For first time since HI/O Summit bringing together fans who follow Habs on Hockeyinsideout.com started in 2007 there will be two games.
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This year’s annual HI/O Summit should be twice as much fun as all the other ones.
The first HI/O Summit was held in 2007, bringing together Canadiens fans from across North America — and sometimes beyond — who follow the team on the Montreal Gazette’s Hockeyinsideout.com website. The Gazette launched the website in 2006 as Habsinsideout.com and readers became friends through the comments section, which led Ian Cobb to start organizing an annual HI/O Summit.
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Cobb, 79, is a retired businessman who grew up in Montreal and now lives in Belleville, Ont. Cobb is dyslexic and was able to have a successful business career despite being illiterate. He says he learned to read and write with help from a friend and other fans in the comments section of Hockeyinsideout.com. Cobb only revealed his long-held secret after former Canadiens coach Jacques Demers announced he had battled illiteracy in a 2005 biography titled Jacques Demers: En Toutes Lettres. In 2020, Cobb had a book published about his own life titled My Headwinds to Freedom: A Memoir.
For the first time, fans at this year’s HI/O Summit will be attending two games with the Canadiens playing the Boston Bruins on Saturday and the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday — a rare weekend doubleheader at the Bell Centre. Cobb said more than 50 members of the HI/O group will be attending the games.
This year’s HI/O Summit will begin with a meet-and-greet for fans starting at 6 p.m. Friday at Hurley’s Irish Pub on Crescent St. There will be a charity raffle at 1 p.m. Saturday at Hurley’s with proceeds going to the Montreal Canadiens Children’s Foundation, followed by a pregame meal before heading to the Bell Centre. The group will return to Hurley’s after the game to “celebrate the win” in Cobb’s words. There will be another post-game get-together at Hurley’s following Sunday’s game.
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When asked what he likes about this year’s Canadiens team, Cobb said: “They’re fast and they’re young. They seem to be jelling together. They’re starting to stick up for each other and play for each other.”
Cobb isn’t happy with the power play, though.
“They got to get away from having only one play on the power play,” he said. “When they’re coming out of their end, this back pass to the guy coming up with speed. Well, that works sometimes, but you got to have another play. You can’t just have over and over and over the same play and then setting (Cole) Caufield up for the one-timer. You got to have more than one play.
“I was blaming (Martin) St. Louis a little bit, but it’s hard to blame a superstar like that,” Cobb added about the head coach. “I don’t know what it is, but they still have some growing pains to take care of.”
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You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger Canadiens fan than Rob Hing, who lives in Calgary and has season tickets at the Bell Centre.
Hing and his wife, Alayne, who attend the HI/O Summit every year, will be able to sit in those seats this weekend. Hing, a 46-year-old high-school teacher, fell in love with the Canadiens at age 13 when he was living in Pembroke, Ont., and an uncle took him to his first game at the Forum. Hing later lived in Montreal for about four years and always wanted to become a season-ticket holder so he put his name on the Canadiens’ waiting list. Four years ago — after spending just over 10 years on the waiting list — the Canadiens called Hing. He plans to move back to Montreal after retiring and didn’t want to pass on the opportunity to fulfil a dream of becoming a season-ticket holder, so he took the tickets. Hing still has family and friends in Montreal and the tickets he can’t find someone to use he tries to resell.
In 2015, members of the HI/O Summit chipped in so John Smidt and his son, Alex, could fly to Montreal from Regina and attend their first Canadiens game. The previous year, Smidt had shared the story about his son — who was 13 at the time — fighting for his life while battling meningitis. He asked Canadiens fans on the website to pray for his son and they did more than that after Alex regained his health and arranged to bring him and his father to the HI/O Summit. After the game, Alex and his father got to meet P.K. Subban.
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“What Ian Cobb and that group at HI/O did was absolutely outstanding and unbelievable,” Smidt said. “I can’t thank them enough.”
Cobb says his favourite thing about the HI/O Summit is the people. For health reasons, Cobb says this is the last year he will organize the HI/O Summit, but he’s confident others will take over to keep it going.
“There are some who come every year and I’ve made some fabulous friends like Rob and Alayne,” Cobb said. “People still pop in unannounced at my house in the summer (in Belleville) and ring my doorbell and we sit around my pool for an hour when they’re down in this area for a visit or they’re just driving by on the 401. I’m a people person. I’ve lost so many friends who have died and I’m a guy who always had a ton of friends. The only friends I really have left are the ones who are in this group.”
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