Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘habs’

And now, you can study it at school. Yes, believe it or not, there’s a course at Université de Montréal, all about the religion of the Habs:

The Swiss-born Universite de Montreal professor said the ubiquitous relics and rituals linked to the Habs struck him when he arrived in the city a few years ago.

The similarities prompted Olivier Bauer to launch a crusade – in the form of a university course – to explore the many ties between a team that hails its sweater as La Sainte Flanelle – or holy flannel – and spiritual devotion.

Yes, it’s a religion here all right. In its jubilee 100th year. With a big revival in the form of All-Star Weekend coming up next week. And of course, we’re all hoping that this will finally be the year when Les Boys bring home the Holy Grail: the Stanley Cup.

Two seats in the reds at the Bell Centre: $240.

T-shirt with Habs logo in Hebrew letters: 30 shekels.

Coffee and a muffin from Tim Horton’s: $2.50.

Being there to see the game-winning goal scored with 22 seconds left: Priceless.

There’s a busker in the Place-des-Arts metro station almost every afternoon at rush hour, playing Moonlight Sonata on his keyboard. Three notes, over and over again, echoing off the walls. Beautiful. Haunting.

The melody stays in my head as I walk home, setting the tone for the rest of the evening. It is already dark, long ago. The days are so short now.

Outside, a few snowflakes fall lazily, trying only halfheartedly to amount to something, but succeeding only in lightly dusting the ground and the shining pavement. There’s no more ambiguity now about the season. The trees are bare now, autumn leaves replaced with Christmas lights.

Hardly anyone is on the streets. Even in the middle of downtown on a Thursday evening, it’s quiet. They’ve all hibernated. Gone underground for the winter.

The headlines today are all from Mumbai, and they’re all horrifying. Nobody reacts much. The rest of the news is about the economy. People worry but they don’t panic. They can’t quite work up the energy to panic. They exchange platitudes at the water cooler before heading back to their desks to cough and sneeze. They work hard, but they’ve slowed down since everything was new. The shorter days make everyone tired.

South of the border, it’s Thanksgiving. Here it’s just another day, like all the others. Maybe with a little less life than yesterday. And tomorrow with a little less life than today. They say it’s supposed to be the festive season, but aside from last night’s hockey win, people can’t seem to find much to be festive about.

November is a month of endings. Cold rains and early snowfalls, without the joy. The knowledge that winter has set in and will be here for the next five months. A long road with no end in sight. We walk it steadily, one foot in front of the other, because it’s all we can do.

And so we draw those we love close to us, hunker down and wait for spring.

The Habs opened the regular season tonight with a 2-1 shootout loss against Buffalo.

Lang played a great game. Tanguay, not so much. Kovy is hogging the puck again, but it’s definitely the Kovy of 07-08 and not of 06-07 on the ice. Captain K, Pleks and AK all look good. Breezer is back to his cringe-worthy self. Markov doesn’t look too comfortable in his new role yet. Lapierre, wtf was up with Lapierre? And as a team, these guys are still getting used to playing on lines together. A lot of missed passes, blueline confusion, the usual stuff for the start of a season. And very nearly a photo finish. But in the end, it wasn’t enough.

And Price. Price, Price, Price. Yeah, so he lost the shootout, but the kid still made 35 saves tonight, and looked really sharp doing it. The kid’s the real deal. He’ll improve on shootouts with practice.

All in all, we looked pretty damn good out there. We came away with a point, and we’ll build on it. Bring on the Leafs!

• A Palestinian terrorist asshole sent Livni a welcome message by slamming his car into a group of Israelis in Jerusalem, injuring 19. Analysts are predicting more attacks, as summer vacation is apparently over and terrorist schools are back in full swing. It’s no coincidence that this shit heats up every year right when universities are back in session, either.
• Meanwhile, on a visit to the region, Barack Obama made all the right noises, but it remains to be seen how much he meant them. Skepticism still abounds.
• Ominous news from Austria, where the far right seems to be making electoral gains. The situation bears watching.
• Back in Canada, on the campaign trail, the Liberals unveiled their platform, with more criticism than fanfare. Seems it’s trendy to be an environmentalist these days, but Dion’s having a tough time convincing Canadians that his numbers add up.
• Car-free day went by without much notice from the millions of people who drove their cars as usual, merely avoiding the few blocks closed off for the event. Far less of the city than is shut down for the typical summer festival, I might add. Some politicians scored some symbolic environmental points. The AMT announced a fare hike, giving new meaning to the phrase “worst timing ever”. I walked to work, as usual.
• Speaking of transportation, however you’re getting around these days, avoiding Greyhound seems like a good idea in light of a second stabbing attack in as many months.
• Hockey pre-season kicked off this weekend. The Habs lost their pre-season opener tonight, 8-3 against the Bruins in a quasi-playoff rematch of last season’s rivalry. Ouch. I’d be more upset if the game actually mattered.

