Dear Boston Bruins Fans, I Am Wearing This Canadiens Jersey To Piss You Off. PS - Your Team Sucks. Don't Thank Me, Thank Sinden.

I am going straight from work to my therapist to the Sharks game tonight. Thus, I have my Canadiens jersey hung over the back of my chair, since I'll be changing in my office before I leave and it's a game worn jersey so I don't want to throw it in a heap. And of course - of COURSE - someone in a Bruins hat comes by and has to make the big freaking deal about how it's "black and gold in these parts, baby."

Okay, it can be black and gold. No prob. Meanwhile, I'll wear the red, white and blue of a team that has won TWENTY THREE Stanley Cup Championships versus the "black and gold's" four. Oh, and in case we're keeping track? Seven of the twenty three have been won since the Bruins' last one in 1972, so I think we can cut the shit and all run out to Home Depot and buy ourselves ladders so we can GET THE HELL OVER OURSELVES because the Bruins SUCK, guys, okay? The kids are exempted, because they don't know any better, but everyone who is old enough to vote really needs to take a look at the game of hockey and understand that Harry Sinden has spent the past however many years slowly screwing the franchise into the ground and more or less being the John Madden of hockey...formerly brilliant-to-at-least-tuned-in, currently a complete idiot and master of the obvious.

You know what my favorite team is? It's not the Canadiens. I admire the Canadiens very much because of the above statistics and the awesomeness that is was the Forum and possibly most of all their fans who understand both nostalgia and the importance of bashing someone's teeth backwards every now and then. My favorite NHL team is the Detroit Red Wings, not that I even bother that much with the NHL since the Powers That Be are determined to pussify the game by overofficiating it and instituting the most ridiculous new rules, like the goddamn overtime shootouts...great concept guys, play the whole game and one overtime period as a team, then scrap the whole concept and place the outcome of the game on individual effort - HOCKEY IS A TEAM SPORT, YOU MORONS! "It's exciting!" No it's NOT, because no one seems to know that your best chance is to get all barnstormer on the goalie's ass and go in there like you AND the puck are headed for the backbar - it takes away the tender's ability to read you, and since you are the ONLY person he has to read, you see why this is crucial, right? Right?

Anyway, my favorite team is the Red Wings, first because I am oddly nostaligic for eras before my time and thus am in love now and forever with Gordie Howe and the Production Line, and second because the franchise caught on quick and really mastered the trendy European style of play and I enjoy adaptivity (and the European style) very much. I wear the Canadiens jersey because a guy named Patrick Traverse is playing for the Sharks now, who used to play for the Icecats and also holds a permanent spot on my list of top 20 players I could watch skate for the rest of eternity without tiring of it. Even better, he's now developed what Speed correctly described as "the Ray Bourque thing" where there's zero wasted movement, just tiny adjustments and smooth swiveling turns. It's unbelievable. The Canadiens jersey I own is a number 54 game worn Patrick Traverse jersey and the HELL if you think I'm not going to wear it just because all of you black and gold mongoloids can't figure out your team sucks and will continue to suck for at the very minimum a three year redevelopment period AFTER Sinden has been ALL THE WAY removed from the organization.

So please do us all a favor and shut the hell up before I have to beat you down with my hockey knowledge.