Habs long-time beat reporter Pat Hickey covers last home game, leaves to make room for young blood

When he began covering the Montreal Canadiens in 1965, Pat Hickey could look to the rafters and see 12 Stanley Cup banners.

On his final night of work at the Bell Centre on Saturday against the Ottawa Senators, there was twice that number, along with the retired numbers of greats from Jacques Plante to Patrick Roy.

The Habs paused Saturday's game in the third period to honour Hickey for his many years covering the team for the Montreal Gazette.

"It was pretty electric last night," Hickey told CTV News. "It's probably the only time I'll have 20,000 people cheering for me."

Hickey is leaving his post at the Gazette, so another younger reporter can stay on as the Montreal newspaper's parent company Postmedia makes cuts to the newsroom.

"I had enough seniority I could have stayed, but it would have meant that some younger people, people with mortgages and families, might have been put in jeopardy," he said. "So I figured the best thing to do was to ride off into the sunset and give somebody else a chance."

The Habs gave him a personalized jersey before the game, and Twitter was overloaded with notes from other journalists, sports fans and those in the game who wanted to send off the legendary scribe.

"I've been very lucky to have Pat Hickey as a mentor, colleague and great friend for more than 30 years at the Montreal Gazette," wrote fellow sportswriter Stu Cowan. "Going to miss working with him."

"Congrats on a great career Hick, spanning many fun and games - at many newspapers," said Lance Hornby out of Toronto with a pic of Hickey working for the Sun four decades ago.

It is a job Hickey will miss.

"I used to tell people that it's not like I really have a job," he said. "Somebody's paying me to watch sports events."

On Sunday, Hickey was in Boisbriand for the Montreal Force women's team's final home game of the season, and he will cover two of the Canadiens' Pacific road trip games this week from his office.

BITTERSWEET GOODBYE

Hickey said it's been a "hectic three weeks" since Postmedia announced that it would make cuts to the newsroom. The Gazette originally was looking at 10 layoffs, but wound up losing 5-and-a-half jobs, he said.

Hickey added that the business has changed, and covering from afar, relying on Twitter feeds for information and not being near the team is not the way to engage with the team effectively.

"It's not as much fun as it used to be," he said. "Since COVID, for an entire year, I covered the NHL from my office at home, and Postmedia decided not to travel a couple of months ago and that took away some of the fun. It's difficult to cover a team when you're not there."

Hickey said he worked in newsrooms with as many as 250 staff members. The Gazette will be down to around 35 this year. 

"That's discouraging," said the old-school newspaperman. "I pick up the newspaper now and it's so small. I'm used to newspapers with 150 pages. Now it's down to around 30 or 40. In general, everything in the business has just changed so much and not for the better."

LIKE A FUNERAL

Hickey has spoken to many colleagues from different media organizations in the past months and years, who have seen the business they entered change to more digital and less advertising dollars.

At Saturday's game at the Bell Centre, Hickey said it felt something like a funeral.

"There's a feeling of shared grief," he said. "The night was a celebration, and it's like when people die, you actually celebrate their lives, and that's a little bit of how it felt. People were celebrating my career, and I felt really good about that."