We Love it When a Plan Comes Together

    

    The award-winning science fiction writer Stephen Leigh once wrote "Rumors are like lightning on summer tinder, producing flames that dance in flickering brilliance from person to person, sometimes flaring in great conflagrations of exaggeration before finally extinguishing themselves in the cold waters of fact." He was talking about prejudice and race relations in his novel Speaking Stones, but he could just as easily have been talking about the insanity we witness every year around the NHL trade deadline.

    So far this season, we've heard all the rumours, from Michael Hage, Kaiden Guhle and two first-round picks for the Blues' Robert Thomas, to Patrick Laine to the Kings for Corey Perry. Like they've all got arseholes, everyone has an opinion about what the Habs will do at the deadline. The thing is, the only opinions that matter are those of Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton. The rest of the talk is (apologies to Macbeth) sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's Leigh's great conflagration of exaggeration.

    If we've learned anything from Hughes and Gorton it's that we'll only find out what they're up to once they're done doing it. It'll probably be something no rumour monger thought about, and if they do nothing it's because there was nothing to do. Either way, all the predictions, rumours, potential line combos and trade proposals are only a way to kill time until there's something to talk about.

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    These guys are very smart. They're not your grandpa's GMs, who'd trade Tomas Plekanec, Carey Price, a first-rounder and a couple of prospects for a late-career Vincent Lecavalier. They also wouldn't have traded Higgins, Ryan McDonagh and prospects for Scott Gomez and his anchor of a contract. (You know who you are, Bob Gainey.) So the pundits and the peons are wasting valuable oxygen talking about what HuGo is going to do.

    They have a plan. They'll stick to that plan because they're already ahead of schedule in their rebuild and they're working from a position of strength. They have the picks, the prospects the money and the pros they need to make a deal if it fits their plan. However, they're not like other Canadiens' GMs. They don't care about attracting a big, established French Canadian player. They won't sell the farm for a centre based on one or two good seasons. And they won't go all in on a veteran rental who may or may not fit with the team's culture on the off chance they can sneak into the Conference Finals or better.

    Speaking of culture, the HuGo plan has been unwavering in a couple of areas. They want players who match up with the current roster in terms of age and contract status. They also want smart guys with hardworking character. It's unlikely they'd take on a player like Nazem Kadri, despite all the rumours of their interest, because he's older, more expensive and way dirtier a player than the rest of the team. They have little interest in courting controversy or distraction around their young guys. If there's a move coming, it'll likely be more of a Kirby Dach situation, in which a young, talented former first-rounder with a ton of potential needs a new start.

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    The Habs got to the Finals in 2021 when nobody expected it. That could happen again just because of the "if you punch your ticket anything can happen" philosophy. Perhaps Jakub Dobes will pull another rookie goalie miracle out of his butt and carry the team far, but the most realistic scenario is the Canadiens will make the playoffs (barring an unforeseen disaster in a tight Eastern Conference race) and give a good showing of themselves, but they won't go all the way this year. They don't have tight enough team defence or, arguably, enough grit and toughness right now and adding a piece at the deadline, unless it's an unexpected blockbuster, won't change everything overnight. If they can take another step forward over last year's results, it's all gravy for fans who've not seen a Cup since '93.

    Hughes will not trade a player if he's not fairly sure of that guy's upside. Maybe that means they already suspect someone like David Reinbacher will never reach his potential due to a fragile physique and will be willing to move him. Or maybe it means the prospects are all on track and nobody will leave. He'll be very careful about giving up a player who might be a star somewhere else. That's what he does to other team's GMs.

    In any case, we'll all know the truth on Friday, when the rumours extinguish themselves in the cold waters of fact.

    

Breaking's Bad

      

    If the crack of a hockey stick on a puck is a sweet sound to players, the snap of an expensive composite stick breaking is the complete opposite for fans. How many times have Canadiens supporters witnessed a prime scoring opportunity when it really matters...late in a game, on a PP, in overtime...disintegrate along with the shooter's stick? There was one game last fall in which Mike Matheson, Lane Hutson and Juraj Slafkovsky's composite corpses all littered the ice at the same time.

