Category: Sports

Admit it: You had a feeling it would happen. I had a feeling it would happen.

How could anyone not?

Chris Froome, the four-time Tour de France winner, confirmed Wednesday that he tested positive for excessively high amounts of the asthma drug salbutamol during the Vuelta a España in September, on his way to victory in that Grand Tour. The level of the drug found in his urine was twice the amount allowed by anti-doping rules.

This news comes as no surprise. Not necessarily because it was Froome, the 32-year-old rider for Britain’s Team Sky who has dominated cycling in recent years. But because the revelation fits right in with a Tour tradition.

So Froome’s name now goes on the growing list of cycling champions turned infamous for failed drug tests or doping admissions: Lance Armstrong. Floyd Landis. Jan Ullrich. Alberto Contador. And on and on.

The last time there were back-to-back Tours de France without the winner becoming entangled in a doping scandal was 1995, when Miguel Induráin of Spain won his fifth and final Tour. (Yet he, too, once failed a test for an asthma drug but was not punished.)

That’s an entire generation of embarrassment for a sport and its biggest stars. Three of those riders — Armstrong, Landis and Contador — have been stripped of some or all of their victories, but those falls from grace didn’t happen without a fight. And it looks as if Froome is preparing to dig in for one, too.

Froome, who has had asthma since childhood and has often used inhalers in public, may face a suspension of a year or more. But don’t think for a second that he and his powerful, often sanctimonious team are going to roll over and accept a ban.

Be prepared for explanations and excuses, and they had better be good, because cycling investigators have heard some doozies. Tyler Hamilton once blamed a doping positive on a vanishing twin in his mother’s womb. Landis once attributed a suspicious surge in testosterone on too many swigs of whiskey.

For the moment, Froome is free to continue racing, and he isn’t panicking. At least not publicly.

He told The Guardian and Le Monde that his asthma had worsened during the Vuelta, so he just followed a Team Sky doctor’s orders to increase the amount of salbutamol he was already taking. The drug opens airways — an undeniably helpful result in a sport like cycling — and some argue that if a handful of riders can take it for asthma, then every rider should be allowed to do the same. And why wouldn’t they? Salbutamol has been used to increase endurance, burn fat and increase lean muscle mass — basically the reasons the World Anti-Doping Agency affixed a limit to the amount an athlete could have in their system.

But even if a doctor told Froome to take more of the drug, Froome should have known better — he must know better — because that isn’t going to fly with anti-doping experts.

To be even clearer: If Froome’s version of events is true, he made a rookie mistake. It would also be a surprise if Froome couldn’t feel the difference between the regular amount of salbutamol he takes and twice that amount. And the consequences of getting caught doing so should have been obvious to an athlete who — as he admitted — knew he was going to be tested repeatedly.

So right now we know this: Something went very wrong for Froome at the Vuelta, and that something, now and perhaps forever, has put a black mark next to his name in every record book.

“I am confident that we will get to the bottom of this,” Froome wrote on his Twitter page. “Unfortunately I can’t share any more information than I already have.”

As you read this sentence, Dave Brailsford, Team Sky’s principal and founder, is becoming an expert on salbutamol, which is a twist. Over the years, he has talked a lot about drugs, but only about how none of his riders use them, and often — despite increasingly unexplainable incidents — with how-dare-you-insinuate-that-they-are-not-clean indignation.

In 2016, he brushed off the revelation by Russian hackers that the 2012 Tour winner, Bradley Wiggins, had gotten official clearance to use more than his fair share of otherwise restricted or barred drugs. That same year, he dealt with the fallout from the delivery of a mysterious medical package to Wiggins at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné, a critical Tour de France warm-up race.

Froome’s failed test could be different, though. Team Sky was founded in 2009 on the pompous premise that the organization had zero tolerance for performance-enhancing drug use and that it would fire anyone with a doping past. It was quite a bold and somewhat ridiculous idea, and the sideways glances only multiplied as Froome and Team Sky ascended mountain after mountain with improbable ease.

We’ll find out now if Team Sky’s stated zero tolerance applies to its best rider. If Froome can’t wiggle out of a suspension with an acceptable explanation, does it mean his time with Sky is over? My guess is it won’t — at least not if Brailsford can help it. After all, cycling’s rules are often broken or, at the very least, bent to fit the needs of a team or its star.

But if history has taught us anything, it is that the most dominant riders in cycling are the ones who fall the hardest.

The history of the National Hockey League can hardly be written without large swaths of text devoted to the legends of the Montreal Canadiens. The mythology built up around the team, starting in its city and its province, then exported across Canada, throughout the league and across generations is arguably the foundation on which the league could grow from a quaint winter pastime into a business that now generates more than $4.5 billion in revenue.

Windsor, Ont., my hometown, sits at an odd nexus of Original Six hagiography. The Detroit Red Wings played across the river. The Toronto Maple Leafs were beamed into homes by the CBC on Saturday night. But that area of the country carries a deep connection to French culture, which helped create Detroit — gave it its name, le détroit du lac Érié, and its spokes-on-a-wheel street pattern. Connections to French culture survived around Windsor and Essex County when I was growing up, including pockets of abiding love for the Canadiens.

