2014 has certainly been a strange year in the Montreal sporting scene. The Canadiens went all the way to the Eastern Conference Final after sweeping the Tampa Bay Lightning and edging out bitter rival Boston Bruins in a seven game classic. The Impact took eight matches to notch their first league win in the MLS, but they still won the Canadian Championship and qualified for the quarter-finals in the CONCACAF Champions League by winning their group. And then the Alouettes started their CFL campaign with an abysmal 1-7 record, with four different quarterbacks playing in those nine games, although they’ve since turned things around and gone 5-1 in their next six games.
But despite these surprising and exciting developments, the main storylines since the beginning of the year in Montreal have focused on the Montreal sports legends who play for the three clubs: the retirements of Anthony Calvillo, Saku Koivu and Marco Di Vaio.
Koivu, despite not playing for the Habs since 2009, delivered some heart-breaking news for Canadiens fans who were hoping the free agent would play a final season in Montreal, but their dreams were dashed when Koivu announced his intentions to hang up his skates on September 1o.
There is no question that Di Vaio had the least impact on the city, but there may be some debate to who the bigger Montreal hero was, Calvillo or Koivu. Calvillo won three Grey Cups, set pro football’s all-time passing-yards record with 79,816, and leads the CFL all-time list with 455 touchdowns and 5,892 completions. Koivu, meanwhile, was never the best player on paper with only two 70+ point seasons, but thanks to his 13-season tenure with the Habs, he finished 10th in franchise scoring with 191 goals in 792 games, and an astonishing sixth with 450 assists. He also made big contributions off-ice, such as the $8 million he raised to purchase Montreal’s first CT scan machine.
What is most surprising about the two leaders is both of them have suffered through cancer during their time in Montreal. Koivu was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (coincidentally abbreviated as NHL) in September of 2001. After care from the staff at the Montreal General Hospital, Koivu was able to return to playing hockey on April 9, 2002, after a 79-game absence. He received an ovation that lasted nearly 10 minutes from the Molson Centre crowd, one of the longest and most touching in the Habs’ history.
Six years later, Calvillo’s wife Alexia also received a cancer diagnosis, in her case leukemia. Calvillo chose to put football aside to be by her side for the remainder of the season, missing the final five games and the playoffs, as his wife was quickly recovering from the horrible disease. He returned to play the following summer under new head coach Marc Trestman, who would revive Calvillo’s career with two championships in three trips to the Grey Cup.
After Calvillo’s final Grey Cup game, his second straight win, he announced that he would spend the off-season recovering from surgery to remove a cancerous lesion in his thyroid. Luckily for him, thyroid cancer is among the least fatal cancers if detected in the early stages, and Calvillo made a full recovery.
All three players have strong ties to their families. Calvillo is easily spotted in his retirement days, bringing his daughters to school like any other parent. Di Vaio kisses his wedding ring after every goal he scores; part of his decision to retire is to rejoin his wife and two daughters, who relocated to Italy for family reasons. The longest-serving captain in Habs history (tied with Jean Beliveau for ten years), Koivu’s family is also well-known in the Montreal community, and his wife Hanna has helped out in many Montreal Canadiens Foundation events with her husband.
The three men have each left an impression on the sporting scene in Montreal. Each of them has shown Montreal sports fans that athletes are real people. Koivu left his heart and class imprinted on the city, Calvillo showed his dedication and sportsmanship every week for 16 years at McGill Stadium, and Di Vaio, despite a relatively short stay in Montreal, demonstrated that it’s always family first. Montreal will surely miss them all in 2015.
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