Brendan Kelly
@brendanshowbiz
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Scribe @ Montreal Gazette. Writer of hockey column What the Puck. Chroniqueur à ICI Radio-Canada Première. Co-host of podcast High Fidelity/Haute Fidélité. Dad.
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Joined February 2009
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Here's a column I wrote for the
@FPJQ
earlier this year. Music matters. Or: Whatever happened to cultural criticism in the mainstream media? Criticism matters. Now more than ever.
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So does Carey Price get a call from management to gently suggest to him that maybe it's not so cool to post that photo of himself wearing camouflage and holding a rifle just days before the École Polytechnique massacre anniversary? I figure they don't.
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Quebec has lost the voice of a generation. The reaction is similar to how Canadian music fans felt after the death of The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie in 2017. Here's my column on the death of Cowboys Fringants singer Karl Tremblay.
Brendan Kelly: Cowboys Fringants singer Karl Tremblay was the voice of le peuple
montrealgazette.com
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So cool that Joe Sakic comes to Montreal on a huge game day for Colorado to pay his respects to Guy.
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Shea Weber attended Pekka Rinne's sweater retirement ceremony in Nashville in February yet can't make it, even via video, for the opening Habs game of the season nor does he bother to show for the Guy tribute. I'd say the message is pretty clear.
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Karl Subban: "I still love Auston Matthews. I still love Wayne Gretzky. But I don’t love that they’re in these ads promoting gambling because young people look up to them. They want to be like them. So they might think gambling is okay when it’s not.”
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This just happened on my street. Guy got out on his balcony and started playing the bagpipes. Moving.
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Pourquoi est-ce que Carey Price n'est pas capable de dire quelques mots en français? Il joue avec le Canadiens depuis 2007! J'ai pensé à ça quand j'ai vu Ken Dryden faire son entrevue en français à
@OFF_TLMEP
dimanche soir.
@guyalepage
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This is a moment in Quebec. I'm saying this in English because maybe there are some of my fellow anglos who don't realize how big this is. It's a moment and the reaction to the death of Karl Tremblay is a beautiful moment. This is what's great about Quebec. We're a community.
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So sad to see this is the end of the road for Paul Byron. He gave it all for the CH. Never forget that epic winning goal in game one of the Toronto series. He played 521 games for the Habs after being picked up on waivers from the Flames in 2015. Unreal. Hero.
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Subban finally announces his true colours. He loves Weber. Brilliant ad.
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Nigerian star Burna Boy had the crowd in the palm of his hand with his impossibly appealing mix of hip hop, reggae, dancehall and Afrobeat. Amazing. At
@osheaga
.
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Shania Twain en français à
#TLMEP
. Vraiment cool de voir ça. Combien des pop stars de ROC peuvent faire ça? Way to go Shania!
@guyalepage
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Who cares about the Cup? A detail. The Habs beat the Leafs. Suddenly life has meaning.
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So 3.3 million Quebecers watched the Bye Bye this year. For a market share of, wait for it, 91%. I mean that's crazy. Cool but crazy. You only get that kind of market share in North Korea. Like does a memo go out? You must watch or else? By the way I really liked it.
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I’m not a Crescent St. fan - who the eff is? - but I am kind of glad Leonard is keeping an eye on things.
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I was just downtown walking around and it was depressing to see the streets way emptier than they were a few years ago. With offices empty, one of the few signs of life downtown comes thanks to the Concordia and McGill students. Now the CAQ hopes to empty those streets even more.
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Here's my advice for Suzuki. Actually learn French for real. Become bilingual. Koivu was captain for 10 years & never spoke a word of French in public. That was wrong. Management should make it clear to Suzuki that he has to get his parlez-vous up 2 speed.
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The Canadiens need to bring Arber Xhekaj back right now. It was a mistake to send him down in the first place. This CH team is soft like every Habs team this century. Noesen’s cheap head shot was icing on cake of night of the Canes pushing the Habs around. Unacceptable.
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Restaurants can't find staff even with the CERB out of business. They say there's a cultural shift. "Now there’s this kind of entitlement...it’s about doing the least and getting paid the most."
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McGill m'a aidé à devenir bilingue. Lorsque j'étais à McGill, il y a de nombreuses années, j'étudiais l'économie mais je suivais des cours en français tous les semestres, sur la culture québécoise, la littérature, etc.
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New-look Céline Dion isn't confusing. She's empowering. If some folks in Quebec don't like the liberated Dion, perhaps they just don't like strong, unique women who take control of their lives. Here's my column.
