Canadiens vs Nordiques: 38 Years Ago – The Good Friday Massacre

There have been a plethora of epic rivalries that the Montreal Canadiens have partaken in. Of course there’s the classics versus the Boston Bruins and the eternal feud against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Nothing however can reach the epitome of hate between two teams than the one between the Montreal Canadiens and the Quebec Nordiques.

The rule was simple. If you lived in Quebec City region, you cheered for the Nordiques. If you lived in the Montreal region, you cheered for the Canadiens.

Simple as that. Anything else and you were a traitor.

The rivalry has become stuff of legends. Tales of folklore are told on this day in nearly every hockey household in Quebec and of course during the holidays. It wasn’t an exaggeration that this rivalry went beyond hockey. It was defending your honor as a fan and as a citizen.

You know the stories you hear of your friend parading his Bruins jersey in downtown Montreal and getting boo’d at? Or your relative who dared to wear the famed red sweater in Toronto? Just like that. But worse.

It went beyond the Yankees versus the Red Sox.

The rough and blue collared fans of Quebec hated the snob, pretentious fans of Montreal who would hide behind their Stanley Cups and decorated history. Get out of here with your Toe Blake, we got Michel Bergeron. Not to mention, you stole Beliveau and Lafleur from us!

Not literally, but you get the picture.

The boiling point came on April 20th, 1984. A small snippet was written in “This Week In Canadiens History“, but here’s how it ultimately went down.

It’s the eve of Game 6 of the 1984 Adams Division Finals, the second round of the playoffs that year. The Canadiens are ahead 3-2 and have the chance to close the series on their rivals.

The Canadiens had already swept their other rivals, the Boston Bruins, the round prior. While the Nordiques also steamrolled their way past the Buffalo Sabres for a first round sweep.

The Canadiens’ dominance of the 1970’s were long gone. Lafleur, Shutt and Robinson was all that was left of the old guard along with Jacques Lemaire who took over Bob Berry as head coach near the end of the season.The team now belonged to captain Bob Gainey and his young scrappers named Claude Lemieux, Guy Carbonneau, Chris Chelios, Chris Nilan and Mario Tremblay. Mats Naslund was a year away from officially becoming a superstar.

That summer, Mario Lemieux went first overall and Kirk Muller second in the NHL Draft. The Canadiens would land Petr Svoboda, Shayne Corson, and Stephane Richer. Late in the third round they would also tempt fate by drafting a scrawny goaltender named Patrick Roy.

The Nordiques had the Stastny brothers – Peter, Marian and Anton, but leading the pack was a 23 year old sensation named Michel Goulet who had just scored his second consecutive 50 goal season. He would score to more to make it four in a row, then have 49 and 48 goal seasons before injuries significantly slowed him down and was ultimately traded to Chicago.

Behind them were hitters and bruisers. Dale Hunter, Pat Price, captain Mario Marois, Randy Moller and Wilf Paiment just to name a few. Future Montreal Canadiens GM Andre Savard was also part of this team.

Quebec was craving a long cup run and Montreal needed their glory back. This series would claw and scratch all the way to Game 6 and here we were at the famed Montreal Forum for what everyone expected to be an intense battle. Even Don Cherry was there for CBC and couldn’t contain his excitement.

It took 23 seconds.

Mike McPhee and Wilf Paiement dropped the gloves and the tone was set.

The first period was full of slashes and hits and cuts and elbows. Both teams were using whatever tactic possible in order to disrupt the opposition. Even Jacques Lemaire went as far as to ask the referees to check Jean Hamel’s stick and low and behold it was illegal which drew a penalty for Quebec and the fury of Michel Bergeron.

Peter Statsny would score the only goal in the first period on the powerplay and the Nordiques went to the dressing room with a 1-0 lead.

Fans were left with what was expected. Some hard hits, lots of slashing, a fight and overall intensity in the game. A classic 80’s matchup.

What would come next would make the movie Slap Shot look like a Disney movie.

The second period started off a little quieter but the intensity quickly amped up. After a series of non-calls by the referees, Chris Chelios and Dale Hunter would hit each other nonstop drawing penalties for both. Anton Statsny and Craig Ludwig would drop the gloves and even that wasn’t enough to appease both teams.

When the horn was heard, it didn’t signify the end of the period. It was time to brawl.

Fights blew up from every angle. The players were seeing red and the fans were going absolutely ballistic and some of them were going at it as well!

Tossed was Wally Weir, Peter Statsny, Louis Sleigher, and Randy Mollar. Even goaltender Clint Malarchuk was tossed for fighting.

On the Montreal side, goaltender Richard Sevigny, Mario Tremblay, Mike McPhee and Chris Nilan were given the ol’ heave-ho. When it was all said and done, a total of 198 penalty minutes were handed.

After a long delay the players finally went to their respective dressing rooms. But the third period would start off just like the second ended.

During the warmup, Guy Carbonneau and Larry Robinson would both go after Louis Sleigher, who had returned to the ice despite having gotten ejected, while a family brawl also broke out between brothers Dale and Mark Hunter. The referees had to be rushed out to the ice in order to stop the brawl.

Bruce Hood, the head official, had lost complete control of the game. He even forgot to log in the official penalties at the end of the second period, which led to the confusion of who was still in the game or not. Hood ended up retiring at the end of the playoffs but we can draw our conclusions as to how his retirement came to be.

The third period was all Canadiens. After Michel Goulet scored a powerplay goal at 2 minutes of the 3rd period to make it 2-0, the Habs decided to play hockey.

The Canadiens would score 5 consecutive goals in the third thanks to two from Steve Shutt as well as goals from Rick Green, John Chabot and Guy Carbonneau. Wilf Paiement would score with 3:10 left in the period but the Canadiens held on and won the game 5-3 and the series in six games.

Ironically, only Michel Goulet got a penalty in the third period, getting called for tripping.

Michael Farber of the Montreal Gazette wrote at the time “Forum Brawl Disgraced Game” and went as far as saying that the “players desecrated the sport.”