ScorchStack issue #21: True North? Strong And Free? Yeah, Sure Thing Pal
We preview the Canadian teams!
Friends, loved ones, it is finally here: the 2021 NHL season. Many are calling it the “Era of the ScorchStack” and I simply could not agree more.
For the first* time, the world’s only and best Flames newsletter is talking hockey. Not Flames hockey (check back tomorrow), but still hockey.
*We technically talked hockey for all of two games when the Flames were tripping over their dicks en route to getting eliminated in the first round. Those games really didn’t count and neither did those issues (but you can read them in our archives because they were good).
A lot has happened in the hockey world since August or whenever the season finished (not checking). I think the draft happened in October, can’t be too sure. With the general state of the world and your life in disarray, you are certainly blameless if you weren’t entirely aware that Chad Chundy had signed on to be a top six forward on a team you don’t really remember existing. Thankfully, we’ve done* the research** and will provide you with everything you were out of the loop on with regards to Canada’s teams: what changed, what stayed the same, and what we can expect from them.
Since these folks are our rivals, we would be abandoning our duties if we were just looking at the facts and not being mean to them. We’re getting the psychological advantage on our Canadian opponents by really sticking it to the teams we’re division-mates with for just this one season. We’re moving in and living rent free (the Flames haven’t played the Oilers ten times yet, so this phrase is still fresh and definitely not annoying) in the heads of the Scotia North Division.
If you’re mad at this, remember that it’s just jokes and you’re actually the fool for taking it seriously. If you like it, we are truthsayers and the best in the business.
What’s inside?
Well, we do previews for all the other teams in the Scotia North Division. How many times do we need to bring that up?
Since last week
In ScorchStack #20, we tackled the tough topics that the other guys were afraid to touch: Should you care about lines? What is a PTO? Who is disrespecting Joe Nieuwendyk? What are movies?
Every player on earth was put on waivers, including Oliver Kylington and Derek Ryan. They were not claimed by rival teams. Is a conspiracy at play? The short answer is no. The long answer is also no.
The ScorchStack Previews Some Teams
The Edmonton Oilers
by ramz (@raminashlah)
What’s new with these guys?
I don’t know, some stuff happened, I guess. They signed Kyle Turris to a two-year contract with an AAV of $1.65 million. Turris was quite bad last year.
He was bought out by Nashville because they’d rather pay him $2 million per year to play for anyone other than them for the next seven seasons, if that says anything. Preds fans were also upset that he was a healthy scratch for seven games, which I get, that’s a little weird. He also continually had different linemates, so I guess it’s hard to play with new players all the time, but also if you’re bad, then you’re just bad. Sorry.
They also signed Tyson Barrie, who was decent with Toronto last year, I guess. He apparently did better when he was with Colorado, but I wouldn’t know since I don’t particularly like paying attention to the Leafs. But Edmonton could use him since they have like zero defence, especially with Oscar Klefbom missing the season due to injury. At least they still have Kris Russell :)
What’s the same?
I don’t know, a lot, I suppose. They re-signed Tyler Ennis (blockbuster announcement) to a one-year contract worth $1 million. He likely will not play on the top two lines or much on the powerplay, and for only $1 million, that’s fine, I would just like him to get some sleep and some brightening eye cream.
They also re-signed Mike Smith and Kris Russell :) My favs :)
They found a Dominik, but our Dominik is better. They also brought Jesse Puljujarvi back, and I like him, so that’s fine. I only like him because he has not been good for the Oilers, so he is a good friend of mine. Also, he has the face of a villain when he smiles. I guess Ken Holland wants to give their relationship another try. I can still feel the Peter Chiarelli vibes. You can take the Edmonton out of Chiarelli but you can’t take the Chiarelli out of Edmonton.
Oh, and Johnny Gaudreau remains superior to Connor McDavid.
There may have been some more things that stayed the same, but I simply do not care enough about the city of Edmonton to look into that.
Some very good reasons to hate them:
1: They play in Edmonton.
2: The Flames have to play them 10 times this season, which will inevitably put a big strain on my relationship with my Oilers fan boyfriend.
3: While I do not agree, some people believe that McDavid is “fun to watch”, and “the best player in the modern NHL”. Cool, have fun watching him skate around your team (if that’s what you believe, which I do not).