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C'est scandaleux que Price ait passé toute sa carrière avec le CH & qu'il n'ait jamais fait l'effort d'apprendre le français. Idem pour Gallagher, Weber. Gainey et Robinson ont appris le français. Et Gorton devrait s'y mettre.
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I have no issue with Carey Price expressing his views on gun control. What I won't accept is the Habs' most famous player of the era supporting a gun lobby group that thinks it's cool to sell stuff making fun of the École Polytechnique. Here's my column.
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A sad day.
@PKSubban1
has retired. Sad because so many of us are still bitter about how the Habs treated this guy. He still means so much to our city. He had a great career but more importantly he embraced Montreal like no other Hab in the past 40 years.
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I have been ripping
#Habs
management for years via What the Puck but this was a magic day for Habs fans. Just celebrate and forget all the Lafrenière malarky. This was an epic series win. All heart. It was a blast of a week for us and now we have another series.
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I am officially a Florida Panthers fan. I don’t care about the draft pick.
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Le Québec a perdu la voix d'une génération. La réaction est similaire à ce qu'ont ressenti les gens au Canada après le décès de Gord Downie, de The Tragically Hip, en 2017. Voici ma chronique sur le décès du chanteur des Cowboys Fringants, Karl Tremblay.
Brendan Kelly: Cowboys Fringants singer Karl Tremblay was the voice of le peuple
montrealgazette.com
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That Ricky Gervais opening monologue at the Golden Globes was unbelievable. He just doesn't care. Totally punk rock. With a pint of beer in front of him. You have to love this guy.
#GoldenGlobes
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Ok let me get this straight. Just For Laughs is half owned by Bell/Habs and mega Hollywood agency CAA and they don’t have the cash to move forward? Like they couldn’t do a reduced edition? Questions need to be asked to Bell, CH and CAA.
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And here it is. The Legault govt doesn't listen to concern of anglo universities and brings in plan that will devastate McGill and Concordia. Beyond depressing.
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I can confirm that I was told earlier this week my Taste Test column on CBC Radio's Daybreak has been cut. They say they'll get their music elsewhere. I've been doing this for years and years so I'd just like to thank all the faithful listeners who tuned in and texted in.
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I met Guy Lafleur in early 2020 when he was launching his line of gin. He’d recently had quadruple-bypass heart surgery and they’d discovered he had lung cancer. In spite of it all, he was in hood spirits and was super friendly.
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Oh man. Carey Price. In his cowboy hat. And P.K. and Carey do the triple low-5. A moment of beauty. And Michel Therrien isn't there to scold them. Class.
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Can we end the debate right now?
@PKSubban1
is one of the league's great D-men, which is why he is on the short list for the Norris Trophy. 3rd nomination, with 1 win. Elite baby. Yeah it was a bad trade.
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Disgusting. Minimum suspend him for the series. No place for this garbage.
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Geoff Molson missed a great opportunity to be a hero. The
#Habs
should've given those 2500 tickets to frontline workers instead of selling them & allowing people to resell them for crazy amounts of money. What the Puck!
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What is wrong with the NHL? Let me rephrase: What’s wrong with Canada?
Canadian 🇨🇦 National anthem sung only in English at NHL All-Star game in Toronto. Not a word of French heard.
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That SNL Montreal "skit" isn't even controversial. It's just nonsensical, unfunny and kind of bizarre. Nothing to get upset about.
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The attack on English universities suggests...the Legault government has few if any constructive ideas on how to promote & protect French. Its go-to strategy is punitive, destructive, political...aimed at tearing down the English community’s institutions.
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Ron MacLean complaining about reffing. Can Hockey Night in Canada pretend they’re not Leafs homers?
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Here's my piece on
@beatricepirate
who lost her voice, the worst thing that can happen to a singer. “It’s a little scary. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. After they gave me my diagnosis, I was very depressed."
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Guy assaults someone, doesn't really apologize, says he's standing up for his family and then the room gives him a big cheer. That's ugly.
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Je ne comprends pas comment on a decidé de faire le Gala de l'ADISQ la même soir que l'élection municipale.
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P.K. Subban down at the Children's Hospital today with a bunch of his Preds team-mates. More evidence that there's little truth to the malicious innuendo that P.K. is hated by his fellow Preds.
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Arber Xhekaj isn't crazy about the Wifi nickname. He'd rather be called The Sheriff, like he was when he laid down the law in his junior days. But he's more than an enforcer: “I’m not a goon, I’m a hockey player first." Here's my column on The Sheriff.
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Bravo to Valérie Plante for standing up for Montreal and underlining that an attack on our universities is an attack on the city: "We certainly see it as a measure that directly attacks Montreal, and that is not fair."