Individual tickets for the Canadiens go on sale at noon today, after the Habs postponed the original date from Saturday when the online system crashed due to user overload. Anyone taking bets on how long it will stay up today?

In an effort to reduce scalper buyout, they’re limiting the tickets to one transaction per person / credit card. So even if by some miracle I manage to get ahold of tickets, they’ll only be for one game. More likely, I’ll get shut out. Then it’s a matter of staying on the good side of some season ticket holders.

Update: After waiting nearly 2-1/2 hours in the queue for the online system, I managed to get onto the system, but all the good games were basically sold out. I picked up two nosebleed tickets for Montreal-Chicago in March, which should be a good game with all the talented kids that the Blackhawks have in their lineup. I had really hoped to get tickets to a Washington or Pittsburgh game, but no such luck. Oh well, at least I got some!

Whew, this is what I get for being out of the loop for a couple of days. It’s hard to even keep up!

Let’s see, we’ve got:

• Marian Hossa to Detroit, where he obviously wants to try to win a Cup from the other side of that equation.
• Michael Ryder to Boston, not surprisingly leaving the Habs for our arch-rivals.
• More surprisingly, the Habs also lost Mark Streit to the Islanders. Streit was one of the most valuable Habs last season, and I’m frankly stunned that Gainey didn’t make keeping him into a bigger priority.
• Rangers shit-disturber (and surprising fashionista) Sean Avery heads to Dallas.
• Wade Redden to the Rangers, taking one of the top D-men out of the free agency market.
• Brian Campbell to Chicago, taking care of the other.
• After being traded to the Caps in time for an inspiring playoff run, former Hab netminder Cristobal Huet is heading to Chicago to try to give all the young talent over there a fighting chance.
• To fill that void, the Capitals have acquired Jose Theodore from the Avalanche, who in turn signed Toronto-castoff Andrew Raycroft. Definite downgrades for both teams, there.
• Tampa Bay has signed three free agents, most notably top forward Radim Vrbata, as well as Adam Hall and former Caps’ veteran goaltender Olaf Kolzig. Along with their previous signings of Ryan Malone, Gary Roberts and Vinny Prospal, and their first-round draft of Steve Stamkos, Tampa Bay is clearly determined to dig out of last place in a big way.

And the Habs? Aside from re-signing Andrei Kostitsyn, and picking up Alex Tanguay on draft day, Gainey has been pretty quiet. We lost Ryder (no surprise there) and Streit (big surprise and tough loss) and so far we have nothing to show for it. Not even Sundin, who I don’t even want, but who surely would have signed by now with Montreal if he had any desire to be here.

We cleared cap space, we made offers, but it’s starting to look like Gainey’s highly publicized announcements about his intention to land an “impact” forward will end this year much as they did last year. And I have to wonder how many people will stick to the “In Gainey We Trust” bandwagon this time around.

NHL draft update: The moves have started already. The Habs picked up Alex Tanguay from Calgary in exchange for this year’s first-round pick and next year’s second-round pick. Not sure how I feel about this one. Tanguay is a potentially excellent – albeit somewhat inconsistent – player. Despite his ups and downs, I’ve always kinda liked him, and I could see him fitting in well in Montreal. But then, that’s a lot of draft juice to sacrifice. Hell, that’s more than we got for Huet.

All things considered, I think Calgary – who picked up Mike Cammellari from LA, came out ahead on this one, upgrading their talent and picking up some key picks. All things considered, I think I would’ve preferred a direct deal with LA for Cammellari.

But, in Bob we trust… Right? Right?

Update #2: The negotiations are officially underway for Mats Sundin. I really, really hope this doesn’t happen.

Update #3: Flyers forward and the Habs’ playoff hopes’ worst nightmare, RJ Umberger, has been traded to Columbus.

Update #4: If the reports are true, Montrealers hoping for a return of native son Vinnie Lecavalier will be very disappointed indeed. Not that it was ever more than wishful thinking, mind you.

All eyes will be on the NHL Entry Draft tonight. In addition to the new talent, the wheeling and dealing of draft picks will lead to interesting trade speculation.

Here’s hoping the Mats Sundin to Montreal rumours don’t come true. I know Gainey desperately wants an “impact forward”, but c’mon, we can do so much better than over-the-hill Toronto cast-offs.

It ended with a whimper rather than a bang. As he often does, the Gazette’s Aislin expressed it best:

Sad as it is, the Habs defied a lot of expectations this season, and I’m predicting even better things next year. Here’s a salute to the bleu-blanc-rouge. Thanks for a great year!