Edited sentence: At the time of the riot, the motivation was not nationalism but a sense of anger that the Canadiens' playoff hopes had been dashed by an NHL-wide conspiracy to suspend the league's top player.Attempts to link the riot to Quebec nationalism may be a case of mistaking the chance sequence of historical events with causality.Other hockey-related riots in Montreal - following Canadiens' Stanley Cup victories in 1986 and 1993 - were not associated with nationalism, thus suggesting that the roots of the Richard Riot were something less than political (anger at the NHL's unfair decision, mob mentality, etc.The NHL did not treat Richard unjustly because he was Quebecois, they treated him unjustly because they wanted to raise the other five teams' competitiveness.There was no nationalism involved.This blatant action angered Montreal hockey fans and led to the riot