I Stand Corrected

When free agent Claude Giroux was signed by Ottawa, I was indifferent at best.

I was no Giroux fan and didn’t see why I should be. I didn’t see why the Senators would want him in their lineup. Ottawa Citizen sports reporter Bruce Garrioch insisted at the time the trade would “reinvigorate the Senators brand”, an opinion at which I roundly scoffed. From my perspective, there was no way the signing was all that.

 

I admit now, Bruce nailed it.

 

Giroux has been fun to watch because I get the feeling he’s been having fun. His competitive fire and effort are in plain view every game and he seems to be a good complement to the young stars on the team who I have enjoyed watching for the last three or four seasons.

Through the pandemic and into now, it has been fun to watch the young guys fly around the ice.

 

Stutzle (39 goals 51 assists), Batherson (22 goals 40 assists), Norris, Pinto (20 goals 15 assists) are talented and play with zeal.

Captain Tchachuk (35 goals 48 assists) is a glowing credit to the team on and off the ice.

Jake Sanderson (4 goals 28 assists) is smart and cool with the puck, and just so effective without it.

Even Kelly never took a shift off.

 

Chabot, to me, doesn’t always play like he cares. Maybe I’m wrong. 

 

It’s thoroughly disappointing that the Senators didn’t make the playoffs, but how are you supposed to make the playoffs when your goalies give up…

 

Two goals on seven shots.

Four goals on eleven shots.

Two goals on two shots.

Seven goals on nineteen shots.

 

Does any of this ring a bell? Is it a gigantic alarm bell? It should be.

 

Now and then, goalies for the Senators have played some absolutely stellar games but, overall, the goaltending this season was shoddy; sorrily inconsistent.

 

I’m looking forward to next year and I’m hoping the same names will be in the lineup. Go Sens Go!

 

BTW - in case you’re wondering how a Montrealer became a Sens fan, you’re welcome to read my September 25, 2010 blog, titled “You Can Keep Kovalazy”. 

 

I was happy for Claude Giroux and the team when he tallied his 1000^th point at the end of the season, becoming the 96^th NHL player to reach that milestone.

 

As far as his signing by the Senators is concerned, I stand corrected.

Ice Storm Twenty-Five Years Later

We don’t seem to bounce back from ice storms any quicker than we did before, although, true, I did not hear of any hydro towers crumpling this time.

You would like to think that each time these storms happen, Hydro Quebec is diligently taking steps to make certain the extent of future outages will be significantly reduced.

I get the feeling Hydro much prefers to let it happen, counting on powerless clients to muddle through as best they can, whether the temperature is -2, -25, or +35. It’s a thermal crapshoot. This time we lucked out, with a temperature mild enough that heat wasn’t the desperately vital issue it could have been in the dead of winter.

 

Our ice storms typically happen in early January. I really thought we had made it through this winter without a major ice storm. Yes, there were several instances of mild wet weather during the day followed by freezing conditions overnight that made the following mornings, tricky. I spread pet-friendly salt on our back deck and stairs a few times this past winter to make sure our doodles didn’t risk their limbs when we let them out the morning after wet surfaces had frozen overnight.

 

I was just flipping through the book published by The Gazette after the terrible January 1998 ice storm, when power was out for 33 days in some areas of Quebec. That things were not that bad this time is more a tribute to Mother Nature than Hydro-Quebec. Twenty-five years later, I have zero confidence that Hydro customers are any more likely to have power, or lose it, in our next ice storm.

 

This time, we lost power for 40 hours and, as frustrating as we found that, I cannot imagine being one of the households that lost electricity for six days! 

It was strange during the outage to go off to the grocery store where there was power and a slew of employees packing shelves with food. Everything seemed normal while you were filling your cart and then you’d leave and pull into your driveway and remember, oh yeah.

 

It was the same when we ate at Harvey’s restaurant in Laval at the height of the outage. It was certainly busier than usual, but everything seemed normal until we rolled back into our driveway and remembered, oh yeah.

 

Thank-you to whomever invented the toilet, James Jonathan Toilet perhaps, for not making them electric.

 

Hydro should be making a far greater effort to reduce the extent of future ice storm outages while improving grid resilience, a term that, as far as I know, I just made up. In that area, it would be nice to see a surge.

 

 

 

 

Bound to Happen

I will accept that it was bound to happen, although, darn it, we were doing so well.

I felt fine as I eagerly went off to ball hockey the night of March 13^th. As a rule,

I try not to eat too much beforehand, so that I’m less likely to resemble a bloated hippo as I play. 

 

About halfway through the game, my energy sagged seriously, I felt lightheaded and as though I might fall asleep while waiting for my next shift. I ended up leaving early but was hit by an intense cold chill as I stepped outside.

 

By the time I had reached home, the car was toasty warm so I continued to drive around just to delay having to climb out of the car and into the cold again.

 

When I finally did go home, I thought I would regain some energy by eating but I soon discovered I had no appetite. A hot shower did little to ease the uncontrollable shivering.

Wouldn’t you know it, Susan tested positive for COVID and I did a short time later. My son also developed symptoms. It was the first time any of us had contracted the virus.

 

My main symptoms were intense cold chills, general aching, a loss of appetite and some coughing. My son also manifested cold chills, along with a persistent sore throat. Susan had nasty and prolonged bouts of intense coughing, along with general aches, sniffles, headaches and chills. Both my son and Susan reported a diminished sense of taste and all of us seem to have lingering occasional coughs.

 

I didn’t eat much for the week that followed and tended to have chills at night.

 

To improve our nights, my son and I tried cough syrup but, far easier than ingesting two consecutive spoonfuls, was putting the stuff in shot glasses and downing the recommended dose in a quick gulp. We’re practical people.

The next Monday, March 20^th, I wanted to play ball hockey and though I had tested negative earlier in the day, going to the supermarket proved exhausting. I decided I didn’t have the energy to play.

 

I returned to ball hockey the following Monday. Some of the other players asked why I had left early two weeks ago. When I explained I had COVID, some of them began sharing their stories, and the stories of their loved ones who had caught the virus.

 

The stark numbers show COVID is not a thing to mess around with and even now, even for the vaccinated, it is quite an ordeal for many people.

 

All in all, thankfully, we didn’t do too badly. I’m sure the vaccinations helped.

 

We determined Susan brought the virus home after getting it from a fellow fitness instructor where she works.

 

I suppose. 

 

It was bound to happen.