Bon Nuit, Canadiens

It is time that this miserable, failed 100 year experiment with ice hockey in eastern Canada to come to an end. If the utter failure of any Quebecois or Ontarian club to win a playoff game this year wasn’t evidence enough that hockey cannot flourish north of Buffalo and east of Alberta, then may I present the following: class-less French Canadian fans who boo the Star Spangled Banner (and ravage their own city after losses); the utter inability of the most recent incarnation of the Ottawa Senators to win a Stanley Cup; and Toronto’s silver drought that has lasted since 1967- a time when Tim Horton was known for something other than fried pastry and blueberry muffins.

In addition to organizational failures, eastern Canadian teams have recently become festering pools of questionable morality. Reference Montreal’s incessant unsportsmanlike diving, the Neanderthal-like Tie Domi of Toronto, that guy in Ottawa who once killed a young Atlanta Thrasher, and Daniel Alfredson’s mustache.

If there is one thing I have learned from the comments section on TSN.ca over the years, it is that cities whose teams have poor records don’t deserve to have NHL hockey. How anyone could miss the fact that the on-ice performance of highly paid professional athletes is directly related to how much the people living in their immediate vicinity deserve to watch hockey in person is far beyond me.

The league has a clear solution to these lingering issues. Give these franchises a shot in the arm by relocating them to more deserving markets in Houston, Kansas City, and Las Vegas.

Look at what such a move did for the lowly Quebec Nordiques. No more bilingual PA announcements, no more fleur-de-lis on the jersey, no more queens on the currency, and voila! Stanley Cup! This obviously had everything to do with how much Denverites deserved an NHL franchise than Quebecois, and nothing what-so-ever to do with Peter Forsberg, Super Joe Sack-Itch, Valeri Kaminski, St. Patrick, Adam Foote, Mike Keane, Stephane Yelle, and Claude Lemieux.

So I propose we allow the 09-10 season to be the swan’s song for eastern Canadian hockey. After bidding adieu to the great white north-east, allow the Canadiens to feel a little sun on their backs in the worthy metropolis of Houston, where the Aeros have served adoring fans for decades. Dig the Senators out of their malaise in Ottawa and draw inspiration from the twisters of Tornado Alley in Kansas City. Most important of all, let us grant the wish of every frustrated Maple Leaf fan by raking their team out of the backwater town of Toronto and piling them among the lights of Las Vegas. What better encouragement than for the lowly Leafs players to be able to walk out of the locker room and right past the Vegas oddsmakers’ display boards announcing astronomical payouts for an unlikely Leaf Cup?

Stanley Cup Final berths in recent years by both Alberta teams and the current first round domination exhibited by Vancouver show that western Canadians have properly embraced our fine sport and deserve to keep their franchises. But Mr. Bettman, I think we can all agree that the other three teams in Beaver-land need to add some blue to their red and white flag.