Yet it was the night to beat cancer. Alicia, 16, beaming despite the courageous battle she is waging against leukemia, announced the starting lineup in the locker room in front of an emotional Martin St-Louis and seemingly concerned and touched players.
Then, other sick children lined up alternately with the players for the national anthems which followed a sober, touching and inspiring ceremony.
St-Louis summed it up well, his men had to win by “playing” hockey on the ice. These children are not playing, they are fighting fiercely and with courage for real. These kids put up a real fight.
However, it was an evening where in principle no player has to draw very far to find remarkable motivation to play in the match. It was true for the Canadian, it was also true for the visitors.
So, I have difficulty explaining how CH was able to play this match by repeating all the catastrophic patterns that made it the laughing stock of the National League just three weeks ago.
The Canadian, it’s true, was sooner or later going to play a bad game and get busted, as happened every week in October.
But Saturday night? There, I refuse.
The players did not have the right not to go out for 60 minutes on the mat, concentrated, determined. They had no right not to fight courageously. They had no right not to do everything so that these sick children left the building with a light heart.
In professional sport, you play every match with the duty to do everything to win it, knowing full well that sooner or later you are going to get flushed.
Not Saturday night. The CH players did not have the right.
Fortunately, some of them understood this. They had the compassion and sensitivity in their hearts to leave everything on ice.
Unfortunately, and this is what worries me, some others did not seem to understand the importance of this match lost in the middle of a busy schedule late in November.
Each time the Bell Center public boos its favorites, 50% of observers decry this abusive behavior of ticket payers and 50% unreservedly support this sad song of shame.
This proportion is often very similar among the players questioned in the locker room. Not Saturday night. This time, everyone in chorus except a few eternally stunned people supported the vocal depreciation of the supporters in the building. Many have certainly even booed in their living rooms or in sports bars.
All the players consulted said they fully deserved to be booed. St-Louis supported the supporters’ motion to denounce without the media even having time to ask him to comment. Why, do you think? Because it wasn’t a Saturday night like any other. This wasn’t one of those little matches tucked in the middle of 81 others.
Saturday night was not the same. No passenger had the right to enter the bus of happiness, the night train for hope, the hope to be maintained in all these sick children whose battle bears witness to what is most cruel in life. to attack what is most beautiful and most inspiring in the world, our children.
Sunday, the players had off. Not sick children. On Monday, they returned to skating light and unconscious. We trained them to forget the day before in two seconds. Not sick children who are incapable of putting their conscience to sleep.
On Tuesday, Martin’s little guys will play hockey, while the sick children will fight for real against the terrible disease. Because these children don’t have the time to take time off…