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So Kotkaniemi and Caufield presumably out. I give up. Did I once – or maybe a thousand times – says there was no PLAN?
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Sofia Zahariadis came from St. John’s, N.L., to study pharmacology at McGill and she said she’s not sure she would have come if the new tuition rates had been in place. The irony is she chose Montreal cos she's bilingual & wanted to live in a French city.
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Je suis sans mots. Nous avons souvent travaillé côte à côte sur des émissions de Rad-Can et dans des événements cinématographiques. Marc-André était un grand critique, mais surtout un des gars les plus sympathiques de notre milieu.
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@CorbinReiff
Nirvana, at Les Foufounes Electriques, 400-capacity alt-rock club in Montreal, two weeks before the release of Nevermind in September 1991. Good crowd but club wasn't even sold out.
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Can we honestly just stop the Habs Dubois rumour mill right now? Long-term deal at $9 million a year for a dude who got a career-high 63 points last year? C'mon. For the
#Habs
, it makes zero sense. After they made it clear Suzuki is supposed to be salary leader at $7.875.
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The Gaz has a new columnist & all I can do is echo what a pal said re this last nite @ the bar – Why did it take so long?
@ToulasTake
is 1 of the city's best columnists, has been for years, and she's just who we need in our pages (do we still have pages?).
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Here we go again. The City is harassing a vital indie music venue, this time
@TurboHaus
, threatening them with up to $12,000 fine due to one complaint about noise. From a nearby bldg built in last 2 years! Every small venue in town deals with this.
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In the church with
@beatricepirate
. Béatrice just gave a hilarious talk about putting out another album of sad songs. She said some say she has too many songs about toxic people in her life, that she pays them too much attention. ‘But they pay the mortgage’ she quipped. BOOM
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Great moment at
@beatricepirate
’s inspiring show at the gorgeous El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles last night. Guy yells at Coeur de Pirate: ‘Move to L.A.’ Béatrice Martin doesn’t miss a beat: ‘I can’t. I love Medicaire too much!’ Ba Da Boom.
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Can we at least agree that any playoff format that lets the 24th place Montreal Canadiens into the playoffs is a playoff format that is a bit of a joke?
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I still do this. I walk into the dep and pay money to buy paper newspapers. It’s fun. Try it out sometime.
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Legault and the rest of the govt must be loving this influencers TMZ big-jet big-party story which conveniently deflects most of the media's attention away from the real story – a health-care system on life support, a curfew that is not going down well with many.
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I'm not even remotely interested in what Marc Bergevin has to say this afternoon because he'll have nothing to say. Trades are hard. It's hard to get centres. You want loyalty, get a dog. I give take-it-or-leave-it deals. Galchenyuk sucks. J.J. Daigneault is my bestie.
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Habs will contend before the Leafs. You read it here first.
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People of a certain age have been so emotional since Lafleur’s death cos it's a flashback to a time when the Habs defined Montreal, when the mayor would say the Cup parade would be following the usual route. A more innocent time. We were the champions.
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How’s that P.K. trade looking now? Hmmm that’s right, looking exactly like many of us said it would look.
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Nothing to do on a closed-down Sunday except to go to The Main for a smoked meat & fries. No one there but the usual line-up for the hyped place cross da street. Leonard always preferred The Main & I’ll side with Lenny. Had lunch with him there in ‘89 to talk about I’m Your Man.
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Nice front page of the Gazette today. Me and my daughter Devan K-m. Family is the rock - and rock’n’roll - of my community.
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It’s kind of surreal. Habs have the worst season in their history, become the first NHL team ever to finish 32nd and most fans are super upbeat.
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I am loving this. This isn’t the Leafs choking (well maybe just a bit haha). It’s the Panthers saying to everyone - we’re the real deal my friend. Will the Sportsnet dudes survive this? Panic!
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Peter Hook & the Light at Club Soda Saturday nite. They arrived two-and-a-half hours late on stage cos of numerous flight cancellations coming from Toronto. None of their gear arrived with them. Yet Hook & Co. still delivered a transcendent set of New Order & Joy Division songs.
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Paul Wilson organizes Zoom call with Molson that doesn’t include Gazette, TSN 690, CBC, and Radio-Canada. Very Trump-like to discriminate against the journalists that ask tough questions.
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Mark Scheifele: “My intention on that play is to try to negate a goal. There’s no intent, there’s no malice there." The classy thing to do would be to just apologize, period. Mark, the puck was in the net when you were leaping in air to hit Evans' head.