Although my allegiance was rooted in the geography of access to the Red Wings, one’s imagination in the 1970s couldn’t help but be invaded by those other players in far-flung metropolises. The Maple Leafs had their interesting players and Maple Leaf Gardens was a cathedral, but it was the Canadiens who employed the gods of the game. The Lafleur-Lemaire-Shutt line; that endless supply of defencemen: Guy Lapointe, Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, Jacques Laperierre. I used to like to draw goaltenders — even back in the less-padded days they were still just rectangles and ovals — and the Canadiens’ logo was easier to render for a child than the incredibly detailed winged wheel or that angular blue foliage.

My favourite Canadiens player was Yvon Cournoyer, the Road Runner. Why? Who knows now. Maybe it was the cartoon nickname. He was just a little guy with a round face. There might have been something magical about his name, which looks unapproachably French but sounded fun when Danny Gallivan said it on TV: CORN-WHY-EH.

The end of this 100th year of the NHL is a good time to reflect on its bleu-blanc-et-rouge foundation. Through the end of last season, there had been 329,514 regular-season NHL goals scored, another 24,370 in playoff and Stanley Cup competition. Players for the Canadiens had accounted for 20,902 of the regular-season goals, 2,248 in the post-season. Dozens of the most storied goals in the league’s history were scored by the Canadiens. Those 20,902 are greater than a 6.54-per cent representation of the league’s output. You could pick out a small handful of Canadiens goals and show how they support the entire weight of the league’s history, upon which stand Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby and the rest.

That’s a taller task than this is meant to do. Below is an interactive graphic from our friends at Qlik accounting for every one of those Canadiens goals scored, the goals that won championships and launched dynasties. You can even look at some congregations of the 19,223 they allowed. You can see who had the most goals in the decade of the 1930s. You can see how many even-strength goals Steve Shutt scored. You can look at the distribution of Lafleur’s goal scoring across the 14 seasons he spent in Montreal. You can see how many goals were scored on both sides of the fence in the Montreal-Boston feud. Immerse yourself in the names.

Below that, we’ve attempted to highlight 10 of the most dramatic or meaningful goals in Canadiens history (with a bonus selection). Better fans of the team might have other favourites, but here’s an appreciation from outside of the culture that gave birth to the team that defines the NHL.

Maurice Richard | March 18, 1945 vs. Boston Bruins

With only six teams in the NHL, there were only 50 games in the regular season back in the 1940s. So the length of the schedule added the significance to the idea of scoring 50 goals in one campaign.

Montreal had already locked up first place and had an 11-point lead in the standings on second-place Detroit on the final night of the season. Despite being down 2-1 late the third period, getting that 50th goal for Richard was the objective that kept the Canadiens pushing forward. With 2:15 left in the game at the Boston Garden, on a pass from linemate Elmer Lach, Richard tied the game. Bolstered by the achievement, his linemates, Toe Blake and Lach, scored in the final two minutes to win 4-2.

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Jean Beliveau | Nov. 5, 1955 vs. Boston Bruins

It was the goal — or, more precisely, the three goals — that prompted the NHL to make a profound rule change. Beliveau scored a natural hat trick in the span of 44 seconds with two Bruins in the penalty box, a feat made easier by the fact each player was only allowed to leave the box after sitting out for a full two minutes.

Of the league-leading 222 goals the Canadiens scored in 1955-56, 66 came with the man advantage, and 19 of those were credited to Beliveau. By the time the NHL dropped the puck on the 1956-57 season, the league had taken a step to limit Montreal’s edge, decreeing that minor penalties would now end the moment a power-play goal was scored.

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Maurice Richard | Oct. 19, 1957 vs. Chicago Black Hawks

The Rocket turned 36 the August before the 1957-58 season, and he came into the campaign needing seven goals to reach 500 for his career. No one had ever dreamed of such a number, since he was the only one ever to eclipse 400. Gordie Howe only had 353 at that point, and his Red Wings teammate Ted Lindsay was still three short of Nels Stewart’s previous NHL career record of 324 goals.

Richard only needed six games to get the seven goals, scoring the 500th in a 3-1 win at the Forum against Chicago. It would take Howe another six seasons to eclipse the Rocket’s final career total of 544.

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Henri Richard | April 14, 1960 vs. Toronto Maple Leafs

Henri Richard’s goal wasn’t notable in itself: it was the second goal of a 4-0 win that finished Montreal’s back-to-back playoff sweeps of Chicago and Toronto. It’s notable for a couple of other reasons: it contributed to the Canadiens’ record fifth consecutive Stanley Cup championship, and it was set up by the Rocket, his final point in his final game.

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Bernie Geoffrion | March 16, 1961 vs. Toronto Maple Leafs

It had been 15 years since the Rocket had his 50-goal campaign, and even though the NHL season had now grown to 70 games, no one had repeated the 50-goal feat. Howe had reached 47 in 1951-52 and upped that to 49 in 1952-53; Beliveau had tied Howe’s total 47 in 1955-56. Even the Rocket hadn’t been able to replicate what he had done at the age of 23.