    This is infuriating for fans. You see a player with a perfectly clear path to the net, the tying or winning goal on their stick and BOOM. The stick blows up and the scoring chance is gone. The players must find it even more frustrating, even though the equipment they use is by their own choice.

    Of course, many of us learned to play the game using good old wooden sticks, which were sturdy, but pretty heavy, especially for younger players. Now the top-end sticks are made of carbon fiber and there's a lot of science that goes into their creation. Players want high performance, light sticks with good flex, but they want them durable as well. That's what manufacturers call the Holy Grail of stick building.

    "As you get up into those elite level hockey sticks for the pros, you're going to want the weight as minimal as you possibly can, but it doesn't sacrifice performance," says Sherwood Hockey VP Brendon Arnold. "And that's where you get the conversation around durability. You have to strike a balance between pushing the limits of performance while also trying not to diminish the durability when you're using materials that in essence are less durable than the fiberglasses of the world. It's a delicate balance and it's a dance that that every brand is always trying to to manage when when building at the elite level."

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    Hockey sticks take a lot of punishment, and from the first shot they start to break down internally. When you add battles in the corners and along the boards, faceoffs, shot blocking and slashing, (none of which the stick is actually designed to do...it's meant for shooting only) the stick absorbs more and more stress until it finally gives up the ghost.

    The problem is, it's not just elite players who want the best sticks. Young players emulating their heroes and whose parents see pro potential in their kids want them too. And they're not cheap. In fact, some parents say their childrens' sticks are the most expensive part of their equipment. Gloves, pants, helmets and skates can be handed down to a younger kid, but a broken stick has to be replaced.

    "Carbon fiber is the number one material that is used for the sticks," Arnold reiterates. "And when you think of what's going on in the world today with the increased demand for automobiles and  aerospace, those are the two areas that are using an extreme amount of carbon fiber, which doesn't allow for a lot from a reserve standpoint to be readily available. So it's not just products getting a higher cost because the brands want to make more money. It's actually the physical material that is used in these products to continually innovate has increased over the years." 

    Colorado Avalanche alternate captain Nathan MacKinnon has said he goes through 400 sticks a year but they're paid for by his pro team and not all of them break. Brendon Arnold says for some elite players, it's just a superstition thing or they want the mental satisfaction of taking out a brand-new stick at certain times of the game. Other players have different sticks for different situations. For example, a defenceman may have one stick for killing penalties when durability is more important than shot performance and another with a different flex for power plays when they're shooting more. But for young players who are bankrolled by mom and dad, the cost can really add up, even to the point of preventing kids from playing higher-level hockey at all.

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    That's why people like Rod Daigle are trying to find solutions. He's a hockey dad in Mississauga, Ontario and was tired of buying new sticks for his teen sons so he started a small repair business that's now taking off. He says it's been a lot of trial and error finding the right formula to make a strong repair.

    "The race is to get lighter and lighter sticks," he explains. "So the kids embrace that philosophy and you know, it's not magic. You can't keep lowering the volume of material and expect it to last as long. I don't care how strong the carbon fiber is."

    "You don't have a lot of material to work with. So yeah, you have to get creative as to how to repair the stick, but keep it feeling as close to the original as possible, because the players really, really want that. Absolutely, it's trial and error. And I've used my 15-year-old son as my guinea pig most of the times."

     Daigle says he's only been in the stick repair business for a few months, but he's learned a few things, one being that a stick can only be repaired so often before the additional material starts to affect the weight. Still, if a fix can save a family $200-$400 dollars, parents think it's worth it. They hear about his repair company and especially as the season winds down, they'd rather pay to fix a used stick than spend hundreds on a new one. 

    In an era when the game is getting more expensive for youth to play and more parents are finding other sports fit into family budgets better, any cost reduction in equipment could keep a young person in the sport a year or two longer, allowing him or her to develop their skills and move up to more elite levels. That could eventually mean Team Canada having a deeper pool of talent to pick from for big tournaments.

    And Daigle says some of the pro manufacturers have come to him too. He says 20 years ago, repairing sticks wasn't economically feasible for manufacturers but now the high cost of buying new is making companies consider offering repair services to customers and they've come to Daigle to ask for his advice.

