Sunday 8 April 2012

Game 82: Montréal 4, Toronto 1

I didn't really watch the game tonight, it was more as if I had it on as background mood music. I spent my time online at HockeyInsideOut.com, chin wagging with other regulars through the magic of a clunky site. I should have paid more attention, seeing as it was the last Canadiens game for a long long time, but couldn't muster up the discipline. It was like the last day of school, or this one time when I got laid off and spent a day organizing files and getting them ready for handoff and cleaning out my desk. My mind was elsewhere.

Precisely, it's stuck on the draft, and free agency on July 1, and on the news conference(s) which will announce our new management and coaching teams, and training camp, and the Bulldogs training camp and drooling over the raft of new prospects. So it's not like I was cheating, I was thinking of my true love the whole time.

Erik Cole, Max Pacioretty, Brad Staubitz in the empty net for his first goal as a Habitant, Tomas Plekanec on a 5 on 3 penalty kill, yada yada, great game. The Leafs suck. I wouldn't trade my team for three of theirs.

The win was a good way to end the season, and since the Oilers couldn't muster up a win, didn't cost us a steep 4 points on the draft lottery. Seeing the fans receiving jerseys from the players was great, although CBC cut away to the Jets' game too quick, I had to do some lightning quick PVR work to tune in the festivities on RDS.

Speaking of Don Cherry sucks, the knee on knee collisions are not a result of the clampdown on headshots, as he moronically asserts, but rather the result of the 'finish your check' mentality prevalent in the NHL, which allows players to hit others long after they've had possession of the puck, and the resulting mania of GM's to amass on their rosters goons and lunks who can't skate. These guys either extend a knee or reach out with an elbow as they're missing their target, as Brooks Orpik did and Darcy Hordichuk demonstrated in trying to decapitate Ryan Kesler in retaliation for Maxime Lapierre having had the audacity to bodycheck him.

After the game I watched the Canucks win the President Trophy, and I think I'll make it my new job to follow these guys through the playoffs, call it a civic duty as a transplanted British Columbian. Let's all hope for a good final involving the Canucks at full strength against the Penguins, a final with no villains, and skating and scoring and entertaining hockey instead of thuggery.

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