by Barry Stagg
March 1995
Wendel on the Plains of Abraham
This is the month when all the semi-retired N.H.L. stalwarts finally round into major league shape after settling the nauseating lockout/strike and hitting the ice in a scurrying January season opening. For certain the team to beat in the early going is the Wendel Clark version of the Quebec Nordiques. Clark has the poly-ethnic Nords playing confident ,winning hockey as he scores at a nifty point-a-game pace. Nominal team captain Joe Sakic is leading the entire league in scoring and he is giving every indication that this year's scoring champion will be from the land of cold-footed seperatists.
Quebec has also been astute enough to seek early Newfoundland help as it called up A.H.L. sharpshooter Dwayne Norris in February. The smarts that Norris possesses after stints as a star forward in American college hockey and in international junior and Olympic play were just too much for this surging team to ignore.
Obviously Quebecersalready know that Newfoundland is a ready source of wealth for their province and its industries. Every time a " pure laine" Quebecois flicks on a light with the help of Churchill Falls electricity he should thank someone in Ottawa for the cheap resources of the tenth province. I sincerely hope that Norris gets the biggest contract ever out of the Nordiques and thus does his patriotic part to restore balance to the flow of cash between the provinces.
Norris is a quality player and character and top performances under pressure are his outstanding attributes. Wendel's Nordiques are already away out in front of the rest of the league on a character level just by having Clark in the lineup and by having Eric Lindros and big mommy Bonnie doing their caustic act out of town. It is so deliciously ironic that three years after Eric turned his overgrown but immature nose in the air and snubbed the team that Quebec is so far ahead of the mediocre Philadelphia team that is stuck with the temperamental Lindros as captain and would-be leader.
The rise of Quebec on the backs of a talented young lineup is good news for the league but sadly is bad news for the moribund Montreal Canadiens who are stuck with an aging crew of under-achieving anglophones and totally unforgiving fans. If the Nords shine on as expected and Montreal founders then any referendum battle in Quebec will be eclipsed by the wailing and condemnation coming out of the press corps in Montreal and directed at Canadiens' icon and unfortunate general manager Serge Savard.
Nothing gets bad press quicker in Montreal than a sickly Canadiens' hockey team. This year's Montreal squad has to survive on tight checking and heroic goaltending from Patrick Roy in a style not unlike that perfected by detested nemesis Punch Imlach in Toronto thirty years ago. With Toronto hockey legend Clark stirring the blood down the St. Lawrence the average Montreal hockey reporter will be on Prozac by April with gallons and gallons of sporting bile drifting out into the dirty currents of the river from countless stories on the decline of hockey in the Paris of the north.
Wendel's elevation to hockey saviour in Quebec is also a national story in Canada.Clark is as wholesomely western as was Gordie Howe in his 1950's era domination of a rough and tough six team league. Howe played in patriotically neutral Detroit but Clark is smack in the middle of the alienation melodrama being played out between reluctant Quebec nationalists and their equally hesitant and ham-handed counterparts in Reform-dominated Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The genuine good character of Wendel Clark is potentially a powerful antidote to the pomposities of Generalissimo Parizeau and Pastor Manning. A Stanley cup run by Quebec culminating in Wendel Clark parading through downtown Quebec in July with Stanley Cup held high would assure the defeat of seperatists like nothing else. Even that old soldier and sportsman Pierre Trudeau would be relegated to the waiver list when Wendel takes his team to town with the cup in hand.With a couple of parades along St. Catherine's Street through small town Quebec it would be time for Premier Clark to boot out the old war-horse from the National Assembly and weld this country together through hockey once and forever.
On a more basic level it would appear that Quebec has some stiff competition in their division from the Lemieux-less Pittsburgh Penguins. The irony just spills into this scene like snowflakes. The one remaining Quebecois hockey god is "hors de combat" and in Pittsburgh anyway while Quebec goes mad over a strong ,silent farmer from Saskatchewan .The remaining twist to the story unfolding is that Pittsburgh without Lemieux is the only team to match the Nordiques pace. With the playoff experience in the Penguin's lineup they represent a dangerous second round trap for the boys from the frozen Nord.
Forgotten in this Quebec rapture over Wendel are the fates of Clark's forlorn disciples in Toronto.The Toronto hockey team is surviving after a fashion but the throngs of Wendelphiles in Toronto are drifting without purpose or direction uncertain about bus schedules to Quebec and pathetically checking the French television listings for possible cathode-ray sightings. The emotional health of many remains a worry and without the uplifting prospect of voting Premier Bob Rae and baggage out of office this year there might be need for a special provincial task-force on this difficulty. Fortunately the therapeutic effect of off-loading the New Democratic Party from the backs of Ontario voters will in some small and pitiful way make up for the loss of the Captain to the Nordiques.
However little is being said about the potential trauma of fans having to witness Clark's Nordiques roll over the Leafs in four straight in the Stanley Cup finals. One speculator has opined that in those dire circumstances the provincial Anti-racism and Pay-equity brigades would immediately be seconded to the Leafs organization to arrange intense therapy sessions in an effort to avoid terminal depression among the shattered remnants of the team's loyal followers. That should guarantee an epidemic of treatment-induced hysteria for a decade or so.
Hockey is back and it is fun time again.Onward Wendel!
Until next month: Be proud ,Be Prosperous.