Hurricanes, N.D.G. Maroons were fierce on

B2
Ho ck ey i nside/out
the gazette
· montrealgazette.com · T h u r s d ay, April 25, 2013
Habs know they
must be tougher
DAVE STUBBS
THE GAZETTE
At one point in
Wednesday’s edgy Canadiens
practice at MTS Centre, a pro
wrestling match broke out.
Rock-solid defenceman
P.K. Subban and powerful
forward Michael Blunden
locked up during a particularly physical drill on the
boards just out of the corner,
banging off each other with
great vigour.
Subban finally took his
larger teammate into a half
bear-hug, then from behind
pretty much lifted him off
the ice and slammed him face
down onto the ice.
Penalties in a game, to be
sure, but without a referee
in sight, a point was clearly
made. Both Subban and Blunden skated away at the end of
the punishing drill, fighting
not with each other but for
their breath.
“That’s just how we’ve got
to be playing,” Subban said
after practice. “We all understand that.”
The Habs had best have
their steel-toed boots on
Thursday night when they
take on the Winnipeg Jets (8
p.m., RDS, TSN-Habs, TSN
690 Radio). The home team
is virtually eliminated from
the playoffs, absolutely needing a win and then a monumental collapse by both the
Ottawa Senators and New
York Rangers to make the
playoffs.
The Canadiens need only
one point in their final two
games to secure home-ice advantage in the playoffs after
Toronto’s loss to the Tampa
Bay Lightning on Wednesday
night.
“We need to play with more
intensity, we all know that,”
Canadiens coach Michel
Therrien said. “Especially
when we start the game
(lately), this is an aspect that
I believe we’ve gone through
the motions a little too much.
And then we try to react.
“For the most part this season, we established the tone
of the game. We need to get
back to those good habits.
Today’s practice was not different than any others. It was
WINNIPEG —
gazette files
An old photo from a former hockey league: Canadiens’ general manager Marc Bergevin, left, Mario Lemieux, an unknown
teammate and Daniel Faubert. J.J. Daigneault is at bottom. The Ville-Emard Hurricanes produced three NHL players.
Hurricanes, N.D.G. Maroons
were fierce on-ice rivals
‘We were always 1-2
… It’s always us and
them at the end’
BRENDA BRANSWELL
THE GAZETTE
The Ville-Émard Hurricanes
got off the ground in the mid1960s when church parishes
had minor hockey teams.
“When we first started, we
ran into a lot of opposition
from different churches,” former Hurricanes coach Ron
Stevenson said.
“They didn’t want to release the kids so that (they)
could play for the Hurricanes
and stuff like that.”
Stevenson, a Montreal police sergeant-detective at the
time, and the Dilallo brothers of Ville-Émard — Tony
and his late brother, John —
launched the minor hockey
association. Their brothers,
Louis and Carlo Dilallo, also
got involved. Louis served as
president of the Hurricanes
and Carlo coached. Their
parents owned the Dilallo
Burger restaurant in VilleÉmard.
Two Hurricanes teams won
provincial championships.
“We were always going
for the provincials, we were
always in the running. We
Peter McCabe/THE GAZETTE
Ron Stevenson coached Mario Lemieux, Marc Bergevin and
Jean-Jacques Daigneault on the Ville-Émard Hurricanes.
had good teams,” said Tony
Dilallo, 72, who also coached.
Their teams were welldressed and the Dilallo restaurant put a lot of money
into the Hurricanes, Stevenson said.
The original restaurant
was located on Monk Blvd. at
the site of today’s Monk métro station. It doubled as the
Hurricanes’ clubhouse for
team and coaches’ meetings.
A skate-sharpening machine
was set up in the basement.
“We had a lot of kids that
were really not well-to-do
down here,” Dilallo said
while having lunch last week
at the Dilallo Burger restaurant on Allard St.
“A lot of the coaches at our
meetings would say, ‘So-andso from the Point — because
we had kids from (Point St.