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    Alain Hache is a physicist and amateur goalie who's written a couple of books on the physics of hockey and the science of the slapshot. He's done a lot of research on the topic and he says if players insist on performance over durability, they're going to have have more breakages, no matter what. So, for that reason, he believes if cost is a factor in affording to play hockey, fancier sticks won't make a huge difference for most players who aren't elite. 

    "I remember not so long ago you could get a stick easily for less than 100," he says. "There's no real reason to work with an elite level stick. To me, it's just about developing skills and skating and shooting accurately. And for the few that will get far enough where equipment like that will make a difference, it would make sense for them. But for the majority of players, I think, you know, cheaper sticks would be probably the way to go."

     Brendon Arnold at Sherwood says the ideal would be to never see Mike Matheson in the slot in OT with the puck on his stick and not get the shot because of breakage. But as long as he wants more flex and lighter weight, that's probably a Holy Grail as likely to find as King Arthur's.

    That's fine for him, even if the fans pull their hair out when that stick snaps. However, for a game that needs its young players to develop more than it needs them to have the best equipment in the world, kids need less Holy Grail and more reliable affordability.

An Open Letter to Team USA

   

     Dear Team USA.

    Congratulations on your Olympic gold medal. See, that's how civilized competitors respond to winning a closely-contested championship game. Unlike yourselves, they don't usually take the opportunity to party with unqualified, cross-eyed members of the ruling autocratic elite who think nothing of blowing taxpayers' money for frivolous personal gain. They also don't usually take phone calls from the malignant maggot currently squatting in the People's House and mock their compatriots who also won gold, but lack penises.

    The fact that you thought it funny when the corrupter-in-chief made light of the women's hockey victory shows how very juvenile you really are. Not one of you thought to say "Hey, wait! These women are gold medalists too. They work just as hard as we do and deserve respect." No. You were too busy yukking it up with the yuckiest man on earth. And the fact that you, Connor Hellebuyck, accepted the honour of the Congressional Medal of Freedom for performing less well than your female counterpart, Aerin Frankel, while she was ignored shows how entitled and clueless you are.

    The fact that you lowered yourselves to attending the State of the Union address by the most unfit, cruel, ignorant, racist, lying POS president of all time says more about your character than any gold medal ever will. That you likely voted for him shows you support the evil he stands for and have joined the clueless elite who have no idea how much he hurts the people who pay your extravagant salaries.

    It's interesting that the women, who make a tenth of your money, decided to forgo the event. Some of them may have had prior commitments as they claimed they did, raising children and working day jobs to make ends meet, but some of them probably would rather eat rat poison than be anywhere near the orange pedo.

    That some of you play and make your millions in Canada makes your decision to behave the way you did even more egregious. This country is regularly mocked and bullied by the White House Klan leader. At the very least, you could have considered the hand that feeds you before you glad-handed the creep.

    To Bill Guerin in particular, thank you from the bottom of Habs-fans' hearts for not including Lane Hutson and Cole Caufield in your shit show of a team. We are so glad our young stars weren't tainted by the clique of pro bros you assembled. We'd like to think they would've been different; that they wouldn't laugh at the numpty-in-charge's lame sexist jokes but it's even better that we'll never have to find out.

    Granny always said you can judge a person by the company they keep. By that measure, Team USA, you'd be ranked as dumb goons. You chose to be feted by a racist, sexist, ridiculous old man who finds joy in raping children. If that's the quality of the company you keep, your gold medals are worthless. If you can't win with grace and a modicum of class, you're worthless too.

Sincerely,

A disgusted Canadian hockey fan

Operation Vacation

 

The Scene: Coach Martin St.Louis' office, the Bell Centre. Marty sits at his desk, waiting for Lane Hutson to arrive. Hutson enters, out of breath.

Hutson: Hi Dad. Ummm...I mean Coach. Heh heh. Sorry I'm late. Ran into traffic on my way from the rink. You wanted to see me?

St.Louis: Yeah, just wanted ask...wait, what rink?  

Hutson: (blushing slightly) Well, there were these kids on the outdoor ice out by...

St.Louis: (interrupting) Yeah, yeah. I wanted to ask, what're your plans for the break? Going somewhere warm?

Hutson: Ah, well...I thought I'd hang around here. You know...use the ice while no one's around. Work on some things.