4: Matthew Tkachuk will smile at Leon Draisaitl, and in return, Draisaitl will throw a temper tantrum and try and get him suspended for 25 games.
One reason to begrudgingly like them:
Edmonton boasts the world-renowned, truly best goaltender there is: Mike Smith. He is an incredible goalie, and they are very lucky to have him. Personally, I’m very jealous, but he is also a good friend of mine, and I am also his biggest fan.
Final prediction:
The Oilers will spend another season having their best player be worse than Johnny Gaudreau, and Draisaitl will continue to go poopoo in his diaper. They may finish ahead of Calgary in the standings, but only because the Flames will allow them to do so, because we are nicer than them. They will definitely not finish last, and they have the Senators to thank for that.
The Vancouver Canucks
by Christian (@decayinwtheboys)
What’s new with these guys?
Well, most of the Canucks from last season are here now. That’s the major thing, but you probably already knew that.
It’s been an offseason of change for Vancouver. Even if they didn’t all end up in Calgary, the Canucks were going to have to purge a lot of expensive players and replace them on the cheap, hoping that no one would notice. Say hello to Braden Holtby, who is here to try and not completely fall off the aging curve so that they don’t have to throw the unproven-but-exciting Thatcher Demko into the starting role too early.
Speaking of washed, old players, Travis Hamonic is also in Vancouver now, playing with, let’s see…Quinn Hughes? That can’t possibly be right.
Oh boy. Look, we all loved Hamonic and wish him the best, but he was quite clearly declining, and a husk of his former self after all of the injuries. It takes a special effort to be the worst half of a pairing with Noah Hanifin, and I can’t imagine he’ll be much more than a liability on the first unit (yes, we are aware that Chris Tanev is the exact same thing, but slightly shinier).
To their credit, the Canucks did add second pair superstar Nate Schmidt to the mix. This was plan B after Oliver Ekman-Larsson fell through, but it’s one hell of a plan B. Originally an expansion draft afterthought, Schmidt blossomed into an excellent puck mover with the Golden Knights and became an early fan favourite, which explains all the fanfare for Vancouver diehards. He is also 29, not allowed to do P.E.Ds anymore, playing for a team that hasn’t been a major cup contender for the first time in his career, and on a contract that will last until his mid 30s, so this would also be a very funny time for him to completely fall apart. Just saying.
Rookies include Nils Hoglander and Olli Juolevi. Hoglander has some serious steam behind him given the number of ridiculous highlights from Europe, and seems ready to excite. Juolevi might be okay, but will probably be the butt of more jokes. It’s not his fault that the Canucks picked him over our beloved angel boy, but he’s never going to stop hearing the comparisons.
What’s the same?
Despite rumours that Brock Boeser was on his way out, the Canucks have wisely kept their core of Elias Petterson, Hughes, Boeser, JT Miller, and Bo Horvat together for another go at it. The firepower on the top end of the lineup is going to wreak havoc in the Canadian division, with a case for the most talented top six in the division. Hughes might be the best defender in the Scotia North as well, and he’s in his second season.
The major problem is that the bottom six is filled with the exact opposite of those players: crud that might not make it onto most NHL rosters. Jay Beagle is here to win a lot of faceoffs and not much else, which still might make him more useful than Brandon Sutter. Antoine Roussel might make games spicy, but won’t do much outside of that.
Adam Gaudette, Jake Virtanen, and Tyler Motte aren’t old or rich enough to be placed in that bucket, but they’re also not to be confused with great players. By the way, they’re already slew-footing and fighting each other in practice.
Fellas, please. Nikolay Goldobin isn’t around anymore to even be a vague threat to your job. You don’t need to impress anyone by fighting in scrimmage, who’s going to take your spot?
The further you go down the depth chart, the more dire things get. Farmhands Jayce Hawryluk (already injured) and Zack MacEwen are being pushed into NHL duty. Did you know Sven Baertschi is still around and kicking? He’s been waived again, but he’s still here in spirit. Loui Eriksson is also here, and might get paid seven figures per goal this season. They’re both taxi squad-bound, but they’re also the only experienced NHLers the Canucks have as depth. Also, in a very Canucks twist of fate, they are already in Covid trouble, so they’re going to feel the pinch really early in a season where seven or eight games is more crucial than usual.