Charles) that came and joined
us — doesn’t have a pair of
skates.’ It was the third pair
he outgrew that year. So at
that time, everybody would
say we need $2 from everybody to buy Pierre a new pair
of skates and the guys would
just take a deuce out of their
pockets and put it down and
Pierre had his skates.
“They were really there for
the kids,” Dilallo said. “It was
touching.”
For mer Canadien Sergio Momesso played for the
N.D.G. Maroons and squared
off against Mario Lemieux,
Marc Bergevin and Jean-
Jacques Daigneault on the
Hurricanes. (They were later
his teammates on the Montreal-Concordia midget TripleA team coached by Clément
Jodoin, now an assistant
coach with the Canadiens.)
The Maroons and Hurricanes had a heated rivalry,
Momesso said.
“We were always 1-2,” he
said. “They were one and we
were two. We had good teams.
It’s always us and them at the
end.
“They always had that extra superstar that no one else
had,” Momesso said of Lemieux. “He obviously was the
difference when we got down
to a final game or in the last
period he would get that goal
to put them over the top.
“I remember in peewee
everyone was coming to
watch, ‘Who’s this kid? Who’s
this big kid?’ But then you
realized they had more than
just him. They had a helluva
a team besides Mario.”
The Hur ricanes were
forced to merge in 1981 with
the Maroons and became
known as the Hurons.
“It was sad,” Dilallo said
about the end of the Hurricanes. “But I enjoyed every
year I was there. It was one of
the highlights of my life.”
bbranswell@
montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @bbranswell
branswell ‘We just loved playing’
Continued from B1
He remembers Lemieux
being spat on a few times in
peewee when he went on the
ice by mothers from opposing
teams.
“I guess they were jealous
because he would be beating
their team,” Stevenson said.
The Hurricanes won two
provincial championships:
their midget Double-A team
in 1978 and their bantam
Double-A team in 1980. The
latter was Lemieux, Bergevin
and Daigneault’s final season
with the Hurricanes before
moving on to midget.
Bergevin said they won
most of their tournaments,
although not all of them, and
noted how they didn’t do well
at the Quebec International
Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament. Looking at his peewee
team photo, Bergevin rhymed
off the names of some former
teammates.
“Maybe half the team went
on to play major junior,”
which is rare, he said.
When the Hurricanes travelled to Chicoutimi for a bantam tournament, Bergevin
recounted how the players
all missed curfew when they
went roller-skating.
“Back then roller skates
were à la mode, so we all
went,” Bergevin said. “We
missed curfew and I remember (Stevenson) got mad.”
Stevenson wasn’t pleased
with how his team played in
the tournament semifinal
against their big rivals, a
team from Granby. They
squeaked past Granby 2-1
thanks to their goaltender.
When he got wind of the
missed curfew, Stevenson
ordered the kids to be in bed
at 7:30 p.m. in the homes
where they were billeted on
the Saturday night before
the final. He had Lemieux’s
older brother Alain, who was
playing for the Chicoutimi
Saguenéens at the time, along
with another player from that
Quebec Major Junior Hockey
League team, check to make
sure the curfew was respected.
The Hurricanes won the
tournament, beating a team
from Toronto 11-2. “Mario
was well rested,” Stevenson
said, smiling. “He contributed eight goals in the final.”
Like Lemieux, Daigneault
was from Ville-Émard and
said they were good friends
as young kids, but there was
also a lot of rivalry because
they always played street
hockey against one and other.
“Every time they split up
the teams they split myself,
Mario on the other side. But
the games didn’t always end
the right way,” Daigneault
laughed. “We all had the competitive edge.”
All three went to the same
high school, École HonoréMercier.
“I’m the only one that went,
though,” Bergevin said.
“They didn’t go as much,”
he added, diplomatically.