St.Louis: (sighs) Lane, we've been through this. You need to take a break once in a while, man. You're headed for a burnout. 

Hutson: But Daaaad, I mean Coach! I'm not tired! I only skated for two hours yesterday. And I was hardly even on the ice at all today.

St.Louis: Lane, you just said you stopped at the rink on your way to the rink.

Hutson: Yeah, but I didn't get much time there. The skates I keep in the car were missing, for some reason. I think somebody must've moved them.

St.Louis: (glances shiftily around) Um...heh...you probably forgot you took them out of there.

Hutson: No way! I always keep 'em in there, just in case I find some ice along the way. Anyhow, I thought I still had my backup pair under the seat, but they were gone too. Luckily I had my spare spares in with the extra tire.

St.Louis: (rolls eyes, mutters under his breath) Damn!

Hutson: What'd you say?

St.Louis: Lamb. I said "lamb." Just thinking of dinner plans.

Hutson: Oh...um...okay. Was that all you wanted to talk about?

St.Louis: (hands over an envelope) No. Gortz and Kent asked me to give you this.

Hutson: (puzzled, opens it) Wow! All-expenses-paid ten days in the Maldives! This is unbelievable!

St.Louis: (smiling and nodding) Great! Chill on the beach, get some sun. See you when you get back.

Hutson: But Dad...Coach, I can't use this.

St.Louis: (sighs) Why can't you, Lane?

Hutson: They only have one rink there, and it's not even real ice. It's some kind of plastic stuff.

St.Louis: Why doesn't it surprise me you know where to find skating in the Maldives?

Hutson: I did a geography project in school. Named all the countries and where to find a rink. Got an A on it. Plus, the one in the Maldives is called "Ice Ice Maybe," so that's kinda easy to remember.

St.Louis: Lane. Go. On. Vacation. Or am I going to have to ask Doc Dan to put you off work?

Hutson: It's really, really nice the team wants to do this for me, but I think I'd be happier staying in Montreal.

St.Louis: Okay. I didn't want to have to do this, but...I don't have a choice. Arber! Florian!

(In walk the Bash Brothers, grab Hutson by the arms and legs)

Arber Xhekaj: Sorry, man. No hard feelings, but we have orders.

Hutson: But...wait!! Wait! I have to...(Florian Xhekaj sticks duct tape over his mouth)

St.Louis: Thanks boys. All you have to do is get him to AvJet and watch until the plane takes off. See ya in two weeks, Lane.

Hutson: mmmfffftttt

St.Louis: You'll live. Bon voyage!

Small Wonders

    

    They say in Montreal, hockey is a religion. Fans have been known to beg the Almighty for playoff wins, some going as far as climbing the steps of St.Joseph's' Oratory on their knees. There's even been a course at the University of Montreal called The Religion of the Montreal Canadiens. So, when a figure like Mother Teresa says "Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies," Habs fans pay attention.

    The Canadiens have a long history of carrying dynamic small players. There was goalie Roy "Shrimp" Worters, the smallest player in NHL history at 5'3" and 135 pounds in the 1929-30 season. Aurele Joliat, the 1933-34 Hart Trophy winner was 5'7" and 136. There were the Pocket Rocket, the Roadrunner and the Little Viking, all standing 5'7" and about 160 pounds. (Henri Richard might have been a little heavier, but not much.) And 5'7" Brian Gionta was Habs captain for four years.

    Now, of course, Cole Caufield (5'8", 175) and Lane Hutson (5'9", 162) are a couple of the smallest, lightest players in the entire NHL. Even though they're diminutive in stature, they're putting up numbers to compare with the league's stars and playing some generally great all-around hockey. Even the Canadiens coach, Hall-of-Famer Marty St.Louis, is renowned for dominating at 5'8" and 176 (most of that carried in his thighs.)

    As it turns out, while there may not be a religious explanation for why the Habs' small guys are so good, there is one rooted in science.

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    Alain Haché is an experimental physicist at the University of Moncton. He's also an amateur goalie and the author of two books: "The Physics of Hockey" and "Slap Shot Science." When he looks at the mechanics of hockey, he sees an advantage for smaller players.