Put it all together, and the Canucks will resemble the team from last year. They might get better production from their younger players, worse production from their older players, but they’ll still be a team that gets horribly outshot and somehow still has a fighting chance each game. There’s too much dead weight to make them the favourites, but too much star power to truly count them out. If the season goes smoothly (it already is not), and they can get the most out of everyone (also probably not going to happen), they could contend (lol).
Some very good reasons to hate them:
I’ll throw a curveball at everyone: I think we should nice to them this season! But only just in case some of the good Canucks want to head over to Calgary in the future. This offseason was just planting the seed. Jacob Markstrom will use telepathy to communicate to fellow Swede Pettersson that the grass is greener on this side of the Rockies, and if all the Flames fans politely clap for him, I think we just might have a chance.
Just kidding, they’re the Canucks. Everyone hates them, and even being ambivalent towards them will raise eyebrows. Being the unanimous villains in a series with the 2011 Boston Bruins is a tough feat to accomplish, but they did it. That’s how low the Canucks are in the league’s opinion.
I’ve typed and retyped this section a few hundred times, but I keep landing on the same conclusion: they’re the Canucks, you hate them. I don’t need to waste anyone’s time explaining why. In the alternate reality where the Atlanta Flames never moved, we would still hate the Canucks. That they’re regional rivals is just convenience.
It’s absurd, because this is probably one of the most likeable Canucks teams in their history. Pettersson and Hughes do cool things on the ice that I can’t even really be mad at. Nate Schmidt seems like a genuine, loveable personality. Braden Holtby hates Edmonton so much that he ignored their superior offer to sign with the Canucks, so he’s technically a friend. Ryan Kesler and Kevin Bieksa aren’t on the team. Everyone has good vibes to them, there’s not really a detestable face among the crowd.
Alas, they are Canucks. I do not like them for that reason and that reason alone. The reverse retros suck, too. Wear the skate full time.
One reason to begrudgingly like them:
Jim Benning pulls off one move per year that pays off immediately, but has dire long term consequences, earning him the job security to do more of that in the future.
Final prediction:
Fifth or sixth in the Canadian division. Last year’s squad had a 2014-15 Flames feeling to them, and if you can try and be nice to that team, they didn’t get significantly worse, even as they headed into the disastrous 2015-16 season.
The Winnipeg Jets
by floob (@itlooksreal)
What’s new with these guys?
For the first time since 1996, NHL hockey returns to Winnipeg, as the once and former Atlanta Thrashers have relocated to the Manitoba capital (note to self: check to see if Winnipeg is indeed the capital of Manitoba), proving twice and for all that a city can house a hockey team even without an airport anywhere nearby.
It’s a bit premature to ask what else is new with the Jets, as the big development for this season is still a storm in mid brew, as resident sniper and perennial 80s supervillain Patrik Laine is at all times on the verge of being shuttled off to fresh pastures. The trade is absolutely going to happen, it’s perhaps just a matter of how rosy an outlook GM Kevin Cheveldayoff has of his team at the time that determines the direction of the franchise on the other side. Even two years ago, dealing a player of Laine’s stature out of Winnipeg would signal a new, some would say much shittier era of Jets hockey, but while Laine today is still certainly much more than just A Guy, it’s not the reeking of desperation, franchise changing gamble it would have once been.
Elsewhere, Dustin Byfuglien, that absolute fucking fridge, is finally gone. Also the Jets signed Paul Stastny. Who cares?
What’s the same?
Almost everything, and that’s a problem in a lot of ways. While the Jets didn’t add or subtract much roster wise, they probably should have, because despite some nice pieces at the top of the lineup, further down the lineup features a bevy of players who will one day only be remembered for being swindled in bad investments after they retire. Up front, Kyle Connor, Laine (for now), Mark Scheifele, and Nik Ehlers all move the needle for the Jets, who are complemented by a capable - if not aging (and expensive!) - core in Stastny, Blake Wheeler and Mathieu Perreault. Beyond that, it's mostly magic beans and the erstwhile Prairie farm boys who planted them. One of the more promising beans in Jack Roslovic is already playing the standard “Manitoba sucks” dance, and is ready to leave, unlikely to sign a contract anytime soon and asking for his walking papers. Always a good sign. Winnipeg is going to have to go ahead and get used to that.
On defense, Josh Morrissey looks to rebound after a tough year, and Jets fans sure hope he does, because you wouldn’t have to do much to convince me that allegedly ex-Flames defenseman Derek Forbort might be the 4th best defenseman on the team.