Geoffrion had been a 30-goal scorer twice in his career and he’d won the scoring title in 1954-55, but he might not have been the player expected to crack that hallowed 50-goal plateau. He trailed teammate Frank Mahovlich for much of the season. But a month after his 30th birthday, he did the trick, beating Bobby Hull to it by a year.

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Jean Beliveau | Feb. 11, 1971 vs. Minnesota North Stars

Beliveau became the second player in NHL (and Canadiens) history to reach 500 career goals on this night. What’s more, he did it in style. Midway through the last of his legendary 20 seasons in the league, Montreal’s captain scored goals 498, 499 and 500 against North Stars goalie Gilles Gilbert, firing a screened slapper and tucking near-identical dekes into the net to key a 6-2 win.

In the dressing room after the game, Beliveau posed for photos at his stall with a fedora and a jersey emblazoned with the number 500, the milestone puck clenched between his smiling teeth. He scored seven goals over the rest of the regular season and retired as the franchise’s all-time points leader.

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Yvon Cournoyer | May 10, 1973 vs. Chicago Black Hawks

The Canadiens had won five Cups in a row earlier and would win four in row again at the end of the 1970s, but it’s sort of overlooked that they won six of the nine Cups contested between 1965 and 1973. The 1973 final came down to Game 6, which was tied 4-4 going into the third period at Chicago Stadium.

Mahovlich had set the NHL playoff record with 14 goals in 1971, but Cournoyer broke that mark with his 15th of the 1973 post-season, breaking the tie at 8:13 of the third. The Road Runner set up Marc Tardif 4½ minutes later to seal Montreal’s 18th NHL championship. (The goal comes about eight seconds into the video.)

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Guy Lafleur | April 8, 1978 vs. Detroit Red Wings

Phil Esposito scored 76 goals in 1970-71 to obliterate Hull’s single-season record of 58, and the Bruins centre topped 60 goals three more times in the next four seasons. Other than Esposito, only three players scored 60 goals through the end of 1978: Philadelphia’s Reggie Leach in 1975-76, the Canadiens’ Steve Shutt in 1976-77 and Lafleur in 1977-78. In 1978-79 Mike Bossy would shatter that 60-goal plateau a little more with his 69-goal season and 68 more the next season.

Lafleur gets the glory here because there’s video of the accomplishment, but let’s give Shutt a little shoutout as well. Amazingly, of his 60 goals in 1976-77, 52 were at even strength, eclipsing Leach’s 51 the season before, and it was a record that stood for five more years before Wayne Gretzky laid waste to it in 1981-82 during his 92-goal season, with 68 at even strength. Still, today only five players have scored more even-strength goals in a season than Shutt that year.

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Guy Lafleur | May 10, 1979 vs. Boston Bruins

The darkest night of Don Cherry’s coaching career doubled as one of the best in Lafleur’s playing days. The Flower capitalized on Boston’s notorious too-many-men penalty late in the third period of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup semifinal, wiring a drop pass from Jacques Lemaire past the aforementioned Gilles Gilbert, now with the Bruins, to tie the game at 4-4.

Lafleur’s goal with 1:14 left in regulation was his third point of the period; he’d already helped erase one Boston lead by assisting on two earlier goals. His late blast from the top of the right circle forced overtime, where Yvon Lambert’s series-winning tap-in sent Montreal to its fourth straight final.

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John LeClair | June 7, 1993 vs. Los Angeles Kings

This might be the ugliest goal on the list, and yet it represents something only the Canadiens have ever managed to do. In the 1993 playoffs, the Canadiens codified what’s now known on hockey telecasts as Overtime Magic. That post-season, they won 10 straight overtime games, including Games 2, 3 and 4 of the final against the Kings.

In Game 2, defenceman Eric Desjardins scored all three Montreal goals, including the OT winner. Two days later, LeClair scored in overtime to win Game 3. Then he repeated the task in Game 4 by stomping through the crease to beat Kelly Hrudey and set up Montreal for what remains the last championship in team history.

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Bonus: Andrei Kovalenko | March 11, 1996 vs. Dallas Stars

Of all the goals scored in the 72-year history of the Montreal Forum, Kovalenko saved one of the very finest for last. The journeyman forward only spent two-thirds of a season with the Canadiens after being acquired from Colorado in the Patrick Roy trade, but he ensured his name would be remembered by capping an end-to-end rush in the second period with a wrister that eluded Stars goalie Andy Moog.

The Canadiens won that game 4-1 and held an elaborate on-ice ceremony after the buzzer, during which Maurice Richard received a seven-minute ovation and a procession of former captains delivered a torch to then-captain Pierre Turgeon. Two days later, the Canadiens moved into their new digs, the Molson (now Bell) Centre, with a 1-1 tie against New Jersey.

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With files from Nick Faris