    "It's a little bit like soccer," he explains. "In soccer, you'll see shorter players like Lionel Messi. He's not a very tall person and his center of gravity is a little bit lower so he can accelerate faster, go around corners faster. And with hockey players it's the same thing."

    "So they'll be able to maneuver the puck around the traffic faster than somebody who is taller because that taller person has a higher center of gravity so it'll take longer to accelerate."

    Agility and acceleration aren't the only scientific benefits that come with a low center of gravity. Haché says short guys can have an advantage in the close quarters of board battles as well.

    "You're closer to the puck and you may have a better view of where the puck is," he says. "And there's a thing in physics called the lever effect. A shorter person has a shorter lever. You apply the same amount of force (as a taller guy with a longer stick) and you get a better leverage. So you can fight quite effectively for the puck. Somebody with long arms would have not necessarily an advantage in terms of reach." (Recall Gionta going into the corner with Zdeno Chara and coming out with the puck so often.) 

    "In some of the battles for the puck, you might see this smaller player come up on top. When it comes on a one-on-one battle, it's not necessarily all about the reach. It's also how much force you can pull the puck your way with."

    Haché says smaller players can also find an advantage off the ice. When you're not a big guy, you have to be strong.

    "Same thing like when people do bench press. Somebody who has long arms has a bit of a disadvantage because there's a longer lever there. He has to apply a lot of force to lift where somebody with shorter arms could lift more. And same thing with the squats." (Not to harp on St.Louis' thighs, but they are a visual aid for that point.)

    Physics explains some of the advantages small players can have, but Haché thinks the changes in NHL rules limiting holding and interference help too.

    "It was not always that easy in the NHL for a smaller player," he opines. "But in recent decades I think we've seen a change or shift. And I think that's something that the NHL wanted in the first place. They wanted to open up the game and and let players of all sizes have a chance."

    Case in point: Hutson, who at one time would never even have been considered by an NHL team, especially on defence.

    "I think there's some (small) defensemen that pretty much probably could play as a forward, but they have also very good defensive skills and I think Lane Hutson is one of them. So when you have a player like that, I think it's very interesting advantage on a team."

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    Despite scientific evidence of advantages small players may have, every team in the NHL passed on Hutson before the Canadiens took him at #62 overall. Nobody ever drafted St.Louis. There's still a bias against shorter guys in the minds of many hockey executives.

    For some players, getting overlooked because of their size actually gives them one more advantage: a mental one.

    As 5'6" David Desharnais, another undrafted guy who was never supposed to make the NHL put it, "What is important is to show determination and also intelligence, he said. "It is quite obvious that I will not try to play physical against a 6'6" guy, but at the same time, you cannot be afraid to go into the traffic (the dirty areas)."

    "I mean obviously you know people said you couldn't make it right because of your height... it's my fifth season in Montreal. and some people are still going to say uh he's too small or whatever. You just want to keep uh keep proving people wrong." He proved them wrong for 524 NHL games.

    And before there was Hutson on D, there was Francis Bouillon. Standing 5'8" and also undrafted for that reason, he played 776 very tough games in the big league.

    "My story has never been like anybody else's," he recalls. "Generally, NHL players were dominant at all levels that they played. But for me, I was never an impact player... I always had to prove my worth at each training camp."

    Luckily for the Canadiens, management has always been willing to take a chance on small players others overlooked.

    If the skeptics among fans don't believe the Unseen Hand has a role in their team's success, they may not put the same credence in the words of Mother Teresa as the students who took The Montreal Canadiens as Religion in university.

    So, perhaps the words of the great scientist Carl Sagan resonate better.

    "We are in many ways unimaginably small within this universe, yet uniquely special."
    
  

Red-Coloured Glasses

    

    It was fun to watch the Canadiens play the throwback Nordiques at the Bell Centre, with the colour-on-colour sweater arrangement enhancing the spectacle on the ice. The Habs' home reds just popped against the Colorado blues. Montreal ended up thrashing the Avs...and they looked good doing it. 

    Whenever a new player is signed or drafted by the Canadiens, he almost inevitably talks about how glad he is to be part of an Original Six team, one with a great history of winning. Usually, he'll mention how special it is to pull on that sweater, worn by so many legends. 

