Winning is the best marketing. It's all about substance and cliches such as walking the walk and talking the talk. If business success in sport is one part product and one part marketing, the product is by far the bigger part.
That's why those who make the Montreal Canadiens the best-marketed franchise in Canada and arguably the best in the National Hockey League can thank their player roster for validating the 100th anniversary festivities in which the oldest hockey club in the world has invested so much of their resources and our attention.
This year's unexpected playoff run -- to the fifth game of the National Hockey League's eastern conference finals -- has given substance to the centennial celebrations that have become the club's staple industry the past 18 months; if not the past five years.
No amount of clever marketing can replace the inspirational impact of winning on the ice.
In this case, the Montreal Canadiens have done everything imaginable to mark the 100-year milestone with a sense of thoughtfulness, history and class: by retiring a series of sweater numbers in the five years leading to the 2008-'09 centennial; using last year to showcase and market a cross-section of the club's retro jerseys dating back to their first game in 1909; producing a 100th anniversary DVD; and culminating everything with the actual anniversary game in November of 2009, which was an unprecedented presentation of pomp and circumstance in Canadian -- if not North American -- sport.
Yet the 2008-'09 centennial season missed one important piece: a winning season...a bridge to that long and storied history... a sense of connection to the lineage represented best by Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur...and of course the illustrious tradition of 24 Stanley Cups.
After finishing first in the eastern conference and reaching the second round of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs (before losing to the same Philadelphia Flyers), the Habs faltered badly during the Centennial season, finishing eighth and enduring the embarassment of a four-game sweep at the hands of their arch rivals, the Boston Bruins, in the first round. The very glory years that were being celebrated in 2008-'09 seemed so long ago.
These past two months in 2010, however, the players and the team ignited what the entire Centennial was designed to provide; pride of association, memories of yesteryear and what it felt like to be in the hunt for the trophy Canadian sports fans cherish most.
It's been 17 years since the Canadiens last reached the Stanley Cup finals and won. It could be another 17 years or more before they do so again. But Montreal's run in what Stanley Cup-winning head coach Mike Babcock calls a "marathon of hope" was a final touch this year to the 100th anniversary celebrations that was better than anyone in their front office could have scripted.
It has not only given the organization and its fans a sense of hope and optimism but a restored sense of identity for a team that, for the first time in its great history, has gone this long between championships.
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