Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

A four games to none sweep. The Sunshine State over the Great White North. In hockey. It sounds crazy, but it’s true: The Lightning beat the Canadiens 3 to 1 in the 4th game of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last night. The Bolts are now 8-1 this postseason. Of the seven previous teams to achieve that record (none have gone 8-0), five went to (and 3 won) the Stanley Cup Finals. This is a good team. With good fans: Side Salad notes the bandwagon is starting to fill up (Hey Jeff, don’t forget the Lightning flag atop the old City Hall!!). Boltsmag is a great source for Lightning info from a fan’s perspective. Even the visitors bureau is putting it in the face of our favorite visitors. And someone keeps sending THIS to HockeyBird. Excellent job!

For some reason, the northern hockey “experts” are not saying much about our team, only that the Habs got further than expected. The Pro-Canadien (check the last sentence of this post) Hockey Pundits had no comment last night. Off Wing Opinion blasts Martin Fennelly’s column for providing “no content,” then provides none itself. The die-hard fans at “Habs Rule” are not giving Tampa Bay much respect at all, resorting to childish rants. Wacky Canadians.

I care not to go on again about this or this. But I will point out that when they visit us here in the states, they leave their WORTHLESS/USELESS Canadian coins as (meager) tips. On the plus side, one Canadian has visited Florida recently, and is sorta starting to realize that they are, indeed, bad tippers. (Alas, the Canadian response? “Yeah, but Australians are WORSE tippers!!”)

Before I get email from angry Canadians, I’d like direct your attention to Blunted on Reality. He points out that it is perfectly acceptable to pick on and even hate our neighbor to the north this time of year. And it’s fun! However, in the interest of full disclosure, I must say that my mother is a Legal Alien from Guelph, and her francophone dad and mom came to this country from Canada, and are now full-time residents of Plant City (Pepére’s voice even sounds an awful lot like Phil Esposito’s). Besides, all the disparaging remarks aboot Canada will end very shortly. Before long we’ll be too busy ridiculing Greece. HA!