Hard to say just when the ghosts got into the Montreal Forum. We know that they were definitely ensconced in the rafters of that bygone rink by 1989, if only because the upstart Calgary Flames, in town that spring to challenge the Canadiens for the Stanley Cup, are on the record talking about having to conquer them. The Flames’ 20-year-old dynamo Theo Fleury, for instance: “I’ll bet if you sat there with all the lights off, when it was quiet, you’d see the ghosts skating,” he said. “Morenz, The Rocket. I don’t really believe in ghosts. But in your mind, I bet they’d be there.”
Easy to dismiss the musings of a young rookie before a big game—especially when (awkwardly enough) Maurice Richard still, at that point, had eleven years of corporeal life left to live.
But since Fleury is not the first to have evoked the spirits...
Stephen Smith is the author of Puckstruck: Distracted, Delighted and Distressed by Canada’s Hockey Obsession. He shoots left.
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