QMJHL's Gatineau Olympiques accommodate fans' divided attention amid Habs-Sens conflict

GATINEAU, Que. — People who paid to watch one hockey game were watching another.

The place to be for a hockey fan in the national capital region on Wednesday when the Stanley Cup playoffs started probably wasn't venerable old Centre Robert-Guertin, judging from the turnout of 1,946 for a Rimouski Océanic-Gatineau Olympiques QMHJL tilt that conflicted with the Senators-Canadiens game. It was however, the most interesting place to be. The red line at Old Bob, one of the few remaining honest-to-goodness barns still in use in major junior, might as well have been the fault line in a rivalry that divides Ottawa.

Going over to the Guertin, a 63-year-old arena living on borrowed time, is like stepping back in time. It is the older relative you enjoy seeing, if only ever so often. Its absence of a videoboard, benches on opposite sides of the ice, steeply banked fold-down wooden seats, make it a museum exhibit. Whether that throwback charm would endure over an entire season is another story, which is part of the reason the 'Piques' attendance was stagnant this season. Overall, there's a mom-and-popness about it that's fast vanishing from the CHL, if it isn't already gone for good.

One amenity at the Guertin, though, is that about a dozen flat-screen TVs hang down from the arena rafters, within viewing range of fans who are also oh so close to not that far from potential NHLers such as the Océanic's Frédérik Gauthier and Samuel Morin. That meant, on Wednesday, much of the crowd was watching Ottawa and Montreal on TV instead of watching the underdog 'Piques fight tooth and nail with Rimouski, who's expected to come out of the QMJHL to be at the Memorial Cup next month. Perhaps the 'Piques, who had 735 fewer fans out on Wednesday than they did one night prior, might have wanted to play up their accommodation for the multitasking fan. Then again, that might be next-level for a small-scale operation which pretty much accepted that the conflict would probably siphon off some patrons.

"We're not sure about the crowd," one ticket buyer from the other side of the Ottawa River was more or less told when he called Wednesday to reserve three seats, which ended up being between the bluelines, just seven rows up for a grand total of $61.50. "But you never know."

The divided attentions, and divided loyalty, made for an odd vibe. At a hockey game, the ears become conditioned to crowd noise being predicated on what's happening on the ice. That sound of expectation when a home-team scoring chance develops, the parental ooohhhhh when someone fans on a shot. Or the indignant yell when an infraction was committed. That was all there, but it was mixed in with the crowd following the NHL game, which started about 30 minutes earlier.

There were times where the 'Piques and Océanic, in a taut game that Rimouski won 3-0 to take a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 league quarter-final, were engaging in the hockey equivalent of rallying from the baseline in tennis — a string a short sequences, one pass and turnover, back and forth. And suddenly a cheer would go up since either Ottawa or Montreal had scored.

The volume was about equal, but the representation was not. The Senators are not, and never will be, the preferred choice once one crosses over the Alexandra Bridge into Gatineau and perhaps passes by the Maurice Richard statue in Jacques Cartier Park. It is the Habs, always. Montreal sweaters dotted the crowd. Sens fans seemed content to restrict their show of support to a ballcap or t-shirt, under a jacket.

Whether the noise of the thinned-out crowd affected the players can only be inferred. Junior hockey players will talk about their 'seventh man' when they win, but claim to have the ocular block working when it's against them. Plus this was junior, which really doesn't have Cinderella stories. Nevertheless, the act of observation affects the observed. The Olympiques started well with 14 first-period shots, but couldn't build an early lead that would have provided an incentive for fans not look up at those TVs, where goals were coming fast and furiously between the Habs and Sens.

Rimouski broke through for two in the second, which was essentially the game with Morin and Winnipeg Jets signing Jan Kostalek fronting the Q's deepest defence corps. The crowd responded, tried to urge the 'Piques on, but a blown 2-on-0 breakaway chance late in the second was about the most Gatineau showed over the duration.

With fewer than seven minutes left, Gatineau was on a penalty kill when another of those 'oh yeah, look up to see what happened in Montreal' cheers went up. The Canadiens had won the game; meantime, time was running out on the Olympiques, and their season.

That is not to say anyone's priorities were out of whack on Wednesday night. Losing support to the Stanley Cup playoffs when a nearby Canadian team is active is a fact of life across major junior, if not as much in southern Ontario since two lockouts back. There are still nuances, unique vectors of hockey geometry, that can only be appreciated in Guertin. Like in first period on Wednesday, when the Océanic's Alexis Loiseau made a great show of sleight-of-hand as he tapped down a waist-high pass, kept his speed and stayed onside to earn a breakaway, which Gatineau's François Brassard turned back.

It was a reminder of how good the juniors are, and how much better the select few, hockey's 1 per cent, who are playing for the Stanley Cup must be. That's worth $20. Plus the Olympiques put the other game on for you.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.