The puck drops here!

I've just been watching TSN's NHL season special. . .

After two games played in London, England, the 2007 NHL season will officially begin tomorrow night. And I can already make a prediction: the Montreal Canadiens will not win the Stanley Cup this year. Heck, they might not even make the playoffs. As things stand, we will be battling for the 8th and final playoff spot. If we're lucky, that is. . .

I guess you have to be a Canuck to truly understand what hockey means up here. Don't get me wrong: I absolutely love the NFL, but nothing beats a good hockey game!

Detroit and Toronto can brag about being hockey towns and all that, but everybody knows that Montreal is the true mecca of the sport. With its 24 Stanley Cups, only the New York Yankees have won more championships in their history with 26 World Series titles. Here in MTL, we literally have the Habs' logo tattooed on our hearts. The sun rises and sets with the Canadiens, and you have to live the experience to really have a chance to understand what hockey means in a city like Montreal. It's been likened to a religion, and I guess it's a very good analogy.

Which, in the end, is why the prospect of the 2007 season looks so bleak. The addition of players like Tom Kostopoulos, Roman Hamrlik, Bryan Smolinsky and Patrice Brisebois will not get us anywhere. Once again, our general manager did move fast enough at the onset of summer, and every free agent of note signed with another team. Forced to scramble to try to please the fans, Gainey signed Hamrlik to a ridiculous contract, overpaying him and thus ensuring that we cannot possibly trade him.

Both Pierre Boivin and Bob Gainey should be fired, for reasons too numerous to enumerate in this post. The long and the short of it is that they fail, year in and year out for quite a while now, to put a competitive team on the ice. Guy Carbonneau should be an assistant, not the head coach. But in Montreal, anyone with a key position must speak French. . .

TA-BAR-NAK! Je suis francophone -- un Québécois pure laine -- et je n'en ai rien à foutre que le coach ou le directeur général parle le Français! Put together a team that has a chance to compete in the Eastern Conference, and I don't care if they speak Russian, Spanish, or Arabic! Hiring only French-speaking people for key positions in the Habs' higher echelons will almost always preclude our going forward. Why? Because the best coaches and general managers in the NHL don't speak French, and those that do have little desire to come or return to Montreal, where the pressure for them to win is too strong. Which leaves us with inexperienced men who don't have the pedigree to take us all the way.

Of course, I'll be rooting for other teams in the NHL. The Pittsburgh Penguins, in particular. My patriotic side wishes that every Canadian team does well this year. But if the Gods are kind, and if we fail to make the playoffs, hopefully the hated Toronto Maple Leafs will not either. Watching the Leafs lose brings me much joy, you see!;-)

It's going to be a long cold winter. . .:-( But I'm too much of a fan, which means that I will be watching every single game -- for better or worst. . .

Rant over!