The Montreal Canadiens are getting tremendous support at the Bell Centre, but haven't yet been able to turn that energy into results in the playoffs.Adil Boukind/The Globe and Mail
After they got thumped 8-3 at the Bell Centre by the Buffalo Sabres to force a Game 7 on the road last round, Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki laid down an ultimatum to his troops.
“We can’t let that be our last game here,” he said.
Sure enough, the Habs squeezed out an overtime win in western New York to reach the Eastern Conference final, and just earned a split in their first two games against the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, N.C.
With the series returning to Montreal for Game 3 on Monday, Suzuki and company have a chance to redeem themselves in front of their fans and confront a quirk of this otherwise charmed playoff run: the team’s home ice disadvantage.
The Canadiens are 2-4 in the playoffs at the Bell Centre, compared to an impressive 7-3 record on the road, despite – or maybe because of – playing in one of the league’s most electric buildings.
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The players know it, and insist they feel duty-bound to reverse the trend. Said Josh Anderson, the mountain of a power forward who scored twice in the losing effort Saturday: “We have no doubt in our mind that we have to play a little better at home. We kind of owe it to our fans and to ourselves to have better starts there and play a full hockey game.”
That sense of soldierly obligation may be the rub, however. At this stage of the playoffs no one wants to talk about pressure – the hobgoblin that risks appearing at the mere mention of its name – but it is hard to dodge the concept when it comes to hockey in Montreal. The city is so hungry, the stakes are so high, that it can take you out of your game.
It’s easy to imagine how the delirium in Montreal could get to you. The Lenovo Center in Raleigh boasts of being the NHL’s loudest arena, but in truth it doesn’t come close to the Bell Centre. Even the decibel counters on the hometown scoreboards reveal that, with Raleigh rarely besting 105, while Montreal routinely tops 110.
The screams of 21,000 supporters can provide an energy boost, but they can also be an inducement to over-ambition, to ill-advised heroics, hubris, or just plain nerves.
Canadiens fans have packed the Bell Centre in the team's run to the third round of the playoffs. They'll hope to see the team's third at-home playoff win on Monday against the Carolina Hurricanes.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Assistant coach Stéphane Robidas came closest to broaching the subject in his off-day news conference Friday, when he was asked why the team plays so well on the road – though even he resorted to hand-waving when the taboo came too close.
“Maybe we keep it simple on the road, we’re not forcing anything,” he said. “Maybe sometimes at home, in front of our fans, we maybe want to do a little too much. I’m not sure what’s the reason … For whatever reason we’ve just been a better team on the road.”
Head coach Martin St. Louis echoed his assistant: “The fans have poured so much love and so much support, we want to do it for them so bad, sometimes we try too hard.”
The truth is, home-ice advantage isn’t what it used to be, not just in Montreal but across the league. Zachary Bischof, a researcher at Georgia Tech, has shown that the winning percentages of home and away teams have been steadily converging, with some fluctuations, since the birth of the NHL in 1917. The road team managed to win only about 35 per cent of their games at the league’s inception, compared to roughly 45 per cent in more recent seasons.
The same trend has been observed across major league sports, with better travel arrangements, more professional officiating, and even ticket resale markets being floated as possible factors. Flying private, staying in five-star hotels, and seeing your own fans in the arena thanks to StubHub can now make playing on the road feel like a holiday.
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But none of that explains the Habs actively playing worse in Montreal these playoffs. It is, of course, a small sample size. But the team was also slightly weaker at home during the regular season: 24-15-2 in its own barn versus 24-9-8 everywhere else.
The ghosts of the Forum were reputed to help the Canadiens, granting them puck luck and hovering over their shoulders when the going got tough. The ghosts of the Bell Centre are at risk of morphing into a different breed, haunting the team with burdensome hopes and memories of past futility.
That is, unless Suzuki can make good on his vow and exorcise the spectres of Game 6 against Buffalo, along with the other failures that have befallen this team since migrating from its glorious old arena.
“It was a tough one last time we played there,” said the captain in the locker room after Game 2 in Raleigh. “Can’t wait to get back in front of our fans … We gotta take care of home ice.”