operations, GM Kent Hughes, coach Martin St. Louis and most of the players. Gorton, Hughes and St. We may also find out when the Canadiens will name a new captain, with Nick Suzuki and Brendan Gallagher the leading candidates.
The weather forecast looks great with a mix of sun and cloud and a high of 26C.
After getting through the worst of COVID-19 in the last two years, it will be great to see the “carnival of madness” of Canadians return to Laval-sur-le-Lac.
Don’t expect this season to end with a “Stanley Cup in hand and a city on fire” for the rebuilding Canadiens.
As Curtis said in 2014: “It’s a long time before this whole thing goes off the rails and explodes into a million little
controversy.”
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