    Well, it turns out there may be more to the sentiment than just well-meaning platitude.

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    A few years ago, in the psychology journal "Emotion," Dr.Andrew Elliot published a scholarly article about the impact of the colour red on athletes' performance. It's called, "Perception of the Colour Red Enhances the Force and Velocity of Motor Output." The theory behind the research is that human beings are conditioned to react to the colour red. When faced with stress, danger or anger, our faces flush, sending warning signals to other people in a deeply primal response. 

    Dr.Elliot decided to see how that natural reaction to red impacts athletes playing against a team wearing the colour. He gave three groups of students a hand grip, and showed them a sign saying "squeeze," written on either a blue, gray or red background. The people shown the instruction in red squeezed the grip both faster and harder than the other two groups. In a second experiment, he gave two groups of subjects a metal pinch clasp to press right after reading their participant numbers written in either gray or red. Once again, the people reading the red sign reacted more strongly and quickly. The interesting thing is that all of this happened at a subconscious level and the participants didn't even know it.

    "Colour affects us in many ways depending on the context," explains Dr.Elliot. "Those colour effects fly under our awareness radar."

    Perhaps that's one explanation why it seems so many teams find another gear when they play at the Bell Centre. They appear to always give a little bit more in Montreal. It might also help explain part of why the Canadiens have had such a history of success. Elliot's work concludes that opponents of teams wearing red are subconsciously intimidated, perceiving red as a threat.    

    "Threat evokes worry, task distraction, and self-preoccupation, all of which have been shown to tax mental resources," he writes. This, he concludes accounts for why students who see red right before a test perform worse and athletes playing an opponent wearing red are more likely to lose.

    

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    Dr.Elliot's study isn't the only one with similar evidence of the dominance of the colour red for athletes. In 2004, a team of British anthropologists studied Olympic athletes randomly assigned red or blue uniforms in one-on-one competition in various sports. When otherwise equally matched, the athletes in red won the majority of the competitions. When one athlete was obviously better than the other, colour didn't matter, but...and this is the interesting bit...when one athlete was only slightly inferior to another, wearing red was enough to make up the difference in performance. The athletes in red won 57% of Olympic Taekwondo matches, 55% of bouts boxing and 53% of wrestling matches. That study appeared in the journal "Nature" on May 19, 2005.

    Other studies on the subject of the effect of red include one analysis of the British Premier League from 1947 to 2003. The researchers discovered the team wearing red won both the majority of their home games and more titles than teams wearing other colours over the years. A pair of German researchers studied their country's professional football league and they also found the team in red wins more often. However they weren't sold on the connection between red and victory in terms of uniform colour alone. They thought it might have been due to competitive, aggressive men...which describes many elite natural athletes...subconsciously preferring red and joining a team for that reason.

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    Any way you look at it, though, the research shows when all other things are pretty close to equal, wearing red can give a team an advantage. Maybe that's one reason why players really are glad to pull on the CH, even if they don't realize it. 

    It's too bad Mr.Molson can't convince the league to let the Canadiens wear their reds in every playoff game, especially if they're up against one of those grey, white or blue-wearing teams who don't have that red-tinted psychological boost. In any case, it's another reason, albeit a rather obscure one, for the Habs to push for a postseason home-ice advantage when they get back from the Olympic break. 

    And if there was ever a need for more evidence of why those powder-blue third jerseys should be buried deep beneath the Bell Centre for all eternity, this could be it.

   

The Haunting

 

    It was a dark and stormy night. Not much moved outside in the city of Montreal, but inside it was a different story. Inside, where an ice rink should have been, was instead an iconic emblem...the one they'd all worn on their chests with pride...painted on concrete. Above, where once hung banners in tribute to a glorious past, a soulless cinema now entertained throngs who didn't know this place used to be a shrine.

    The spirits knew though. The wraiths still flitted within the walls where they earned their immortality, and lamented that they now lived there alone. They knew the ones who carried their torch had abandoned them, and they weren't inclined to follow..

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    It was December, and a special occasion. One of the old comrades would be joining them tonight.

    "Hey boys! It's been a long time," smiled the ghost of Bobby Rousseau.

