What's brown and gold and has no centre?

With Joe Thornton and Alexei Zhamnov out with injuries, the Habs will be facing “Team Boston Cream Donut” tonight in Montreal. Please don’t let the fact that Boston Cream donuts actually have a centre ruin my witty analogy for you.

In a much-anticipated line shake-up, this Gazette article mentions the Canadiens will be honouring the legacy of the Expos in tonight’s game. The beginnings of this tribute were laid in 1994. The Expos were in first place and looked very promising, with their logo that was both a script lower-case ‘elb’ and a red, white and blue upper-case ‘M.’ Then they cancelled the World Series and the Expo fanbase never really recovered. That year was actually the last time I ever watched a MLB game. The Labour Dispute Theme of ’05 rolls on.

In other news, Damien Cox is striking while the iron is hot. The iron in this case is Bryan McCabe, and the pose being struck is one in favour of McCabe playing for Team Canada in Turino. The cries of “Please God, NO!” were audible across the nation, but not in T.O. There, the masses will simply nodded sagaciously and wonder why McCabe, Allison, Lindros, Tucker, Belfour, Wendel Clark, Tomas Kaberle and maybe Tie Domi haven’t already been named to Canada’s Olympic roster. Jeez, they put nine pucks past Atlanta's third-string goalie, and see what happens??

Seriously, why would Gretzky et al invite McCabe and settle for a poor man’s Ed Jovanovski when they can bring the real Jovocop? Cox mentions McCabe has amassed only 10 PIMs thusfar. Hmmm. Using a nifty little tool called math, I can see that rate would put Gentle Bryan on pace for 137 PIMs this season. That’s 50 more than he had in ’03-04.

What’s with Chris Stevenson’s pun-laden diatribe on the Havlat incident? He’s my favourite Ottawa-area writer, but there’s only one Ron McLean.