An Open Letter To Randy Cunneyworth
This letter ran in The Montreal Gazette’s Letters To The Editor on Friday, Dec. 23.
An Open Letter to Randy Cunneyworth,
It’s not you, it’s us. You are, by all accounts, a good coach and a decent man, but the truth is you never really had a shot. Not with us. Not in this city. Not in this province. Please don’t take it personally – the fix was in long, long before you arrived on the scene. We’re a peculiar group, us Habs fans. We’ve managed to take what should be the most coveted job in hockey and turn it into a quagmire. We’ve turned what should be an X’s and O’s job into a quasi-religious position of authority. We continually write and re-write the history of our team and town in order to fit our own convoluted, ever-shifting narratives. We’ve created wildly outsized expectations then made it literally impossible for anyone to meet them. We do everything, in fact, except look in the mirror and wonder if the team’s struggles are mostly our own damn fault to begin with. You deserve better. We don’t.
Sincerely,
Sean O’Neill
Turn this around and see if the Toronto Maple Leafs or any other team would keep an all francophone, only French speaking coach???
People keep making that argument but it’s a bit of a canard. First, I do believe that, if feasible, fans of Toronto, Boston etc etc would accept a unilingial French (or Swedish or Russian or Finish) coach if he could deliver wins. But the fact is that (broken) English is the language of operation for all 30 teams in the NHL. Whoever the next coach of the Habs is will be speaking English to his team during practice and on the ice. A French coach of the Leafs would not be able to communicate with his players solely in French.
Sean