The final four in the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup Playoffs have been decided and I am not at all excited but who is left. I will be forced to cheer for a negative this year.
The Canucks, the team I do have an emotional attachment to, are not in. Neither are teams like the New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks and Montreal Canadiens. For whatever reason these clubs have always excited me for emotional and aesthetic reasons. That is, I like their uniforms and the mind's eye images I had of these teams when I was growing up.
The teams that are left this year are dull, dull, dull. The Buffalo Sabres were exciting in the mid 1970s with their French Connection line. Since then they made the final with Dominic Hasek the most ungainly, graceless and unstylish goalie to ever play the game. Hasek now plays for the Red Wings who are one of the four teams left this year. The Red Wings, after a long drought won Stanley Cups again, but only in the dull defensive era that started with the Devils winning Stanley Cups in the 1990s. The Red Wings will play the Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference Final. The Ducks are named after a suburb and an insipid kids movie. Vancouver should change its name to the Surrey Canucks and Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Angels (who were smart enough to stop calling themselves the Anaheim Angels) should change their their name to the L.A. Bad News Bears using that logic. Furthermore, the Ducks played the Minnesota Wild in what had to be the most mediocre semifinal in NHL history only a few years ago.
But the team with the dullest, drabbest and most lackluster team aesthetic is the Ottawa Senators. To explain I will have to parse the two words Ottawa and Senators. First the word Senator. A Senator in Canada is equivalent to a member of the House of Lords in England. Senators in Canada are unelected. They are appointed by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister always appoints cronies to be Senators. The Canadian Senate was intended to protect the rights of the Provinces. Unlike the American Senate which does protect states rights, the Canadian Senate has never done anything of the sort. Bigger provinces get more seats than smaller provinces. Attempts by provinces to elect senators or appoint their own senators have been rebuffed by the central government. Senate Reform has been rendered impossible by the fact that the bigger provinces would veto it. The Canadian Senate is thus a joke and so is the word: Senator. Why not call Ottawa's NHL franchise the Time-Servers, the Paper-Pushers, the Bureaucrats or the Civil Servants? These nicknames are just as inspiring. Now, let's talk about Ottawa. I just cannot cheer for a team that comes from Ottawa. For nothing good comes from Ottawa. Ottawa is the capital of Canada. It is the place where decisions have been enacted that turned Canada into a mediocrity and thus a country liked by all the ninnies of the world like Michael Moore and the United Nations. It is a place where far too much of my wages were taken. It was the home to Pierre Eliot Trudeau and Jean Cretin, our greatest mountebanks and worst Prime Ministers. If the Senators win the Cup, then the time-servers, paper-pushers, bureaucrats and civil servants of our central government* will get joy they don't deserve. It would not be a victory for Canada.
So, Go Sabres Go!! Or if need be, Go Red Wings!!, Go Ducks!!. Anybody but the goddamned Ottawa Senators.
*But the Conservatives are in power now, how can you criticize the central government? I am still of the opinion that the Conservatives forming the government is a temporary occurrence till the Liberals get their swindling act together. Twenty years of Conservative majorities are needed to fix the damage the Liberals have wrought.
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