Les Glorieux!

Ah oui! les Ca-na-diens! les super canadiens de Montreal!

Back in January, I ran into an old farmer from my hometown at the cancer clinic. I was going in, he was going out.

The big guy told me, as he nodded sagely: "I think there's a Cup coming!" At that point, Montreal was struggling to squeak into the playoffs, a feat they accomplished on the last weekend of the regular season. A notorious loyalist of Le Tricolore, I thought perhaps that the treatments were doing the same number on him as they had on me.

Then again, he had called the same shot towards the end of the 1993 regular season. Told me, at close range: "I think there's a Cup coming!" I laughed then too, thinking that the big guy had been kicked in the head by one of his dairy cows.

Yet here we are. They are singing in the streets outside my window. They are halfway there, and have more than a puncher's shot to get to the Final. Fuck, I hope its the Bruins in the semis.

Jaroslav Halak is breaking playoff records. Roy, Dryden, Plante, even Steve Penney are being supplanted. And then Pierre Gauthier will make the right decision, and trade him for Vinny and a first at the draft. And Carey Price will then take his place in the pantheon.

I feel like its 1979, 1986, and 1993 -- all over again. And I didn't even wear my Canadiens teeshirt tonight.