Toronto Maple Leafs: Cheering for the Canadiens (And Happy to Do So)

The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens are each other’s biggest rivals.

Recently the Toronto Maple Leafs lost in embarrassing fashion to those same rivals.

You may remember it, since it only happened a few weeks ago, or maybe you have blocked it out from your memory due to trauma.  Either way, it still happened, and it still sucks.

Losing to your chief rival is worse than losing to anyone else, and when you blow a huge lead to a far and vastly inferior team, it stings.

And let us make this perfectly clear: wining is partly random and lucky.  The Canadiens beat the Leafs because two of the Leafs best players were injured and two of their best players went into unlucky slumps at the worst possible time.

The Leafs are the superior team, and have a superior roster. The Habs are still a borderline playoff team who barely made the playoffs.  Sure, the Habs won the most important games, but they only beat the Leafs four times in regulation out of 17 games , and had to get extremely lucky to do so.

The Habs roster is not good.  They healthy scratched maybe their best player.  They make bizarre roster decisions, their GM is not good, their coach is actively bad and they are where they are for one reason and one reason only: They signed Corey Perry and he kicked John Tavares in the head.

Doesn’t mean they’re a better team.  Am I bitter?  You bet.

Still Cheering for Them Though

The Montreal Canadiens are from Canada, and as such I will cheer for them over all other teams (other than the Leafs, Jets, Oilers, Flames, Senators and Canucks).

I don’t understand Leafs fans who “hate the habs” and engage with their fans in a hostile way.  One of my best friends is currently having the time of his life because of their success.  I don’t begrudge him his fun.  And I certainly have not ever cared less about a single thing than what colours the CN Tower are lit up in at night.

I want to see the Canadiens win a Stanley Cup this year.  Sure, the rumours about the team eating a steady diet of Lucky Charms cereal are as of yet unfounded, but they can get it done.  Why not?

They are seven wins away from glory, and they’ve already beat one of the NHL’s best teams.  The Jets are a joke and don’t count, but the Knights are another giant for them to slay.  If they beat the Leafs and the Knights, that’s impressive.  If they then go on to beat the Lightning, it would be arguably the toughest path anyone’s ever trod to the Stanley Cup.

And good for them.  But it’s still hard not to think about how the Leafs season ended because a guy who couldn’t even have made their roster accidently kicked their captain in the head.

Go Habs!