In summer, they played
baseball, but lots of street
hockey as well. In winter,
they spent hours at outdoor
rinks on weekends.
“We’d go outside with our
gear and play from 9 until 3
in the afternoon,” Bergevin
said. “So we played all the
time, and then at night we’d
go out and play. ... Now I think
kids they have more activities
they don’t spend their whole
afternoon playing hockey
outside.”
Neither Bergevin nor Daigneault had visions of an
NHL career at that point in
their young lives. A big Canadiens fan, Daigneault said he
was having fun, wanted to get
better and played as much
street hockey as possible.
“It was a passion,” Bergevin said. “We just loved playing. I never played hoping to
be in the NHL one day. I just
played.”
bbranswell@
montrealgazette.com
intense and we worked on
things that we believe need
work.”
If the Canadiens showed a
flicker of improvement Tuesday in the latter stages of a 3-2
loss to the New Jersey Devils,
the Habs’ fifth loss in their
past six games, they’re hardly out of the woods. Indeed,
with the playoffs less than a
week away, this team is still
moderately deep in the forest.
All the buzzwords and bitesize nuggets were spoken
after practice Thursday:
urgency, desperation, commitment, attention to detail,
return to systems.
Against the Jets, the Canadiens will face a big, young,
strong team that employs a
hard-hitting forecheck fortified by a hulking defence
corps.
The Canadiens, defenceman Josh Gorges said, will
succeed only by playing a
style that works wonderfully
— that is, when it’s used.
“When the opportunity to
get a hit is there, we have to
take it and finish — and finish hard,” Gorges said of the
physical game.
“But if it’s not there, I don’t
think we run around and look
for it.”
Despite the intensity of
practice, the Canadiens
didn’t seem to be weighed
down by the gravity of their
slump.
“But to say we’re having
fun?” Gorges said, raising
an eyebrow. “Winning is fun.
When you’re losing, it’s not
fun.”
Echoed centreman Tomas
Plekanec: “When you’re not
winning games, you’re never
happy.”
There have been no extraordinary players-only meetings through the recent skid,
Plekanec said. No paint-peeling dressing-room rants by
anyone.
“We always talk, that’s
not different now,” he said.
“When you’re not winning or
having tough times, you talk
about what do you want to
do during practice, before or
during games.”
dstubbs@
montrealgazette.com
stubbs ‘No pressure’
Continued from B1
And then Therrien dangled
a bit of a carrot about the possible length of this second audition.
“It all depends on his performance,” the coach said
with a coy grin, asked whether Tinordi could see playoff
action. “We wish. If we put
him out there (Thursday), it’s
because we hope he’s capable
of being a presence out there.
If he’s doing good, why not
(compete in the playoffs)? It’s
going to be a great opportunity for him.
“But there no pressure,” he
stressed. “We hope he’s going to learn (Thursday). For
these young kids, it’s always
about learning.”
Therrien wouldn’t bite,
even nibble, when asked
whether Tinordi’s size and
edge might fill a void since
the season-ending knee injury suffered eight games ago
by Alexei Emelin.
“I don’t think you could ask
a 21-year-old kid to replace a
guy who’s 26 (in fact, Emelin
turns 27 on Thursday),” he
said of the two defencemen.
“And Emelin’s not here. I’m
not going to talk about him.”
Tinordi is bound to get
some duty on the penalty
kill, something that’s a bit of
a specialty. The Canadiens
have a kill rate of less than
63 per cent in their last six
games, the 1-5 stumble in that
stretch troubling with the
playoffs looming.
Special teams’ work and
using his size will be key
aspects to the youngster’s
second audition, which begins against the do-or-die
Winnipeg Jets.
And after the regular-season finale in Toronto on Saturday?
“Playoff hockey is something I’ve watched my whole
life,” Tinordi said. “As a kid,
you always dream of being a
part of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Hopefully, it’s going to
become a reality.”
dstubbs@
montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @Dave_Stubbs
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