The good news for the Jets is one of the things that remains the same is their whole having the best goalie in the NHL thing. Connor Hellebuyck papers over a lot of flaws in Winnipeg, and that’s going to have to continue, because that is a team that hemorrhages chances, and much like the Flames, they didn’t really seek to address that in any way beyond “make goalie fix”.
Some very good reasons to hate them:
The Flames play the Jets nine times this season. That’s annoying on it’s own, but you can bet Winnipeg coach Paul Maurice hasn’t yet finished filling up his diaper about Flames star and absolute sweetheart Matthew Tkachuk since the teams locked horns in the play in round coming out of last season’s covid break. Expect Maurice to take to the press multiple times this season, complaining about how Matthew “injured his players”, or “called me a square jawed Dwight Schrute”, or how fans won’t stop coming up to him at home and saying “Oh, we love any Tkachuk more than you”. I thinks doth protests too much, Pauly.
One reason to begrudgingly like them:
Hellebuyck is what the Flames think they’re getting in Jacob Markstrom, only for less term and money, while Blake Wheeler seems like a genuinely normal and thoughtful-for-hockey dude, which mostly means he’s one of the only guys in the league who thinks “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t wear MAGA hats”. Patrik Laine strikes me as someone that eats wolf meat bone raw, and I think that it would be cool if I got to see him do it.
Final prediction:
We all remember the Jets being promptly dismantled by the Flames in the fake playoffs leading into the fake playoffs this past summer. That team and this team are the same thing, and for fans over on Portage Street, that sucks. For us here in the Scorchieverse, it’s a damn blessing. The Jets are lucky that the Senators share a division with them this year, and thus won’t be in the North Division’s basement, but if you’re only finishing ahead of the team littered with guys Eugene Melnyk barely agrees to pay, well that sure seems to me like you’re the team actually finishing last.
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The Ottawa Senators
by Mike (@mikepfeil_)
It’s da Sens, BABY!
What’s new with these guys?
I often forget that the Ottawa Senators are a real hockey team. My understanding is that they acquired Derek Stepan at some point this off-season, and that they are a cap-floor team. They drafted a kid named Tim Schnitzel out of Germany and also have Degrassi’s very own Drake Batherson. Much like my dearth of knowledge of the city of Cleveland, the Senators are a blind spot for me, so I reached out to some experts on the subject.
Contributing to my re-education is humanitarian-mullet enthusiast Bonk’s Mullet (Eric), and Nate from Silver Seven Sens, a blog dedicated to the fictional hockey team of Ottawa.
What’s the same?
Pierre Dorion is still gainfully employed, and Eugene Melnyk still somehow owns this team. It’s remarkable that two of the most unqualified human beings in hockey are associated with the Senators at the same time. Brady Tkachuk is one of the lone hopes in the nation’s capital, along with Schnitzel, and John Thomas Cabot returns, once again taking a break from Maritime exploration.
Given that Brady possesses the same innate Tkachukian hunger for carnage and drawing attention, I asked the Sensperts (a Sens expert) if they could survive in the woods with Brady Tkachuk:
BM - Assuming there are no pop tarts or pizza pops in the woods, Brady would be dead in a few hours. I would survive off the endless supply of Canadian media members coming to look for him—not to make sure he’s okay, but to ask him about his brother. Not that I’ve thought this through before in great detail...
Nate - I’m interpreting this question to mean that he’s hunting me like some sort of apex predator, in which case I’ll throw him off the trail by insinuating Keith told me that Matthew was the better son at shit-talking, then watching him run off to begin the eternal Tkachuk struggle anew.
Some very good reasons to hate them:
Well, there is a Tkachuk there. If he is anything like his brother, he’ll have a taste for human flesh. Maybe Brady will rip in half a Toronto Maple Leaf “prospect” (drafted in the 200th round of the 2017 draft, has a NHLe of 40, and is poised to be the next big thing according various Leafs fans with abnormally large foreheads). Is this a bad thing, though?
We could spend all day talking about Melnyk, but that’s exhausting. Everyone knows he is a blight on the team and on the fan base. Years ago, he paid Ukrainian hackers to go after popular food-abolitionist Travis Yost. This really seems like the season Melnyk goes after another blogger, and the boys have their predictions:
BM - хакери? які хакери? I mean… Ian Mendes, probably.
