This may come as a shock to those people that think that the last Canadian team in the playoffs becomes "Canada's Team" but sports are about so much more than supporting your team. They are also about hate. Nothing makes a fan happier than seeing their rivals fail. Just take a look at any fan of the other Canadian teams. They enjoy seeing the Leafs fail than their own team succeed. For us Leaf fans, seeing our rivals fail is a. a nice side benefit to supporting the Leafs and b. expected (see: senators, ottawa).

So naturally, when the hardest working blogger in the hockey blogosphere Greg Wyshynski - formerly of The Fourth Period, AOL's NHL FanHouse, and Deadspin's NHL Closer - asked me to write a piece for his newest venture, Yahoo's NHL Experts Blog, about one of the team's fiercest rivals I jumped at the chance.

It took longer than I had hoped but here is the piece that I had been hinting at the last couple of days: a eulogy for Montreal's season . My favourite part is the closing hymn.

That was a good outlet to express some of the disdain I have for one of the Leafs' rivals but the other outlet came in a bit of a roundabout way. Hockey-Reference is the hockey spin off of one of baseball's best statistical sites. Yesterday Mirtle alerted us to the fact that they were taking sponsorships for pages starting from $10 for the year. He already had Wayne Gretzky lined up when Sean came up with a brilliant idea for the topic line. Sean's suggestion set the wheels turning in Chemmy's head and over some quick messages he alerted me to the unlimited possibilities that sponsorship could provide.

Exhibit A - Carey Price

Thanks to Chemmy for the inspiration and Kim for the words.

Exhibit B is in the works but needless to say this is just the first salvo.