How Scotia Hockey Club Bribed Me Into Blogging For Them

Who the hell is Zucker?

Last week I was on twitter minding my own business and snarking as usual when a new tweep popped her head up and said something along the lines of "Hey, how you doing and would you like to blog for Scotia Hockey Club and get some free Habs gear?"

I scoffed, went back to filing my nails, arched a newly manicured eyebrow and nonchalantly cooled my jets for about 5 whole seconds when I finally deigned to check my email inbox to see what was what.

For my non-Canadian tweeps, Scotia Hockey Club is a major hockey supporter in our Great White North. Scotiabank calls itself Canada's Hockey Bank and is the official bank for the NHL in Canada, and this short season they are running a promotional contest called Scotia High Five.

To that end they've gone ahead and recruited 10 bloggers to help promote the contest, and yours truly was asked because of her sexy good looks, kind and generous personality, and my sweet and demurring nature.

OK that last paragraph was absolute crap and you should know by now I can't be trusted. Heck, I heard the collective eye rolling from here.

What I got was more like this, "We like your sassafrass, knowledge about the Montreal Canadiens, and you have quality tweeps. Do us a solid and we'll give you free Habs bling and if you're the best of the 10 bloggers (getting the most clicks on your personalized entry form) you win a couple of third round playoff tickets."

At this point I arched the other eyebrow and said, "Yeah, I'm familiar with your Scotia Hockey Club (I actually "liked" it on FB before this anyway) but what's in it for my tweeps?"

I'm not into spam or nonsense, y'all. I'm not into link clicking for the sake of clicking and I don't like to ask my online friends to do it for nada either. There's gotta be something in it for my tweeple, something really good.

And the answer is this: weekly draws for game tickets to the team of your choice; not just for Montreal Canadiens fans, ANY NHL team. Of course, this contest is naturally only open to Canadian residents, which is unfortunate for my American and International tweeps who sent me DMs last night lamenting this fact (read: bitching about it).

The grand prize, though, is the beauty. It's a VIP package for two to a Stanley Cup Final game, and if that doesn't entice you I don't know why you're even watching hockey.

So how does this work exactly?

It's pretty easy. You log in HERE and pick your favorite team and every time they score a goal you click the High Five hand and voila, you're entered. That's all there is to it.

You have 10 minutes after each goal to click the hand, and 12 hours to log on for a bonus High Five.

Scotia Hockey Club draws a random winner each week to attend an NHL game of their choice, and the grand prize draw is June 10th. The contest itself is open until June 9th, and again, only to Canadian residents.

Just please be sure to use my personalized link if you're kind enough to do this because hey... third round playoff tickets are hard to come by and terribly expensive and I truly appreciate your dedicated clicking contributions to my hard core hockey obsession.

Whilst I do covet the potential third round tickets for myself, I think what would thrill me most is if one of my tweeps won the Grand Prize, or heck even game tickets.

If you're interested in more info you can follow @scotiahockey on twitter and the contest hashtag is #ScotiaHighFive.

You can also follow me @tygerlylly and if you're not already then I'm probably terribly devastated and everything so you might want to fix that pronto. I tend to follow back unless you're an egg, a spam bot or somehow related to me. My relatives tend to confine themselves to my Facebook page because apparently "that's as much of your nonsense as we can take".

There are only 23 days left in the regular season, so be sure to enter frequently and for crying out loud don't pick a team that can't hit the broad side of a barn and doesn't score a lot of goals *cough* Colorado Avalanche *cough*.

Now the Montreal Canadiens, on the other hand, they're doing pretty good in scoring goals lately. You might want to choose them as your favorite team. Just a suggestion!

I shall be shilling ad nauseum for the next 23 days because I want us to win! And if a miracle happens and I win the 6/49 we'll just all go!

I thank you now in advance for the RT's and Shares and Likes, etc. and I'll hook y'all up with my Scotia Hockey Club blogs as they get written and become available.

Good luck everyone!

Cue the Men With the White Coats

I really love Habs fans!

Earlier in the season, after the Habs started winning but still managed to sweat their fans (late period comebacks by opponents to force overtimes), I eyeballed my twitter feed and remarked to a friend that it wasn't just the team that needed to learn how to win.

This stemmed from an earlier remark by Coach Michel Therrien prior to the tilt versus the Florida Panthers. And since then the Habs have, in fact, learned how to win and have gotten surprisingly good at it and now cling to a precarious perch atop the Eastern Conference.

