The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Robbie (Buckshot) Poirier bleeds bleu, blank et rouge. Those are the colours of the Montreal Canadiens. Buckshot has cheered on his Canadiens for 42 years, since the day he was born. "My dad (Ernie) told me if I didn't cheer for the Canadiens I was out of the house," he says, when asked why he's a Habs fan. "No, my dad watched the Habs and I watched the Habs. Serge Savard, Guy Lapointe, Jacques Lemaire, Ivan Cournoyer. Kenny Dryden was my favourite as a kid and Guy Lafleur was the most exciting player I seen in my life live." Buckshot's love for the Habs has led to him building an impressive collection of collectables - so impressive that any hockey fan would likely appreciate it. "Well when Montreal won the cup in '86, I wanted something different for pictures," he explains. "I had a few things back then. I phoned Montreal after they won the Cup and they give me four names of photographers and the first name they give me was Denis Brodeur, Marty's dad, and the phone number." Buckshot was able to contact Brodeur and ordered 20 pictures. His living room is a collage of past and present Canadiens. His father helped him collect jerseys Ð he has 18 game-worn sweaters, some of them signed and some that hang along the walls of Buckshot's shrine. Entering his living room, any person would have the feeling they entered the Canadiens version of the Hockey Hall of Fame. One of the first things to see is four seats he purchased when memorabilia from the Montreal Forum became available. His memorabilia even extends to hockey cards. "I have 56 Patrick Roy rookies, I started buying those when they were $25 and now they're valued at $400," he explains. "People keep buying him stuff," says Loraine, his wife who he met working at the Candy Bar. "Anything you see Montreal, you buy it, he has people sending him stuff because they know he's a big Habs fan. Sometimes he gets doubles, most of the time he has everything." "It's one of the best you'll ever see, without even trying to do it," he says. "It just accumulates." Buckshot's wife is also also a Canadiens fan and watches every game. "Every Saturday night, we watch all the games scheduled, with our dogs and whoever stops over," she says. On this past Saturday, Jason Mandes and Rob Hart watch the Canadiens lose to the Toronto Maple Leafs in overtime. Poirier sits there, in what seems to be disbelief as he says nothing. Poirier has the NHL Center Ice package and digital cable to ensure he gets every game. "I'll never miss a game," he says, "other than when we got married and I forgot to put my VCR on because I didn't realize they were playing." That day was Feb. 18, 1995. Poirier and his best man, Greg Phair, went and watched about four shifts in the RJ lounge and then snuck back to the dinner. That was a rescheduled game. The 42-year-old started taping games in 1982 and they're commercial free. "It's something I started 20 years ago and I can't stop," he says. "It's just like my favourite hobby." In that time, he has 1,200 games recorded. "I'm not too often away from the TV," he says. "Loraine has taped games for me, my mom, friends have went to the house if we weren't around and made sure the game was taped. We went on our honeymoon and we had a couple friends going to the house for two weeks to tape the games." Buckshot's most memorable moment was seeing Guy Lafleur for the first time live in Winnipeg and the Jets beat them. "That was hard to take, I was with Ken Stelnicki," he recalls. "Going to the Montreal Forum for the first time when I was 30-years-old and I went to the '93 finals," he says, "that was a thrill, I went with my dad and Grant McCombie." "There's so much tradition, if you're a hockey fan and you're fortunate enough to grow up to be a Montreal Canadiens fan," Buckshot says in his living room, "there's nowhere to go, why would you want to be another hockey fan, cheer for another team? It's only the Habs, that's the way it should be." So who is his favourite Canadien? Chris Chelios. "He's fantastic, he's tough, he's dirty," Buckshot explains with enthusiasm. "He'll do anything to win, and he was just a fantastic defenseman. "That's the one trade that haunts me the most Ð June 29, 1990. You never trade a stud defenseman for a forward," he says.11/16/2005
