Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce
“The Montreal Expos in the early ’80s were more popular than the Montreal Canadiens,” Mitch Melnick of TSN Radio 690 says in the documentary. “That’s a fact. That’s not pie-in-the-sky thinking from hardcore baseball fans. They were giving away 2,000 tickets a game to fill the seats at the Montreal Forum in the early ’80s while the Expos were setting franchise attendance records.”
It's not a fact per se but there's pretty strong evidence in support of this claim. Full Gazette article here.
And during this period (from 1969 through the early '80s), the Expos were 'Canada's team.' It was only once the Jays got good (1983 ish) that they actually started to push Expo fans out of Southern Ontario and the rest of Anglo Canada. Some converted. Some just disappeared. ;-)
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Mr. Melnick can say what he wants but while the Expos were extremely popular in the early 80s, it can't be said with such certainty that they were more popular than the Habs in those days.
Let's go back in time - I was a kid back then in Montreal's wider orbit.
In that era the Habs were coming off four straight Stanley Cup wins.
They won six of 10 Stanley Cups during the previous decade.
In the early 80s many of the superstars of the 70s like Guy Lafleur were still on the team.
In the first six years of the 80s, they had winning records (almost always by a wide margin) in five of them, and finished first in their division more often than not.
The early years of the 80s were also the beginning of the bitter Canadiens-Nordiques rivalry. It reached a fever pitch fairly early when the upstart Nords beat the Habs in the 1982 playoffs. The two teams met in the playoffs regularly in the years following.
The one year the Habs had a losing record in 83-84 they still made the playoffs and had a surprisingly good run (and eliminated the Nords) thanks to rookie goalie flash in the pan Steve Penney.
So sure, the Expos were a big deal too and it was a great time to be a Montreal sports fan.
But talk of the Expos eclipsing the Habs is nonsense.