If you're expecting a traditional NHL Stanley Cup finals preview, the kind of rote sportswriting you can read at ESPN or The Hockey News, then I apologize ahead time for disappointing you. This post is going to be, mostly, a very fawning appreciation of my amazing 2010 Montreal Canadiens, a team I cursed at vociferously on the teevee the entire regular season. Read on about my Habs, Les Habitants, le Blue-Blanc-et-Rouge, Les Glorieux. And, o-kay, I will briefly give my thoughts on the finals match-up between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Chicago Blackhawks.

It was supposed to be a Canada-Russia Olympic final-with a subplot of Sidney Crosby vs. Alexander Ovechkin-continuing an international hockey rivalry that really began in 1972 with the epic Summit Series (a series that made Paul Henderson, and his shot heard round the world, a national hero forever).

But then, the US shocked Canada 5-3 in the preliminary round. "Fluke," every Canadian fan nervously thought, as their team outplayed and outshot the Americans 45-23. However, in Sunday's wonderful gold medal game, coach Ron Wilson's young underdog squad played the mighty, talented Canadians dead even.

The regular season's over! Let's have a brief but heated discussion of the eight NHL post-season series, some of which will be much briefer and less heated than others. Thanks to my NHL Center Ice subscription, I've seen every team play at least a couple of games. I will combine this amateur scouting with my sublime knowledge of the game to make pointless guesses as to which eight teams will move on.

I know, I know. The Awl's tagline is "Be Less Stupid." And lots of American sports fans consider hockey, with its violent yet legal ice dance-fighting and hard-to-watch helter-skelter play, to be the stupidest sport in the world (I say, what about chessboxing?). Additionally, this is a strange time to start a hockey column, what with the NHL season more than half over. But here we are: you, smart readers and me, stupid hockey fan. Let's start by taking a brief look at the game's top two players.

What if the NHL banned fighting? Would you consider watching hockey games? Of course not, you're an American. You wouldn't even start watching if, during fights, the players all stripped down to their jockstraps like Michael Ontkean did at the end of Slap Shot (video below!). But should the league ban fisticuffs for the betterment of the image of the game? Eh. Probably not.