this is with seconds left in game 4 v boston. i thought it might be my last moment with bob, too. jarvis is wondering how much longer this is going to last, while captain kirk is in the b/g, listening to the radio.
ON WHY I AM SO NERVOUS...
i remember habs irrelevancy far clearer that habs supremacy, for i have lived it longer, and endured many season ending moments of lackluster "ohwell"s, for in montreal the end is always in sight long before it actually arrives. this is true about winter, and this is true about hockey.
when the habs scrapped into the playoffs in the miraculous spring of 2002, it was without saku koivu, who had cancer all year; it was without donald audette, who had almost lost his hand due to his shorty-short glovies and the swishing blade of some czeck NYR skater, HR**T**?; it was without sheldon souray, who broke both his wrists; the habs snuck into the playoffs on the amazing season of Jose Theodore, who won the league's MVP award and beat P. Roy for the Vezina. and doug gilmour was here, and richard zednik. and yannic perrault. and the rest of the gang of jokers on that very best of the worst habs teams, the ALMOST irrelevant team. indeed, that team upset boston and went to make a show of it with carolina before losing in 6, the first time post expansion that the team to beat montreal had gone on to win the stanley cup (except, of course, those teams that played montreal For the cup.)
the next year we missed the playoffs. the team was less sick but still quite bad, and jose theodore sank the ranks from MVP to good to leaky to traded. two coaches were sacked because they couldn't get XL back to glory, and he was traded in the afternoon, injured, not too long after he was banned from the olympics for a controlled substance.
but these were not dark days: in the six seasons/ seven years between the rise of the 2002 team and the collapse of the centennial squad the habs beat the bruins three out of four times in the playoffs, were eliminated by the eventual cup champions twice, and finished first in the eastern conference for the first time since the late days of habs bliss, 197x. it didn't feel like it at the time, because of our SOFT teams sublimating in the post-season, but those mostly-marginally talented teams sure did manage to deliver quite some excitement and entertainment on the way out.
the whole time jettisoning talented NHL players in ridiculous trades (or the gone but never forgotten waiver draft), regular players like: ron hainsey, stephane robidas, francois beauchemain (who we couldn't resign in the summer of 09), mike ribeiro, michael ryder, jose theodore.
the whole time picking-up useless meat and bags of pucks on the free-agent market, or in trade, players like: randy mckay, mariuz czercawski, sergei berezin, niclaus sundstrom (how did this guy play here for three years?), joe juneau, yannick perrault, andreas dackel, oh it makes me ill.
the whole time drafting never-were s, and passing on young superstars.
we still beat the bruins three fucking times. one year, we beat them 11 times in a row.
now, at the dawn of the post-koivu-era, we can look back at that 2002 team, the best of the worst, and ask some interesting questions:
-what does that team have in common with the new, as of yet unseen 2010 team?
-are we a better team today than we were then?
-what, besides beating the bruins, have the habs done of worth since 2002? (1993, really, but let's just say 2002)
and does it matter? there was a fucking protest at the BC to RESIGN KOVALEV, which is as close to maschocism as is permitted by the current CBA.
kovalev often contributed little more to the success of the team than youppi.
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