Hi. My name is Mike and I’ll be rambling on about this year’s edition of the Montreal Canadians playoff run, should you see fit to click in again between tomorrow and the time the Habs players tee it up for their first round of golf of the year.

There’s no telling when that day might come around because this is a team that the experts picked to finish anywhere from 12th to 13th in the east this year. I figured them to be where they were at this point last season, still in contention for a playoff berth going into the final weekend of the schedule. Now they’re shopping for pumpkins and being fitted for glass slippers.

This year’s edition of the Habs was supposed to be a work in progress. A year of marking time as the youngsters, who represent the future of the franchise heading into the team’s second century, continued to develop into the stars of tomorrow. Slow, controlled and deliberate were the watchwords among most rational observers, adjectives also closely identified with GM Bob Gainey, who has been quietly putting pieces in place since his return to the fold in 2003.

Three factors can be blamed for the Habs confounding the experts. The team’s kiddie corps has swelled in number with all of the youngsters seeming to blossom at once, some coming along a lot faster than expected. Among the top ten players in the NHL skill-wise for the past 15 years, Alex Kovalev has decided to play a full season in 2007-08 and has turned up to play every night, a marked departure from his past history and lit up the scoreboard, on his way to posting his best numbers since his 2000-2001 campaign with the Penguins. He has also served as mentor and role model to the team’s young Russian-speaking players.

Last and far from least, the Bruins, Islanders and Flyers, none of whom managed to win a game against Montreal this year deserve a mention for their co-operation. Had they managed to come away with half the points up for grabs, Montreal’s roster would already be wearing their soft-spiked shoes. They’d be doing it some distance from the Bell Centre though, since the snow banks are still at levels not seen since the winter of 1971, one that saw Jean Beliveau hoist the Stanley Cup for a tenth and final time as a player once the thaw finally came.

Other observers see parallels between this year’s edition and another rookie-filled team with a hot 20-year old goaltender, many of whom had won a Calder Cup together a year before with the AHL affiliate. 1986 ended with a parade too, not that anyone here is planning one yet. This isn’t Toronto, after all.

In the weeks and possibly months to come I hope to come up with at least two submissions a week, most largely having to do with the Montreal Canadiens postseason run. I’ll be watching most of the games from the comfort of my living room, in French.

French is the language that hockey was meant to be enjoyed in. That’s the way it was for me as a kid growing up in northern Quebec in the years before cable (or in our household, colour) TV. René Lecavalier was the play by play man of my youth, ably assisted by Lionel Duval and, after asthma brought his NHL career as a smooth-skating, two way Habs forward to and end, Gilles Tremblay.

Dad’s rules were simple. If you cheered for Montreal, we kids could watch the whole game, if we pulled for the bad guys, we went to bed after the first period. While I rarely made it through an entire game in the early years my allegiances were formed early. After all, my old man had played against Jacques Plante during his high school years in Shawinigan and Jean-Claude Tremblay had worked for him for a couple summers in the days when he wasn’t making the big bucks on the ice yet.

To get back to the present - Sorry for the nostalgic moment. There may be others - these scribblings won’t be simply about the game. There’s no shortage of excellent journalists out there doing great work. I’m not one of them.

That didn’t come out quite the way I meant it. Living in Montreal with the home team guaranteed as spot in the playoffs has generated a buzz. This is something unusual, after all it’s only the third time in the present millennium that Montreal’s made the postseason and fifteen years have elapsed since the last spree of joyous looting along Ste-Catherine Street.

Following the bandwagon with as much journalistic detachment as possible given my upbringing I’ll keep those of you who have the time and inclination to pop by on a regular basis abreast of my playoff-related musings. It’s about the Habs but it’s also about me. After all, it’s a blog.

As there words were being turned into pixels, Montreal erased a 3-1 deficit in Buffalo, potting two in the final three minutes and going on Chris Higgins’s overtime marker.

These are exciting times. I’ll share my take on them with you, should you have the time and inclination to return. If you find it worth the trouble to wade through my meanderings, please tell everybody you know. If you’re not so keen on them I’d rather you kept that fact to yourself.

Next up, a short drive to Toronto for a Hockey Night in Canada national broadcast against a team already getting fitted for new niblicks, as the schedule runs out the calendar before turning serious once again once the players’ paychecks stop coming.