In his absence, his altered ego Johnstone Apork will file regular Sensible Sens reports from Schenectady, N.Y., where plans for Woodstock III are still tentatively being held to accommodate the giant love-in from the zillion shiny happy people from Ottawa, Toronto and Shawville that have suddenly joined the Senators Red Zone District, pending an assurance from NBC Sports that it will not pull the plug on its week-long broadcast the very second that people start dropping that perpetually bad brown acid.
So it's come to this after watching NHL hockey every single night, and Saturday afternoons from January to March too.
A Stanley Cup final matching the Quacks versus the Quirks on VERSUS.
Repeat after me: Ducks and Sens.
The Sens, who, until just two months ago, were known for having their ducks grossly misaligned at this time of year, while the Ducks finally got the good sense before this season to remove that silly Disney moniker and have been mightier than the Pens ever since.
Call it the series of the Teams That Snuck Under The Radar Gun. Well, maybe not for their excellent regular-season records, but at least for the relative bunch of no-names that grace the rosters, after we're done scanning the two teams' first-liners, with apologies to Brad May and Dean McAmmond.
How about the SMOG-FOG Cup, in honour of L.A's skies and Ottawa's bureaucracy?Call me unimpressed in this neck of the woods.
Now, thanks to those bearded Hungarian brothers from Cranbrook and that J.S. "Jiggy Stardust" Giguère, the eastern part of the Western World will never know what city would have, at long last, won the bragging rights for calling itself Hockeytown -- well, at least until Nashville or Pittsburgh get their licks next year in this new non-dynasty NHL.
Nor will the environmentalists have a snit over what's less conducive towards a sustainable existence, octopus or beaver tails.
Putting aside that the Detroit Red Wings have the nicest uniform in all of the NHL and most of MLB, never mind the many prime-time horses that race on NBC, it sure would have made for nice copy if Dominik Hašek could have had the chance to go up against the team he abandoned last spring, which then led to them abandoning him when they could have signed him for peanuts instead of the $11.1M they blew on a capable back-up with more holes in his chink than a big hunk of Swiss cheese.
That in turn would have allowed them to keep that big, lazy Zdeno Chara so as to at least give them a whisper of a chance against the Mighty Tall, Big, Nasty, Fast and Young Ducks of Anaheim of Los Angeles and that 1993 No. 2 pick Chris "Which U.S. City Do You Want To Move To This Summer, Honey?" Pronger.It also would have been nice to see the first Cup final featuring two Swedish captains, with certain future Hall of Famers Daniel Alfredsson and Nicklas Lidström duking it out for Mom's best meatless balls and in the process, make Don Cherry eat his duck confit soup with a perforated straw.
Now, we'll never know if 45 year-old Chris Chelios' father would have eventually punched his son in the face at Windsor's lone night spot, Casino Windsor, or if he and Ray Emery would have had a nasty argument on the merits of Detroit's architectural wonders and its night life too.
It's also a pity because now all the members of Leaf Nation in the COTU, except for those four CBC hypocrites "Ole King" Cole, "Everybody's Talking" Harry, "Canadian Pie" MacLean and Donald S. (For Senator) Cherry, no longer have a reason to stay downtown after work, other than going to Ted Rogers' Neighbourhood of Daily Injuries and Ineptitude, and are sure to drive up the price of gas toward $2 a litre now that they are going home at night on time via the Don Valley Parking Lot.
At least the Ottawa fans, especially all those who wear those Red Army sweaters to work or when going out to the 2-3 classy restaurants, or worse, at the snotty Artsy Farty Centre, and who have maybe watched a period or two of hockey all freaking winter, will be spared the ignominy of having to explain to their grandchildren one day the cruel and totally illogical tragedy of the Senators finally making it to a Stanley Cup final with essentially a North American squad after years of sucking with a Euro-filled roster, only to be swept by a bunch of guys in Red sweaters with sames such as Hašek, Lidström, Lilja, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Franzén, Filppula, Hudler, Lang, Kopecký, Samuelsson and Markov.
Instead, we have to watch a team called the Ducks play on a pond. Which sucks, plain and simple.
Oh well, I hope my trend of being wrong every second series continues and that Ottawa brings home the bacon, despite my prediction of Ducks in 4, just like that 1969 record on my old turntable that continues to skip to the tune of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish's anti-war song about that crazy Southeast Asian conflict.You know, the one that goes like:
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don't ask me,
I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Meanwhile, I sure hope the games are as exciting as those classic Rangers-Habs or Leafs-Isles of the regular season so as to keep me awake until the West Coast baseball games come on and the AZ, LAAOA, LAD go up against the SFG, SDP and SM to see who wins the BALCO Alphabet Juice Division.
Jean-Pierre Allard is a freelance writer who has been following the Expos/Senators for MVN since 2004. In addition, he has covered the Ottawa Senators since 2004-05 on MVN and now will chronicle the 2007 Ottawa Lynx, the Philadelphia Phillies' Triple-A team.
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