Nate - Definitely our own Colin Cudmore, who Eugene might or might not have been referring to when he said one of the team’s biggest critics “was a 12 year old from Toronto”. We can neither confirm nor deny any details about Colin’s age or whereabouts at this time.
Count your days, Colin and Ian. It’s like The Ring, but instead of you dying in seven days after viewing a montage of Daniel Alfredsson as a Red Wing, you get hacked by a former KGB intelligence officer working for Melnyk.
One reason to begrudgingly like them:
Matt Murray’s dogs seem reasonable enough.
The cycle of transgressions against talent continues, as Thomas Chabot is the next iteration of Erik Karlsson, in that he’ll be the only talented defenseman among a sea of washed up fringe-NHLers. If you want to see a young man compete against opposing teams, his own-partner, and probably the forwards he’s forced to play with, cheer for him. If reincarnation is real, I’m sure Chabot is being punished for something he did in a past life.
Nate - Stützle is going to kick a lot of ass, and just generally be an extremely charming, delightful young man. Tkachuk is going to be our favourite shithead son. Chabot is going to score some boss goals. The highlight reel for the season is gonna be cool as hell, but if you’re not a fan already, I wouldn’t move them to the top of your watch list…yet.
BM - Now that the Sens have announced that The Deutsch One’s name will be spelled as Stützle and not Stuetzle (get with the times, Nathan), umlaut-gate is over, and I’m not sure what I have to live for anymore. But if you’re looking for some Sens-based entertainment as a Flames fan, please join me in categorically stating all season that Tim Stützle is the best German-born player in NHL history—especially within the Canadian division.
Final prediction:
I asked Eric and Nate to provide haikus explaining their thoughts:
BM - New jerseys are dope
Thank Tim it’s a short season
Maple Leafs are poo
Nate - Hope for the future
This year will be kind of crap
Stützle, our new king
Last in Canada, and therefore banished to the shadow realm: Chetwynd, British Columbia, the hometown of both myself and former-Flame, Deryk Engelland.
The Toronto Maple Leafs
by Konnie (@konnie49)
What’s new with these guys?
Well, they decided that they just couldn’t deal with young guys in their mid 20s in the middle of their lineup, and needed to replace them with players past their prime that used to hit things, or had a long beard. Out goes Kasperi “Cheeks Klapanen” Kapanen, who the Leafs managed swindle a 1st round pick out of Pittsburgh for, and Andreas Johnsson, somehow both overpaid and underrated in the eyes of Leafs fans (oh, we will get to them in just a moment). In comes ol’ Joe Thornton, signing with the Leafs in likely his final attempt to win a Stanley Cup (lol), and Wayne Simmonds, who was excellent at making people angry and putting in the puck in the net. Emphasis on the “was”.
They also stole TJ Brodie from us, which still hurts to this day. He will instantly be better than any right-side defenceman they have had in the salary cup era, which is great for him, but I can’t shake the sadness I feel seeing Brodie wearing that damned blue jersey.
They also signed a bunch of European players like Mikko Lehtonen and Alexander Barabanov, to the typical chorus of Leafs hype. With Lehtonen already being slated as a healthy scratch for their first game of the season, you can tell that these certified “best players not currently playing in the NHL” are not going to live up to the levels of praise bestowed upon them in the offseason.
What’s the same?
Despite the complaints and demands of certain paper bag wearing Leafs fans, the same core of young forwards are in tact. Auston Matthews will score a lot for someone who looks like a finger painted face on a butternut squash. William Nylander is going to be consistently good while still having fans hoping to trade him (right to his hometown of Calgary, of course), and Mitch Marner will continue to be both a point per game player, and overpaid. John Tavares is also there, too.
Fabled member of the Brampton Boys, Sheldon Keefe, gets his first full season behind the bench, and will likely get more out of his players than previous head coach Mike Babcock ever did, with only slightly less verbal abuse.
The defence core still has a similar look with Morgan Rielly holding down the fort, this time with an actual NHL quality defenceman at his side. He could be due for a strong offensive year, not having to worry about having to play both defence positions at once.
Freddie Andersen, in a contract year, will be given every chance to play lights out trying to earn himself a new deal somewhere else, as the Leafs have no interest in paying him. Granted, that is smart, because who would ever sign an alright goalie, who is over 30, to a long term deal?
