Habless

I hate doing this, b/c it reminds me of the RDS forums I try very hard not to read (filled with impossible spelling mistakes - I know French is a hard language, but it's the only single language you know, so why not make an effort? - and filled with stupidities, like, let's trade Plekanec, Bulis, Zednik for ... Thornton. I mean, duh!).

The Habs' offensive lines have been pointed out as responsible for the loss. Yeah, no shit. We lost Koivu, and lost a leader, and the center player for the first line of the team. Bonk is not the first center, and putting him on the first unit to replace Koivu not only 1- screwed up the first line (in fact, Bonk-Higgins-Ryder were on the ice when the first two Canes goals were scored), but also 2- made the defensive coverage more obviously focused on the Ribeiro-Kovalev-Bulis line (with a diminished Kovalev - how diminished, we'll never know), and 3- screwed up the checking line, since Bonk doesn't play on it anymore (he has been very good in this role - and it seems harder than it is to adjust overnight to a new reality).

That's my take on the loss. I need to do this, because I was actually supposed to be downtown to watch the game, after waiting for a guy for work who never showed up, but Danica's phone didn't answer, b/c OAP and/or Crescent bars are kinda loud, you know. Went home to try and not miss too much of the game (she and Sean both called, but then I was already in Dorval), and missed the "limiting-step" bus by a minute or two, and had to wait 30 minutes for the next, and ended up missing the whole first period.

So far, I'm being anti-social, even if playoffs hockey gives rise to plenty of social potentiality in this city. Imagine the street brawls on Crescent between Ottawa denizens and Montrealers for that second-round Sens-Habs series (that is, if Montreal still wins in 6)! In a Canadian city with a team in the playoffs, you can basically walk up to about anyone and talk about yesterday's game, in the most basic manner possible. Playoffs hockey is the stuff that produces fans (I became a real one after the 2001-02 run against the Bruins - brought down to earth by the same Hurricanes). At least I can change channels as I want.

At least in previous years I had my brother's company, but now, he goes to his friend's place to see it. Yelling when a goal is scored is kinda hollow, when the only people who can hear you are your parents (both being just mildly interested in hockey - my mother still reminiscing about that Guy Lafleur on the Habs team when she was a university student) and that they are busy blasting away the industrial-strength vacuum cleaner upstairs.

Hockey with rivality (Leafs and Sens games) gives rise to an excess of emotions being exteriorized. Like, during the Ottawa game in December, I've never heard myself be so... verbally aggressive against the other team's players ("Chara, you gorilla!" ). But playoffs hockey in a hockey city brings those emotions to the surface in all the non-fans. Like in the 2003-04 game, we went to see at the Bell Centre, I've never ever heard petronia yell sooo much, and in such a girly way too! Exteriorized emotions, man, they really transform the best of us.

When Perezhogin scored his goal in the second period, I muted my contentment. Opened my mouth, put my fist up in the air, but not a whisper came out.