MONTREAL, QC. –I have a confession to make to you, my fellow Habs fans.
I have been wary of this team’s success this season. Wary, and uncertain.
I love my Habs, you see. Just as much as you do. And I do have faith in my team. I never want to be one of those Negative Nancies that some of our rival teams have, who always expect the worst and even when the team is doing well can’t bring themselves to hope even a little bit. I follow one such fan of a rival team on Twitter purely as a caution to myself never to see the glass as half empty when it’s three quarters full.
I do have faith.
I am, however, overly careful by nature, and when somebody is overly careful it can be easy to plant little doubts and questions in their head. When “they” said last year that the Habs couldn’t make the playoffs, I loudly disagreed. And when “they” said the Habs would be swept in the first round, I laughed in “their” faces. And when “they” said the Habs couldn’t beat Washington, I replied that if there was one team, one team in the entire playoffs the Habs could beat, it was the one with Mike Green on it. And when “they” said the Habs had not a chance against Pittsburgh… I agreed with “them.”
Common sense dictated that a team that barely made the playoffs on the very last night with an overtime point could not beat a team that tanked so it could be was built to win Stanley Cups, with the likes of Sid and Geno on it. Then again, you’d think common sense would dictate that Travis Moen couldn’t undress Sergei Gonchar on his way to scoring a shorthanded goal in a Game 7.
Still, it was a shock that the Habs made the Eastern Conference Finals. The ‘surprise’ in ‘surprise run’ seemed to be reinforced when the Habs lost so quickly to the Flyers.
So when our boys came back this season, it was as the guys that had surprised the hockey world with what was widely acknowledged to be an improbable playoff run. They came back without one of their playoff heroes in Jaroslav Halak, and a starting goaltender with Halak’s shadow still looming over him.
In other words, they came back with questions.
For 24 games, they have been answering those questions. The Habs have yet to lose a hard-fought game. Every one of their losses has been a direct result of the effort (or lack thereof) they have brought to the ice. They have managed to win a couple of games they did not deserve in the least, and won every game they played hard in. They have beat, not just playoff contenders, but Stanley Cup contenders.
And still I’m uncertain. For the entire time that I have been a Montreal Canadiens fan, they have been nothing to write home about, at least until the last playoffs. The Canadiens I knew were just not that good a hockey team. There was Saku, and the odd flashes of brilliance from the likes of Jose Theodore, Alex Kovalev, Mike Komisarek, maybe Richard Zednick, Mark Streit or Sheldon Souray. But mostly there was mediocrity.
Most Habs fans are used to their tradition of winning… I am used to the tradition of mediocrity. Even when the Habs made the playoffs over the last decade, they did it by the skin of their teeth. That one year they came first in the conference turned out to be a deception wrapped in an illusion wrapped in a mirage. It still stings when we think about how they came out of the gate tearing the league up and fizzled all the way down to a first-round sweep at the hands of their most-hated rivals.
So you see how I can be uncertain. I love how well the Habs are doing, and there is every reason to hope. I have a lot of faith in this group based on what they have shown us so far, and I want to believe the amazing first quarter of the season will continue. Every single game this year has given us something to love, even the losses. But I don’t want to get overly confident, in case it doesn’t last. I would rather enjoy what we’re seeing as though it could turn really sour at any moment.
Because that way, I will have enjoyed every positive thing that led to this year’s Stanley Cup win to the absolute maximum.