Some very good reasons to hate them:
God, the fans are annoying. You’ve seem them online, you have seen them in the arena when the Leafs are in town. They are loud, obnoxious, and ruin any fun that an otherwise exciting team like the Leafs could be. I get why TSN and Sportsnet gives the team so much coverage, as the team essentially prints money, but there is a picture of Leaf fans right next to the definition of arrogance. They also make some of the absolute worst content on twitter.
I mean, look at this.
And it’s going to get worse. For many young Leafs fans, this is the first time their team has deservedly hogged the spotlight, and for many old ones they will also feel nostalgic and bring out that youthful energy. They’ll turn “how does this affect the Leafs?” from an ironic statement to a sincere one. “It was 4-1” jokes are hack to them, but they won’t let you forget a bad trade that your team did ten years ago. They’ll talk and talk and then have the audacity to wonder why everyone’s laughing at them bowing out of the playoffs early, only to pretend they actually saw it coming all along.
Just remember though, every single joke you make to them is extremely tired and played out but they will to make sure to call your team out for putting a player on waivers, calling it one of the worst decisions in your franchise’s history. The silver lining is that you can send of Leafs Twitter into a civil war with one clever reply.
One reason to begrudgingly like them:
Well, the offence is fun to watch, having one of the better forward cores in the entire league. Not many teams are as deep as the Leafs are three lines in, and are able to score away most of their flaws. That said, with the team defence still being such an issue, when the offence dries up, you know they will be spectacularly shitty.
If nothing else, the Leafs provide a level of entertainment that cannot be matched by any other team in the league. When it rains, it pours, and it makes me want to put on my raincoat to wade the storm of salty Leaf fan tears.
Final prediction:
They probably win the division, since they are the most talented team in Canada. Perhaps a division rival gets hot at the right time, and takes the division away from them, but that feels unlikely, and they are probably the only team that is truly a lock for the playoffs.
Montreal Canadiens
by Nathan (@hanoten)
What’s new with these guys?
Quite a bit, surprisingly. After deciding it was funnier to eliminate the Penguins from reaching the playoffs instead of getting a shot at Alexis Lafrenière (it was), GM Marc Bergevin did a whole bunch of moves of varying quality.
They participated in the NHL Draft instead of hosting it, but nothing they did should affect them this season. They traded for Jake Allen as a backup to Carey Price, which was a good move. The extension they signed Allen to…not great. They then traded and signed Joel Edmundson which is not a great decision for a team that can be competitive this season. The Habs did get a great deal on Tyler Toffoli though, who is perhaps a Canucks castoff the Flames should have been pursuing.
Perhaps the most interesting was dumping MAGA chud Max Domi for Josh Anderson. Anderson will fit the system under Claude Julien better, but the talent on-ice is likely a downgrade. That being said, no longer employing Domi and having to deal with his antics and also personality must be nice for them. Not sure it’s worth the extra draft pick Montreal threw in.
With the exception of Edmundson, Montreal’s new moves are pretty okay for plugging holes this season. It’ll probably hurt them cap-wise down the road (if not now) and they didn’t really go out and acquire any game-breakers, but that’s their problem and not ours.
What’s the same?
The hope that their collection of projects or great players past their prime will miraculously figure it out. That, or perhaps their young talents will take massive leaps all together to make this roster more dangerous than it is.
Montreal could be deadly if:
Nick Suzuki and Jesperi Kotkaniemi thrive this season
Carey Price plays like it’s 2015
Jonathan Drouin “figures it out”
Shea Weber stops aging, and also stays healthy
Everyone else has a career year
As it stands, their 1C is still Philip Danault and that really reflects where the team is at. Good enough, but not really anything to write home about. Brendan Gallagher will be a great player and an effective pest. Weber and Jeff Petry will lead the defence with slightly above average contributions from Brett Kulak and Ben Chiarot. Tomas Tatar’s name will still be fun to say. Sunrise, sunset.
Some very good reasons to hate them:
It’s very fun. It’s honestly a surprise that T.J. Brodie didn’t sign with the Canadiens, because hoo boy their fans some of the best conspiracy theorists in the league. Unable to accept they haven’t been good in two decades, the Red White and Bleu will sooner scream in their bastardized French that it’s actually a huge sham and something must be up and not that their best players must be named Jean-Paul Marie Tabernac LaFluer Jr or else they will scréam about it.
