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Canadiens attendance


DJ_Laszlo

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Hey guys,

I'm a regular visitor of HW but don't post all that very often...just out of curiosity - does anyone know when the Canadiens last time did NOT have a sellout crowd in Montreal? It must have been centuries ago :blink:

Edited by DJ_Laszlo
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Hey,

just out of curiosity - does anyone know when the Canadiens last time did NOT have a sellout crowd in Montreal? It must have been centuries ago :blink:

1883 - at the game against the Mackinac Islanders. The Islanders stars at the time were the Ignace gang: Ignace Mackinac (goaltender), Ignace Petosky (defence), Ignace Grayling (defense), Ignace Mackinaw (forward), Ignace Marquette (center), Ignace Saint (winger), Ignace Traverse (forward), Ignace Cheboygan (forward/defence), Ignace St-Marie (forward/defense) & Ignace Gaylord (forward/defence). There were other players on the team also but they have been forgotten or were not considered important enough to have their names left on the team's roster. Some say that this is really due to a conspiracy by the Ignace gang. These allegations were never proven.

By the way, there's an interesting story behind the fact that all the kids have the same name...

In 1862, a contingent of the 13th Northern Michigan Rod & Gun Dixie Fusiliers had finally collected enough money to be able to go off and fight alongside their brothers from the great state of Alabama (from which they had emmigrated to set up a cotton plantation on Mackinac Island worked by Indian slave labour - it didn't work, by the way... severe reservations on the part of the local indians...).

The thing was that, after they spent all of their money on buying illegally imported grey cloth for uniforms (due to the Yankee blockade at Flint by the Unionist Confederation of Pontiac/Chevrolet Indian Tribes), they couldn't afford rail or horse-drawn transportation to the battle lines in the Virginias...

This being the case, they had to walk all the way, all the while trying a great number of routes before successfully sneaking through the blockade. This added 2 years to their journey but they forged on anyway. Their trip to the battlefront took them a bit less than five years...

Well, as historians know, they got there late... really late... way really late...

So, as you can imagine, all those wives left behind began to get rather antsy. Well, at the time, there was one man who didn't get accepted into the contingent that went off to war. This was due to the fact that he was a half-deaf, half-blind. half-mute half-breed. His name was Boomer Ignace. Boomer was the illegitimate son of Billy-Bo-Bob Johnston and a local native girl, Falling Rocks Ignace. The Johnston family refused to accept the baby that Billy-Bo-Bob sired, so he was kept by the Ignace family. His mother, Falling Rocks, insisted on giving him a shortened version of his biological father's name, (a nick-name, really) so she called him Boomer. Rumour was that the child was called Boomer also primarily because of what Billy-Bo-Bob would cry at his peak times with Falling Rocks.

In any event, due to the long-term absence of the local men, Boomer became a well-beloved contributor to local community harmony. The children, all boys, who were born in the next year or so were very similar in physical attributes. Nothing was said about this because this situation was considered a local 'affair' and it was accompanied by a community-wide acceptance of this development.

When word came that the men were returning and that their arrival was several days away, it was strongly suggested that Boomer go west and make a new life and find a new wife for himself. Boomer readily agreed and, with tearful goodbyes by those who took him in during their time of desolation, he left the next day. Boomer was never heard from again. No one knows where he went after he left the area.

When the husbands arrived and noticed the young brood of what they called 'quarter-breeds' running all over, their protests and cries of indignation were quickly quieted by the promise of enforced functional celibacy for a time equivalent to the years that they were away at war. The husbands also soon agreed that the youngsters would be adopted into their families and that the children would maintain their common given name - Ignace.

These boys grew up and bonded intensely with each other and, due to a common love of sports and the nature of the weather in the area, they became avid hockey players. They eventually formed the major part of the roster of that team that went on to play the Montreal Canadiens.

Though the game is a forgotten sports event, it is still a great source of local pride in the Mackinac community. Every year, on the date of the game, all roads to the community are closed to the outside world and the community plays a hockey game in memory of that great event in local history. The players representing the local team always win 1 - 0. This is reputed to be the actual final score of the historical meeting of the two teams.

The historians of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and of the NHL do not admit to the fact that this game ever took place. Yet, the few remaining senior members of the Montreal community still talk about the tales their grandfathers told them about this game. Generally, these older citizens are either living in closed wards in old age homes or are believed to needing to be institutionalized.

As to the less than capacity crowd at Montreal, there's another story involved here. This story will be dealt with when research has been made to my satisfaction. Yet, if there is sufficient demand by my readers, I will share the facts as I have collected and organized them so far...

GO :hlogo: GO!

Edited by shortcat1
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no comments?

GO :hlogo: GO!

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Well, not quite centuries ago... but according to this, the last non-sellout was Jan. 8, 2004, when "20,706 were on hand for a 4-1 loss to Tampa Bay."

May the sellouts continue evermore. :hlogo:

Wow! Even our non-sellouts are over 20 000.

My family pointed out that sellouts are based on tickets sold, and since scalpers probably buy a whole bunch, does anyone have a clue how many of the "scalped" tickets get bought? Are we really 100% capacity EVERY game? Or we just sell them out to the scalpers? (which is still a pretty big feat, and I guess the scalpers wouldn't keep buying if they couldn't turn around and sell them, but still, just out of curiosity...)

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Haha, where did you find that? Or did you wrote that up? lol, nice stuff

tankuverimuch...

I found this information in my personal ROR (reinvention of reality) file. I trust that it was enlightening and fulfilling.

The effort to bring this history to reality was beyond imagination, as you can imagine, I imagine.

GO :hlogo: GO!

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1883 - at the game against the Mackinac Islanders. The Islanders stars at the time were the Ignace gang: Ignace Mackinac (goaltender), Ignace Petosky (defence), Ignace Grayling (defense), Ignace Mackinaw (forward), Ignace Marquette (center), Ignace Saint (winger), Ignace Traverse (forward), Ignace Cheboygan (forward/defence), Ignace St-Marie (forward/defense) & Ignace Gaylord (forward/defence). There were other players on the team also but they have been forgotten or were not considered important enough to have their names left on the team's roster. Some say that this is really due to a conspiracy by the Ignace gang. These allegations were never proven.

What the HELL are you talking about, man? Everyone knows that game WAS sold out! The thing is, ya see, during the first intermission, a whole new row of seats was built at center-ice to try and give people a whole new viewing perspective on the game, aswell as giving the players some new obsticals to play around. As soon as these seats were finished (They were basically fold-e-chairs that were drilled into the ice by Polish strongman Wychaslav Gretzky) they were put on sale and the demand for them was so damn high that no one spend any money on anything else, they just saved up as much money as they could so they could buy the seats. This caused the entire North American economy to collapse, thus leading to the Great Depression, which obviously meant no money, so these ultra-expensive seats went unsold. Personally, I blame the Ignace Gang for the whole thing.

If you want to find the last no-sellout crowd to watch a Habs game, you gotta go WAYYYYYYYYYY back... See, back in the 1400's, right, they hadn't actually invented 'seats,' so when hockey was played it was impossible to actually sell every 'seat' in the house essentially impossible.

And no, I'm not sober.

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