WE ARE LEAFS FANS, SEE US IGNORE

The almost-Maple Leafs beat the almost-Senators 3-1 in the first renewal (well, not really) of the Battle of Ontario last night.

No self-respecting Leafs fan (now there's an oxymoron) would gloat over a pre-season win. With respect to the Sens, there's two more exhibitions against them and four games right off the the hop to start the regular season, so both teams will win a few.

Along with it being pre-season, you never gloat about a win over the Sens. It's Ottawa, on a civic level, that has something to prove to big, bad T-Dot, not the other way around, and that filters down to the entire Leafs Nation, especially those who are living behind enemy lines.

We are Leafs fans, see us ignore. Oh, you led the NHL in goal scoring during the regular season, Ottawa? That's nice. Here's a cellular phone -- will it work way out in Kanata? If it does, call someone who cares.

It's a microcosm of T-Dot's relationship to the rest of the country, or maybe Canada's relationship to the United States. Sens fans have all this bitter resentment built up toward the Leafs Nation, which honestly, couldn't care less. They need to get over it, seriously. It's a rivalry, but one where Leafs fans would probably even cheer for the Sens if they ever got close to the Stanley Cup, since it's getting tiresome watching The Dying Swan In Padded Shorts every spring.

Besides, Leafs fans have a thick skin, and we're a little demented, and we've reached the Acceptance Stage, where you know the players and management are mostly mediocre, and thus will mess up at some point. The Ottawa team is 14 years old, which means they're a bunch of adolescents, stuck in denial. They think they can throw us off our game. Ha.

We've heard all the jokes, all the "Sixty-Seven!" chants. The wannabes in their red-and-black replica sweaters (oh, look, the guy on the crest has red eyes now, we're so scared) living four hours away in Toronto Lite will never lay a glove on us.

That won't change even if by some fluke the Sens do manage to beat the Leafs in a playoff series one of the years. (That's a big if -- how can you be sure the Leafs will ever make the playoffs again?)

Oh, right, the game last night. It looked like a lot of the same old-same old, with the Leafs getting outplayed and giving up all sorts of crazy chances, but getting bailed out by the goalie (Mikael Tellqvist's save on Mike Fisher stands out). Ottawa had the requisite goal allowed off a Chris Phillips giveaway, and the Leafs gave up one since Hal Gill was too slow to get out of his own way.

When Hal Gill skates backwards, does he make beeping noises? Don't tell me the Leafs are actually going to put him and Wade Belak in the lineup on the same night.

As for Ottawa's back end, poor Joe Corvo must be wondering why he let his agent talk him into giving up living in sunny southern California to come to the coldest capital city in the world and have his every move analyzed by 19,000 Pierre McGuire wannabes. Some guys are just better off playing in a U.S. city where hockey is buried way back in the sports section and the players have a lower Q rating than the weekend sports anchor on the local UPN station.

In reality, the Leafs are going to be hard-pressed to do much of anything this year, so kidding aside, wins over Ottawa, pre-season or regular-season (cue Jim Mora: "Playoffs?!"), are going to be a few and far between, not unlike '05-06. We can't gloat, though.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.