Negative Nancy Notebook - Falling Back to Earth Edition

Apparently, the Leafs and their fans were so sky-high after one game that we all came thudding back to earth last night. I don' know about other fans but it seemed like we had our feet on the ground already.

A large dose of reality was brought to the Toronto Maple Leafs' home opener at the Air Canada Centre on Saturday night.

Shoaltsy, maybe you guys in the papers can start coverig the Leafs with that same sense of reality.

Last season, the Canadiens' power play led the NHL with a 24.1-per-cent success rate, while the Leafs were 29th in penalty killing. When the Leafs started taking penalties in the second period, the result was inevitable. The Canadiens finished the night 3-for-8 on the power play.

File that one under "Things that we alredy know". Montreal lives and dies by the powerplay and from a high-speed viewing of the game the Leafs made sure to give them as many unwarranted opportunities as possible.

Though Toronto exhibited growing pains, Montreal looked every bit like a Stanley Cup contenders.

Wait Traikos, haven't we just gone over how bad the Leafs are this season? Don't you look like Stanley Cup contenders by, I don't know, beating the defending champions?

If there was a silver lining for the Leafs, it was that they committed more than enough mistakes for the young and developing team to learn from.

This actually is the benefit of last night's game. There were a lot of teachable moments from how not to fall asleep after the opponent scores thereby allowing another goal to how not to fall asleep after you score thereby allowing the other team to score. Not to mention, how not to fall asleep after you miss two unbelievable chances to open the scoring thereby allowing the other team to score.

There were 48th Highlanders, piping in the season. Canadian Olympic medallists were honoured in both official languages and the crowd supplied itself with a rousing a cappella version of the national anthem.

But after that, there wasn't a lot for Leaf fans to cheer.

It started with the 48th Highlanders getting cut short in the pre-game festivities.

And went downhill from there.

Kevin McGran and Damien Cox (respectively) should have a word about originality with each other. Also, if you want to get a sense of why we, the thinking Leafs fans, get beat over the head with the stereotype of the dumbass fan check out the comments in those articles.

Toronto forward Dominic Moore showed some chutzpah when he went after Mike Komisarek in the third period after the Montreal defenceman hit him from behind into the boards. Moore, who sent Komisarek flying after the whistle, was given two minors. Komisarek was not penalized.

Steve Buffery points out one of the few highlights of the night. I hate Komisarek. He's a large Ryan Hollweg.

So game two is in the books and as the text message I received from my super optimistic uncle pointed out: .500 is still respectable.