We are fair weather fans.
Tonight we watched the Habs play their first playoff game. I ignore hockey all winter but if the Canadians make it to post season play then I can get enthusiastic about the sport and our team. I began the tradition of
playoff hockey fan when I was very pregnant with Clara. Matt and Angela, our friends and neighbors from New Zealand came over for pizza and drank beer and cheered along with us and the people at the sports bar across the street. Even though the Habs eventually lost that year I know Marc and I had lots of fun following the playoffs and making a festive event each time they hit the ice.
Since 2002 the Canadians have made it to post season play at least once or twice - I'm not going to look it up. Clara has certainly seen hockey on tv before and still calls penalties "time-outs". However, tonight seems to have been Leo's initiation to the televised version of our great Canadian sport. In fact, he really got into the game; he reenacted plays with his own version of sports commentary, he pushed a ball around the living room with a plastic hockey stick (or is it a golf club?), and he chanted
Go Habs Go whenever he felt like making a bit of noise. Clara was cute, often she got confused and called the team "Canada" as in,
Go Canada, score Canada, etc. Marc and I kept trying to correct her; "You can say
Go Montreal,
Go Canadians,
Go Habs, but
Go Canada just doesn't work". I do think she'd got it all straightened out by the end of the game which, by the way they WON!
I put my tired fans to bed at 10pm, right after the players got off the ice. As I tucked Clara in and whispered my
goodnight in her ear she asked; "what is Saturday in French again?" "It is Samedi" I replied. "OK" she said, "two sleeps until the next hockey game" :)
