MONTREAL—It was one thing when 25 Haitian-Canadians beat their Armenian counterparts at the World Street Hockey championships this week. It was quite another when they trounced France’s best 7-0 two days later.

You might have anticipated victory over a country that has little cultural understanding of what it means to cradle a pass or where terms like stick handling might draw blank stares.

But beating France was different. Yes, it was a piece of history for the first-ever international outing of the Haitian national street hockey team — one composed entirely of the sons of exiles and immigrants who left the Caribbean island to settle in Quebec. It was also source of pride for players that, in some cases, have never set foot on Haitian soil.

After the game in the Swiss city of Zug, Ainslie Bien-Aimé, the Haitian captain, logged on to Facebook with a simple message: “1804 . . . remember.”

It was a reference to the Haitian revolution more than 200 years ago that ended French rule, giving way to a brief glory age.

The reference would be lost on no one with a patriotic interest in this team in the red-and-blue that seems determined to buck expectations.

“Until I became part of this national team I had never even heard the Haitian national anthem before,” said Georges Laraque, the Montreal-born former NHLer who is serving as the team’s assistant coach and chief fundraiser. “Now to represent the country and, when you win, to hear the national anthem — do you know how awesome that is? It’s amazing.”

Members of the Haitian team have, for the most part, played the sport their entire lives.

“I don’t want to say that I’m surprised but I like the chemistry that’s on the field,” said Bien-Aimé, a former member of the Canadian ball hockey team that won gold at this competition in 2007. “Keep in mind that most of us were born in Montreal. I started playing hockey when I was 3 years old.”

The team has performed strongly in the tournament’s so-called B Pool, which is made up of less experienced or not-yet-proven teams like Great Britain, India and Cayman Island.

Team Haiti lost the first game against Italy. They beat Armenia easily and followed it up with a victory over France, which put them through to the semifinal match Saturday.

“The reason why they take us seriously is because they know we’re all from Montreal,” Laraque said. “If I had people off the boat straight from Haiti it would be different, but of all the countries in this tournament, to be honest, the best players are from Canada.”

Once the Haitian government gave its blessing to team organizers, there was already a rush to form a team.

When they approached Bien-Aimé, the 43-year-old imagined a recreational beer-league team. He soon realized it was an opportunity he had been waiting for his whole life.

Despite growing up in Montreal, he said his parents never let Haiti’s plight—its history, its politics, its upheaval—slip from his mind.

“This is something that our parents always brought up at the kitchen table and most of the guys were always looking for something to give back to the country and the only thing we could do was send money or praise to our cousins or whatever,” he said. “But when this opportunity came up in January, I can tell you that 75 guys were ready for war.”

For logistical reasons, the pool of eligible players was limited to those from the Montreal area. Laraque, who played with the Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens over 13 seasons, came on board as a marquee player but was asked to coach as well.

Handling the practices, training and fundraising quickly became too much for one man, but Laraque remembered a conversation he had had with a minor-league player, Robert Haddock.

“I remember he told me once that it would be his dream to coach a team with only black guys to show how good we could be,” Laraque said.

Haddock’s roots are in Barbados, a few islands to the east of Haiti, but he took Laraque up on the offer just weeks ahead of their departure for Switzerland.

While some members of the team have played at high levels in the past and know how to operate as a unit to kill penalties or benefit from a power play, others are the sporting equivalent of unformed clay — people whose natural abilities may have been missed because their immigrant families had them focus on their studies rather than their slapshots.

“For some of them, believe it or not, this is the first time they’ve had formal coaching because they usually got together with a bunch of buddies and played in a league,” he said. “They watch a little TSN and a few Habs games and try to mimic Markov or P.K. Subban and all of a sudden they think they’re on the same wavelength.”

When the next ball hockey championships is held in Pardubice, Czech Republic in June of 2017, Haddock hopes to draw on a deeper pool of Haitians from hockey-loving towns such as Toronto, Vancouver, Boston and New York.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Bien- Aimé says he would one day like to see Haitian nationals playing on the team, but it could take many years to get to that point, if it is even possible in a country beset by corruption and political instability and still recovering from the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.

“There’s a reason why Haiti never gets represented in any world championship. To get there, there would have to be resources. First of all, kids need to be fed because if you’re hungry all the time and you’re fighting for survival to eat, trying to teach people to play hockey and be competitive down there would be really hard,” he said.

“I hope it happens one day, but honestly there are other priorities in Haiti than forming a team to play hockey.”

Read more about: