Life is funny - both in the ha-ha and oh-please-kill-me-now-vengeful-god sense - and boy are we giggling and humming a happy tune here at French Immersion Acres.
If memory serves it all started with a dressing-room camera shot of a smiling and laughing Andrei Kostitsyn before a recent Habs game.
This is no scarce thing, believe us, as rare as a stable mood in the Randy Moss household.
But if our man Andrei sports an infectious grin - and it really is contagious - there is a reason.
The 25-year-old has six goals and four assists in 11 games this season, which has him tied for the Habs' scoring lead, and has prompted our great and good friend Frankie Gagnon of La Presse to dub him "Brother Andrei", a nod to the recently-canonized, humble former porter and miracle worker born as Alfred Bessette.
After all, this is Montreal, where you can go from being disgraced, tarred and feathered - and thus consigned to a miserable career crafting "humorous" and "clever" lines alongside all the gormless nobodies in the FI bullpen - to lionized as a demi-God in the space of a couple of power-plays.
You know, someone should really write about this whole Habs/religion motif, you've got Brother Andrei, Jesus Price, the Holy Flannel. What? Eh? Oh.
Onward, then.
As Sir Edmund Hillary almost certainly didn't say to Tenzing Norgay upon considering Everest for the first time: it's there, it's big, so we might as well climb it.
Well, Kostitsyn is certainly considerable - though certainly not as conspicuously tubby as he was last year - and the other day he was there, so we screwed up our determination and sallied forth to get a serviceable quote out of the man from Novopolotsk (hey look! Actual journalism!).
This, patient reader, is a titanic endeavour, and ought not be attempted by anyone other than a trained professional (or an FI minion, as the case may be, it's a downturn y'know and we can't be too picky these days.)
If we've waited this long to get to what he said, you'll guess that the Belarus national hockey team's proudest son (hey, he's got more goals and points than the Grabber does in Toronto and his brother Sergei does in Nashville, right?) was about as illuminating as a Victorian gas lamp.
"Nothing's changed from last year."
"If I laugh, it's because people make jokes. It's funny, I laugh, it's not, I don't."
"I feel good, I play for a long time with (Tomas Plekanec) so we play good together."
"I like to score goals. Puck goes in right now."
You can imagine what the man is like when he's feeling surly.
It's not that Kostitsyn has a particular hate-on for French Immersion, although who could blame him, really?
He's just a man of a few words, which we have trouble relating to, having been paid by the word (we know all about the value of adjectives and the tyranny of contractions).
There's been speculation that Kostitsyn has settled better since his girlfriend and their baby moved to Montreal full-time last season, that the trade of his wayward brother relieved some pressure, that he has broken out of his shell because there are now only a couple of Russian speakers in the dressing room (call it the Kovalev effect), that a contract year has made him focus more seriously on fitness.
Ask him about any of those things, and you'll get a blank look, quickly followed by a shy smile.
But hey, we tried, and the whys matter less than the results.
Conventional wisdom in Habs-land has been that the team's fortunes this year will depend on Carey Price putting up a solid start (check), Kostistyn returning to top-six form after the playoff benchings (check), and the emergence of Benoit Pouliot as a consistent NHL scorer (check, sort of).
Pouliot, who is also smiling a lot more these days, has more points (six) than Scott Gomez and Brian Gionta combined, but can't play his way onto their line (those with elephantine memories will recall the trio was the Habs' best for about three months last year).
Not that Jeff Halpern and Mathieu Darche mind - coach Jacques Martin called them "our top line" in the last three games.
"What matters is that the team is winning," Pouliot, our Franco-Ontarian homeboy, told FI last week, "but I'm not going to lie: it's more fun when the puck's going in and I can contribute."
Long may the beaming continue, we say. Now, about providing us grunting jackals in the media with more quotable quotes….