By Gare Joyce in Montreal and Chicoutimi

Grown men cried. Legends cried. The fans stood for what seemed more than an hour. Cheered until they were hoarse. Applauded until their hands were bruised or blistered. I've never seen anything like it in three decades of kicking around hockey arenas. The Montreal Canadiens billed it as "the last act of a masterpiece," and it was that and more. The Canadiens have always done history better than anyone else and are loose with hyperbole, but there was no hope of overselling their last game at the Forum. All those Stanley Cup banners. All those retired numbers. All those Hall of Famers walking out on what must have been every last inch of red carpet in the city.

The game was an instantly forgettable Montreal win over the Dallas Stars, reprising the role of the Washington Generals. The players for both teams then sat on their benches for the duration of the post-game ceremony, when the Canadiens' Hall of Famers walked out to a gathering crescendo of cheers. There were those from the old school: Butch Bouchard, Elmer Lach, Kenny Reardon, Tom Johnson and Dickie Moore. There were those of later vintages: Gump Worsley, Jacques Laperrière, Steve Shutt, Frank Mahovlich, Jacques Lemaire, Ken Dryden and Guy Lapointe. There were past captains: Yvan Cournoyer, Serge Savard and Bob Gainey. And finally, those who defined their eras: Guy Lafleur, Jean Béliveau, and Maurice Richard, the Rocket.

The climax was the penultimate act: a ritual passing of a torch down the line of greats. When looking up from their stalls back in their playing days, they had seen the pictures of other past greats going right back to Georges Vézina and Howie Morenz, along with the team's motto that boldly lined the woodwork: "To you from failing hands we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high." Now the metaphor was made real, a spotlight tracking the flame as it made its way down the red carpet. The ovation was deafening when Béliveau passed the torch to Richard, whose connection to the fans was such that his suspension set off the city's St. Patrick's Day riots in 1955. The supposed injustice of that suspension and the fact that he won only a single Hart Trophy, though he had been the era's dominant player, evinced the bias of the old Anglo establishment. Thus did a hockey star with no great interest in politics become, through no design of his own, an icon of the Quiet Revolution.

Richard held the torch aloft. It was March 11, 1996, the last game at the Forum, the last act of a masterpiece and the last time the Canadiens mattered.

I don't say this lightly. I believe the NHL needs a strong franchise in Montreal. An Original Six team struggling in its market is a bad indicator of the league's health. A Canadiens team falling on hard times would adversely affect hockey's relevance in what has always been a hockey hotbed. As far as Québécois culture or identity is concerned, I'm no authority, but over the years the Canadiens have meant something: a cultural touchstone, a source of pride. Right now they mean something less and almost certainly less than ever.

I'll establish my personal allegiances before the hate mail commences: I have no rooting interest. Up until my college days, I was a fan of the Maple Leafs somewhat, but of the Sabres somewhat more. For 30 years in my professional capacity, I have maintained, without much effort, a clinical objectivity and haven't rooted for one team over another.

I had never been to the Forum prior to landing on the NHL beat. When I did, it was a season after Montreal's 1993 Cup victory, and a lot of principals, headed by Patrick Roy, were still on the scene. I made it an immersion course: striking up conversations with ushers who had worked there four decades, watching a game through a thick nicotine cloud along with 1,700 others in standing room, and, of course, talking to as many of the stars as I could corner. By avocation, I'm a doubter. I had thought that the likes of Mordecai Richler and others who romanticized the Canadiens were parochial rubes. I was disabused of that notion. I became a fan, not of the team but the scene. Going to a game in Montreal in the mid-'90s was different than the experience of seeing or working an NHL game anywhere else.

That's not the case any longer. Hasn't been for a long time.

How could Gauthier and Molson get it so wrong? Marc de Foy of the Journal de Montréal says that Gauthier is out of touch with the city even though he was born there. "He went away to school in Minnesota and he was based in the U.S. when he was starting out (as an NHL scout)," de Foy says. "He doesn't live in the city. He and his family live in Burlington, Vermont. It's hard to imagine that a francophone could get (the Cunneyworth hiring) so wrong, but that's Gauthier.

"It's hard to figure out Geoff Molson, too. He should have known what the reaction was going to be. His family has been in Montreal for 225 years. He speaks very good French. I think he has given Gauthier and others (in the organization) carte blanche."

It seems like only departing employees of the Canadiens speak candidly about the franchise in crisis. Said one former member of the organization (who asked that his name be withheld because he's working for another NHL club): "This wouldn't have blown up if the team had been winning. The criticism (over hiring Cunneyworth) wouldn't have happened if the team had kept Kirk Muller on (an assistant to Martin the previous season) and promoted him. He had been a captain of the team and he would have said that he'd work on his French and it would all have gone away. I don't know how Pierre didn't realize what the blowback was going to be."

There are myriad issues with the franchise, not the least of them being its lack of commitment to French-Canadian coaches and executives, hired in large part because of their first language. The scenario played out with the coaches in last year's Stanley Cup final, Claude Julien and Alain Vigneault, both former Montreal coaches. Neither was necessarily ready for the Canadiens job when tabbed and neither was given time to mature into the role before being removed. Tampa's current coach, Guy Boucher, and the Lightning's assistant GM, Julien BriseBois, were in the Montreal organization until 2010 and would have sated the media's current demands for francophone solutions to organizational problems.