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Karl Subban wants to get gambling ads off of NHL broadcasts. "I still love Auston Matthews. I still love Wayne Gretzky. But I don’t love that they’re in these ads promoting gambling because young people look up to them."
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Popular hockey-watching bar Chez Serge is now called Chez Subban, until P.K. Subban &
@PredsNHL
lift the Cup.
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I hadn't spoken to Geoff Molson for a year & when I met him today after his Canadian Club speech, the first thing he said to me was: "Brendan, are you getting a haircut soon?" I didn't miss a beat, saying: "I will...when you make the playoffs." Game on! I'll respect the bet.
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At the Martha and Rufus Wainwright family gala at Église Saint-Baptiste on Rachel. Magic.
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Holt Renfrew Ogilvy is renewing the Ogilvy’s bagpiper tradition and they’ve tapped 34-year-old Montrealer Jenna Dennison for the job. She’ll be occasionally at the downtown store playing trad and comtemporary. Here she blasts out Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train.
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Habs fans chanting 'Trump, Trump, Trump'. Rangers fan beside us said, all hurt: 'That's not fair'.
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Hard to believe no NHL team is going to take a chance with Patrick Roy as coach. So he had a fight with his boss in Colorado. Like he’s the first coach ever to get into a dispute with upper management. The NHL is the ultimate old boys club.
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That's the beginning of the problem here – fact that Geoff Molson named himself president of the Montreal Canadiens. But who was there to tell him it was a mistake? There is absolutely no system of checks & balances in this organization. The result? Mediocrity, year-in year-out.
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Since Daybreak withdrew its offer to have me say goodbye on air, I'll do it here. Kind of incredibly, I first began doing the Taste Test in 1989, way back in the days when Jon Kalina was hosting.
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A phone hearing for Scheifele? Really? Are you kidding me? Guy could've literally taken Evans' head off but he will be suspended for maximum of 5 games. Sounding like it will be much less. This is a Mickey Mouse league. What are they waiting for? Till someone dies?
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Céline Dion's son René-Charles Angélil aka
@BigTipMusic
is topping the Soundcloud R'n'B charts in Canada & mom is super happy about that! Here's my column.
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What a breath of fresh air chez le CH. Two smart seasoned hockey dudes running the show. Who would’ve thunk it. Well done Geoff Molson.
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Unreal. McDavid creams Danault, who doesn't have the puck. Weber, who's right there, steps out of the way and saunters back to the bench. Then Anderson races in to make it clear McDavid is out of line. Says so much about the Man Mountain.
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Sportsnet folks behaving like Leafs fan boys is embarrassing. Imagine a national broadcaster in the U.S. behaving like that toward a sports team. It would be completely unacceptable. But here it's accepted. & it's an insult to the fans in Mtl & all the other Canadian NHL cities.
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This is so cool! Viggo Mortensen talking in very good French about his love for Le démon blond. Is Viggo the world’s most famous Habs fan?
Vous êtes plusieurs à nous l’avoir demandé.
Viggo Mortensen, grand fan des Canadiens, a rendu un dernier hommage à Guy Lafleur hier en direct de Vancouver.
#TJ18H
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J'ai souvent affirmé que la communauté anglophone du Québec avait peu de pouvoir politique. Alors quel parti politique, fédéral ou provincial, combattra la CAQ dans son attaque contre McGill et Concordia?
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Yeah Carey was unreal but can we give Josh Anderson some love? That was the game of a lifetime! Best Habs performance by a skater in decades.
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P.K. Subban voted by the other players as the most overrated player in the league. Hmmm. Guess jealousy is a thing in pro sports. Also shows that his personality is simply too big for the buttoned-down stuck-in-the-50s NHL.
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Jack Fucale, Zach Fucale's dad, makes it loud and clear with
@TonyMarinaro
: "The team that drafted Zach Fucale is no longer my hockey team...the Washington Capitals is a hell of an organization...in Washington the communication is awesome." Hmmm. Quite an endorsement of the Habs.
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I love listening to
@TonyMarinaro
when the Habs are in the midst of a horrendous losing streak.
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Xhekaj was arguably the most popular Habs player @ start of season. Now he's languishing in Laval because he's a "defensive liability" they tell me. Did you see the D last nite? There were 5 dudes who were defensive liabilities. Fan fave on the outs w management. Sound familiar?
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Really uncool. MSL refuses to say anything against Gally who elbowed a guy in the head at centre ice and almost cost the CH the game. Then they mention Arber's two penalties and MSL says – 'J'adore pas ça.' So throw Xhekaj under the bus but protect the over-paid vet. OK got it.
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