The thing is this: we're used to them losing, and doing it badly. Last season's version of My Montreal Canadiens is gone but not yet forgotten.

Circling this bonfire with lit torches and pitchforks are a bunch of pundits whose collective mandate seems to either be to mock the team (NBC, TSN),  ignore the team (NHL, CBC, HNIC),  or overanalyze them to the point of idiocy (L'antichambre), and there's a recipe for some nonsense if I've ever seen one, regardless of how the team itself is actually performing.

Toss in some underlying, lingering resentment about the lockout and it's easy to see why my twitter feed goes absolutely insane over every little perceived or implied problem with the team.

I, myself, have problems with the Habs not killing teams I view as not just inferior, but consistently inferior by a wide margin, such as the New York Islanders. EVERYONE beats the New York Islanders. Except the Habs.

For YEARS now. Ugh. I don't get it. Lack of killer instinct? Are the Islanders terribly underrated? Is it that the Habs go in thinking "2 points in the bag" and tempt the Hockey Gods? I'd really like to know.

Also, I don't enjoy my team being Matt Moulson's personal bitch. That is just unacceptable.

OK mini-rant over, sorry.

Anyway my point is that after recent years of watching Jacques Martin coaching, I have been conditioned to believe that the Habs will either play down to the level of their opposition, or conversely, rise to the occasion (see Bruins, Penguins).

I am still learning who Michel Therrien's Canadiens are, and that's actually really fun in a way I've not experienced with this team for a long time now. They're much less predictable, less likely to melt down just because the other team gets up a goal or two. They work hard and as a team first and foremost, a mentality that usually only manifests during a post-season run but is currently having one hell of a positive effect on their on-ice performances.

But they are not perfect, there's still room for growth and improvement, and having watched some of the players for years it's still pretty easy to tell when they're off or something's not right. Last night versus the Islanders it was the defensive corps and Carey Price.

Price has let in 17 goals in his last 3 games, and while it's clearly not just his fault, he looks a bit off to me. As savvier observers have pointed out: he's looking smaller and less confident, he's slower coming across, he's having a bit of trouble with his angles.

Throw in a defensive corps that has shown Gorges having a couple of bad nights while Kaberle is solid, Subban and Boullion an adventure to watch (not in a good way), and Markov showing his age and it becomes interesting online to say the least.

I don't know if it's that some fans are superstitious or take it personally or what but the second I mention that Price doesn't look right I get a LOT of hate from within the fanbase.

And it's not just me making these observations about Price and the D corps and whomever it is causing the turnover, etc. We're also pretty consistent in observing the quality plays too, but they don't generate anywhere near the attention that a negative observation does.

That's when twitter loses it mind, moreso than I've ever before witnessed on twitter.

I really don't mind differing points of view. That is, in fact, what I absolutely love about twitter - the varied view points.

But when a fanbase turns on itself and starts imploding, I run out of what little patience I normally possess and then you get more of this:

and a whole lot less of this:

from @tygerlylly or her alter ego @Rosalyn_Roy.

Do you really hate me all so much for not worshipping at the altar of Carey Price? He's not perfect. He's fallible. HE HAS BAD NIGHTS. Also, so does the D corps. When Kaberle is solid but Gorges is not, that is unusual and highly noticeable because, hey, I have actually watched this team for the better part of my life.

The only truly "untouchable" for me is Larry Robinson and guess what? He had bad nights too. I can admit that without hating on people who think Robinson is overrated and wasn't all that and a bag of chips.

I'd honestly love to sit down with a sports psychologist and get his or her take on this, because as far as I can tell Habs fans just don't know what to do when the team is consistently winning but has a bad game or period and twitter goes off the rails.

Lest you think I'm a bitch (okay I am), let me point out that I don't put up with people being rude to me and my friends offline either. And I forgive it once or twice or even longer because frustration happens during a game, and I can rant with the best of them. But when you're at it game in and game out I perceive it as trolling, and subsequently I lose all interest in any valid point you might actually be making.

Sometimes I think it's because of their recent past, and I don't trust them not to "backslide". I honestly hate it when the MSM starts saying nice things about the Habs. It completely throws me off. Now they're saying the Habs are legit, that they're good, that they expect the Canadiens to be playing hockey in the post-season.

What am I supposed to do with that? It's not really that I disagree, but it's such a striking contrast to what I am used to.

Pavlov's tyger is confused.