The problem with demands based on language is that they'll inevitably escalate. Last fall, the Parti Québécois claimed that the Canadiens' roster, so thin on francophones, was a piece of political strategy hatched by federalists. "If you had a star francophone player, nobody would be counting," former team president Pierre Boivin told the Montreal Gazette in May. "If they don't have the star, they want a whole bunch (of francophones) because one day they hate them, the other day they love them."

I know that winning should be what counts, ultimately. The conventional wisdom (at least the conventional wisdom outside Quebec) is that the French pundits would have to bite their lips if the Canadiens were standing first in the Eastern Conference. History would suggest that the conventional wisdom is wrong.

Ask Al MacNeil. He won a Stanley Cup in 1971 after reviving a middling team as a mid-season coaching replacement. But when Henri Richard declared his unilingual coach incompetent because of his line-juggling in the final, many in the public, not just the lunatic fringe, interpreted the Pocket Rocket's criticisms as meaning MacNeil had a bias against francophones. The fallout was immediate and poisonous. During the final, MacNeil was under police protection. In Montreal. He was fired soon after.

Pierre Gauthier had forgotten or ignored history. But the GM had to see the results from a survey commissioned by the Journal de Montréal. It showed that 83 per cent of francophones in the market believe the Canadiens don't do enough to ensure a francophone presence on the team; 72 per cent said a unilingual anglophone coach of the team is unacceptable; and 56 per cent believe Gauthier should lose his job.

Gauthier buckled on Jan. 3. He reluctantly faced the media and reversed course, apologizing for any offence. "We felt the best option at this time was to work from within the organization … having a bilingual head coach of the Montreal Canadiens is very important and it's something that will be part of our decision going forward."

The Canadiens did many things back in their glory days, but they didn't apologize. Their biggest moves weren't rash. Crisis management was for other franchises. No longer. Some will make the case that the Canadiens still mattered somewhat or sometime after the Forum went dark. Even if you give it to them for the sake of argument. But don't tell me they matter anymore. They're looking up at the middle of the pack and over their shoulders at the hindmost closing in on them.

Back in pro hockey's earliest history, the Canadiens were supposed to be the French analogue to the Anglo Montreal teams, the Maroons and the Wanderers. Later, the Rocket became a cultural icon. In the years following the Richard Riots, Quebecers won social and political battles off the ice. Their boys won Stanley Cups on it: 15 of the next 24, thanks largely to Québécois superstars. It was a perfect storm.

But with the advent of expansion and the provincial pipeline to the roster shut down a few years later, the Canadiens' empire began to crumble. They remained dominant through the '70s but there have been just two titles since -- unexpected blips on the radar screen -- and they are in their longest stretch without a Cup, going on 18 seasons. The franchise has been crushed by the pressures of having to be more than a hockey team, having to be a Québécois institution.

It's a brutal dichotomy: hockey decisions have to take into account cultural considerations. This has led to the most mediocre Canadiens team in modern history. Unwieldy contracts to woebegone players, no young prospects in development, a fan base and media spewing ridicule and scorn at management: these are the facts of life for what used to be Les Glorieux. I don't suppose any particular culture would be proud to claim exclusive ownership of the Canadiens right now.

If Maurice Richard had known how this would play out, he would have had a hard time holding the torch as high as he did, not with the franchise destined to go down in flames.

The Decline Of An Empire: The firestorm that has developed this season is the culmination of events that began five decades ago:

1970: Virtual Quebec exclusivity lost. Sabres draft Gilbert Perreault No. 1.

1972: The Quebec Nordiques are born and begin pilfering fans; join the NHL in '79.

1978: After nine Stanley Cups and countless prescient manoeuvres in 14 seasons as GM, Sam Pollock moves on. One year later, fellow Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman, who coached the team to five Cups in seven seasons and four in a row to end the '70s, moves to the fledgling Buffalo Sabres.

1982: Rod Langway traded for spare parts. Wins Norris Trophies the next two years.

1986: Captain and future GM Bob Gainey leads Montreal to a surprising Cup victory, its 23rd. The win satiates Habs fans who still believe their team can revive the days of ‘Les Glorieux,' when Montreal went to 22 Cup finals and came away champs 16 times between 1951 and 1979.

1990: Norris Trophy winner Chris Chelios is traded to Chicago for Denis Savard, a French-Canadian Hall of Famer past his prime. (Savard was drafted third overall in '80, Montreal chose Doug Wickenheiser at No. 1.) Chelios won two more Norris trophies and was runner-up twice.

1993: A fluke Cup win gives fans long-term hope when there is little.

1995: After a disastrous loss to Detroit, a frustrated Roy declares -- while being pulled from the game -- that he will never again play for Montreal. Four days later, the last great Canadien was traded to Colorado along with captain Mike Keane for three middling players, including francophone goalie Jocelyn Thibault.

1996: The Forum hosts its final Habs game, ending the team's relevance.

2009-2010: The Canadiens celebrate their centennial over two years, milking every last drop of history.