    "Look who's here," shouted the Boomer. "It's the kid!"

    "Not so much a kid these days. I'm 85 years old."

    "No, you were 85 years old. Here, you're in your prime, kid."

    "Say, what happened to our old barn? I haven't been here since they closed the joint."

    "That was a night," the Rocket chimed in. "I thought they'd bring down the rafters, numbers and all"

    "Not much left of it now," sighed gloomy Jacques Plante, bent over his knitting. "Not much left for us anymore."

    "Yeah, but remember the fun we had, helping the new guys out," asked Gumper.

    "Shit, yeah! I was new here then, but it was a blast standing behind the 'tender in all those overtimes," recalled Bunny. "There was no way anything was going in that year!"

    "Where were you the night everything went in? The kid wasn't sticking around after that. Too bad. He was a real character," said Moore.

    Laughter and shared memories echoed among the ghosts of the old cathedral. They recalled the party when they brought home their fifth trophy in a row. The time the Rocket laid open Laycoe's head and punched out the linesman. The long nights on the train and the night the scoreboard dropped for the last time.

    In a moment of quiet, the Captain cleared his throat. "Okay, boys. I think it's time to go."

    "What?! Why now?! I don't wanna go! What about the ones who'll come to find us and we're gone?!"

    A chorus of protest burst from the assembled wraiths.

    "Phil and Kenny are here now, and most of the younger ones know all about the new place," explained Beliveau. "The future's over there, and the kids could use our help."

    More debate followed until finally, with a collective sigh the spirits agreed. It was time.

                               🏒🏒🏒🏒🏒🏒🏒🏒

    "See, it's not so bad here," encouraged Henri. "I mean, it's not really home, but watching the games is fun. We used to think Roadrunner was fast, but just look at these guys!"

    "What're the goalers wearing," asked Hainsworth. "They look like mummies out there."

    "Why do their sticks keep breaking like that," Morenz wanted to know. "Looks like they're made of glass."

    "I like that Caufield kid," said Joliat. "He reminds me of me!"

    "Can you believe that Hutson," Harvey marveled. "Look at him handle that puck! He's what I wanted to be, if I could have. I'm gonna give him a little help here."

    "What're you gonna do?"

    "Just watch!"

    (Harvey, invisible, low-bridges Marco Foligno at the blueline, wiping the player out and clearing a path for Hutson. Ref calls a tripping penalty.)

    "What the hell?! How is that a penalty? That ref must be blind," ranted Harvey.

    "Ah, don't worry about it," soothed Lalonde. "You know half the stripes need glasses. I'll try."

    (Mitch Marner cuts across the Montreal crease looking dangerous. Newsy Lalonde shoves Marner from behind, sending him flying. Ref calls a hooking penalty on Caufield.)

    "NO! That's not supposed to happen! What the hell is wrong with these guys!"

    "How're we supposed to help when the zebras are this bad," wondered Flower.

    Dryden piped up, "No more. The truly aggrieved is not the player or the team who receives the occasional unjust penalty. There’s only one but what about that matters..."

    "SHUT UP, KENNY!" the spirits chorused.

    "Are they actually seeing us and calling penalties on ghosts," Butch marveled.

    "Nope, they didn't" interrupted Red Story, calling from the back. "But I did!"

    "What's HE doing here," grumbled Toe.

    "Don't think I forgot about how you got McArthur fired, you old boot."

    "Come on! That was years ago. I can't even remember what happened!"

    Red Fisher laughed his gruff laugh. "They're gonna write it up to say the refs are calling "phantom penalties." Little do they know!"

    Beliveau: "Okay, guys. The idea is good, but we have to be a bit more under the radar. We can't give the dummies (sorry Red) any reason to blow the whistle on us."

    "I'm gonna like this place," grinned Fergie. "I can be there the next time the big kid takes on a bruiser."

    "I can get in there on draws," offered Henri.

    "And I can help out in nets," said Vezina. "I don't have a trophy in my name for nothing, you know!"

    Beliveau smiled. "Alright, my friends. The ghosts are back! Just don't give the whistles any excuses."

    "Onward! Bring on 25!" the phantoms shouted. 

    The stragglers leaving the Bell Centre heard an echo that made them smile.