Quebec hockey fans get confused watching Bon Cop, Bad Cop because they relate both to the cops who are terrible at their job and to the serial killer who cares so much about the NHL that they’d go on a psychotic murder spree to satisfy their fantasies.
Remember the time they tried to file police charges against Zdeno Chara because of the fluke Max Pacioretty injury? The only person who has ever made French hockey fans sympathetic is Shane Doan.
Montreal is an incredibly fun city filled with the best bagels and delis in the country, and they ruin it by letting their citizens become Habs fans.
One reason to begrudgingly like them:
When I was a student at SFU, I was forced to rent in the absolute hellscape that is the Greater Vancouver housing market. We were thrilled with our incredible luck when we found the main suite of a house that was built in 1955 in the middle of nowhere and subsequently never touched again. Even though the pipes burst and windows would randomly shatter, this was an incredibly affordable place for three students at only $2000/month once you factored in utilities. Vancouver is definitely built to last.
In the basement suite lived a Quebecois man named Conrad, and his expanding family situation that we never quite fully understood. At first it was just him and his son Mario. They mostly kept to themselves and smoked a bunch of weed in the shack out back. Conrad looked like ZZ Top, if ZZ Top emerged from rural Quebec. We shared a laundry room and so we had a cordial, if not friendly relationship. Over the years, Mario found a girlfriend who I think was named Kristie. She had a kid who was cute but possibly one of the dumbest kids I’ve ever met. Just an incredibly stupid child. Then Mario and Kristie had a baby. There were five of them living in this tiny two-bedroom basement suite, where all the damage would hit when the pipes burst. Then, to make matters worse, the original baby daddy for the first kid re-entered the picture. And this guy was hot. Way hotter than Mario. It drove a real wedge that we heard all about because you could hear everything in the house. We moved out and never got resolution to this story, and I wish I could know how it ended more than anything.
None of this ever really affected Conrad though. He would go out to the shack, smoke a bunch of weed, and go on nice long walks with his dog Daisy. He couldn’t work because he needed back surgery, so he mostly just took care of things around the house. And he would sing the entire time he was doing it. Almost every day at 9:00 am, Conrad would launch into old French children’s songs or sea shanties or (bewilderingly) the American anthem with all the gusto he could manage. Like I said, you could hear everything in this house, so we were routinely woken up to Conrad’s weird songs that were always in a different key. We never brought it up though, because we hosted a lot of parties for our quidditch team and they frequently got out of hand. We would try and keep it to the weekends and head to the park after midnight so we weren’t so loud, but it was what it was. We had no right to ever tell them they were a bother.
Every week, I’d expect Conrad to tell me that we were loud and disruptive to the kids. I’d expect him to politely tell us to smarten up, or even to launch into a huge tirade full of French biblical swears. He never did. All he ever wanted to talk about in his incredibly broken English was how he wanted the Habs to be good, but they always disappointed him. He’s still watch every game in his big, brown chair on the tiniest TV, because maybe they were just a few pieces away from putting it together. He would scream when they scored, but always with weird made up words like “Gabagabagabagoooooooooal.” When he screamed a whole bunch, I’d turn on the game and watch how it ended just so we’d have something to talk about. It was pretty obvious though that Conrad knew this team would never truly win it all. You could see it in his incredibly glossy eyes. It did give him something to think about besides how long the waiting list for his surgery was, or how badly he wanted to move out of this basement suite and back to Quebec, or how Daisy was allergic to most of her food but he still spoiled her because he loved that dog more than anything except maybe the Habs, although the jury is out there.
Conrad deserves some joy. The Canadiens can give that to him.
Final prediction:
They’ll probably make the playoffs in the North Division and maybe even win a round. Of all the teams in the Canadian division, they honestly might be the least eventful team this season, which isn’t a bad thing. It just……is. Like the Canadiens.
Up Next Week
Tomorrow counts as next week, which is when we have your Flames season preview. We’ll get ahead of this one now: it includes Josh Leivo.
There will be a week of NHL regular season hockey under our belts for the first time in ScorchStack history. I don’t know, maybe we’ll do something with that.
The first annual ScorchStack Beefs list will go live, in which we put anyone who has stolen our ideas or wronged us in any way on blast, and where they can leave the envelopes in the park in order to pay for their indiscretions.
Perhaps a guest column from some of our favourite talent over at the Western Standard?