Matt Slocum
Gang, we can't recall being this disillusioned since the much-hyped Star Wars prequel fiasco of the late 1990s and early Oughts.
We were willing to play along for a while, but Hayden Christensen as Young Luke? Jar-Jar Binks? Come on!
To be told that something exciting is going to happen only to find out the opposite is true, well that's just no fun for anyone.
Which is presumably how readers of this space feel, oh, every Tuesday or so.
Today, we focus on yet another instance of all hat and no cattle, and this time it's no fault of ours.
Mike Richards promised - promised!! - that the dastardly P.K. Subban would pay, oh how he would pay, for being, well, dastardly and all bigmouth rookie-ish.
And in the event? Pffft.
The Flyers decided to play hockey instead, something at which they're quite handy, as it turns out.
Sure, the most exciting rookie in the entire N-H-of-L got booed, and the Flyers roared back when Habs seemed to have things well in hand - until forgetting how to backcheck and cover people in their own end.
But this simply did not come off as advertised, and we are shocked, shocked!, as Claude Rains once said in some middling film.
As any regular peruser knows, we here at French Immersion are specialists at drawing links between unrelated events and seeing conspiracies where none exist.
So in that fine tradition, let us compare the Flyers' clever bait-and-switch with what appears to be happening in Quebec City.
You'll recall that people up there are all hot and bothered about the return of NHL hockey, presumably so they can hate Montreal even more than usual.
This past summer, a bunch of Tory MPs from the region even donned Nordiques jerseys (all but Maxime Bernier and, crucially, Quebec lieutenant Christian Paradis).
All seemed bright and good, until the West started whining that Quebec was getting special treatment - by the way, leave the whining to the experts, you don't do it very well.
Although, it may yet turn out, rather effectively.
Whoever in Quebec isn't talking about Carey Price's sick save on the third period two-on-one Monday night - and the fact his teammates mysteriously quit playing in front of him - is talking about l'Affaire Colisée.
There have been intermittent signs that the feds aren't keen on kicking in their share of the $400 million it's going to cost to build a new arena for a certain billionaire's future hockey team (and for the Olympics, concerts, etc.).
But this week should be interesting.
Quebec Mayor Régis Labeaume is used to getting what he wants, and though our sources insist that the rink project isn't dead, we guess the leak that it might, possibly be will swiftly be followed by some quiet polling in the Quebec metropolitan region to see whether such news will kill off any Tory hopes deader than the Habs power-play. And FI's political prognostication department is predicting that it will.
So don't believe everything you hear: there will be much political theatre in the coming days and weeks, the bulk of it rolling out under the guiding hand of the old master in La Vieille Capitale.
Our bet is still that all this talk is part of the gamesmanship involved in this deal, and that shortly it will emerge that private money has been lined up to ease the federal burden and satisfy squirrelly Western MPs.
We can tie it back to the wily Richards, who for all the tough-guy talk was more intent on pumping pucks into open nets.
To stretch the analogy beyond the breaking point, you can think of the current blathering about the arena in the same way as Jacques Martin's insane tinkering with his line-up (way to kill off Cammalleri's momentum by pairing him with Gomez and Moen! And can we please call off the Weber experiment?) It's a momentary over-correction that will shortly be followed by a return to regular programming.
We reckon this thing will still get done.
And to those inclined to doubt us: were we right about Carey Price or not?
Uh-huh. That's right.