Habless
Habless (adj):
1. Luckless; unfortunate.
2. Team captain gets hit in the eye by opponent's stick during game 3 of a best-of-seven series and is out for at least the series (potentially career-threatening). Team goes on to lose that game, and the next, such that that the series is now tied after winning two first games away.
3. :(
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!"
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.
I used to love it when vinh would watch hockey with his friend. They would yell at the TV in cantonese. His parents would always yell at them that it was a stupid game..
I miss canada even the chicks would talk about the hockey games the next day at work.. you just don't see that here in the US (other than american idol!).