The Unforgiven: Nashville Game Preview and Open Thread

 Unforgiven: The Return of Sergei

Tonight on RDS and the mystery TSN secondary feed, noted troublemaker Sergei "Little Tits" Kostitsyn returns to the scene of his (alleged) crimes against team unity to face stone-cold killer Carey Price and a showdown with his long-lost-in-a-fog-but-better-now brother Andrei. Sergei left the wild frontiers of Montreal and headed to Music City to join big gun toting Shea Weber and learn some honky tonk but tonight he and the Predators come into the Molson's saloon looking for a fight after being blown away like tumbleweeds in Toranna last game. Saddle up!

Cast of characters:

The Stone-Cold Killer: TFS stats for the last four games: 4-0, 0.75 GAA, .979 SP, 2 SO. That sound you hear is the wind whistling through the Preds dressing room as they contemplate those numbers.

The Gunslingers: Big Tits and Cammy each have 3 points in their last 2 games. Captain Gio has 5 in his last 2. Pleks has 6 in his last 2 and is on pace for 94 points. These boys are shooting the lights out, I reckon. For the Preds, youngster Cal O'Reilly and old warhorses JP Dumont and Steve Sullivan are leading the way, although none are exactly dead-eye shooters at the moment.

The Sheriffs: The Preds win with defence, and their defence starts with big gun Sheriff Weber and his deputy Ryan Suter. Along with former Hab Frankie Bouillon, the Preds usually make life in their zone tougher than a night at the OK Corral on Wyatt Earp's worst day. Habs D makes second appearance without Russian Gun Andrei Markov. Can old saddle hands Roman and Jaro keep rustling forwards away from the net? Can the Lightning Kid PK avoid distractions from the Mike "Coward of the County" Richards interview? Will Josh Gorges be the unsung hero who gets to kiss the rancher's daughter in the end?

The Wounded: Russian Gun Andrei's six shooter is holstered indefinitely. Halpern's bell got rung off the saloon doors on Tuesday so he might be shakier than a farmhand on hooch. Nashville's Matt Lombardi got conked on the head by a flower pot off the brothel's second floor during a shootout last week so he's concussed.

The Drifter: Funny as hell but still menacing tough guy Wade Belak won't have much to do tonight so he'll drift around unless someone like Travis "Prairie Gumption" Moen stupidly decides to take him on.

The Angry Loner: Yeah, this is the part where we discuss that low-down dirty scoundrel Sergei "Little Tits" Kostitsyn. Word by way of the wagon trail is ol' Sergei is strugglin', with 3 points and a minus 4 in 12 games. He's also reputed to have had some run ins with boss Barry Trotz. What with the Habs playing so well and Sergei still letting his ten-cent head mess up his million dollar skill set, it looks like the Habs win that trade even if they only have tumbleweeds in the press box to show for it. However, keep an eye on that varmint tonight, because the return to the saloon he was run out of on a rail might motivate Little Tits to go guns a blazin'.

The Pony Express: Get yer news on those dirty low down dawgs from Nashville via On the Forecheck.

The Posse: Final word goes to the posse, which has something to say to anyone disappointed this post isn't an epic Tits versus Tits fest. For entertainment purposes after the game, rustle up a posse for yourself!   

Got anything else to say, cuss, or croon about?  Put it in the Grand Ole Opry of comments.

Today's preview and open thread is all about Tits and BJ's

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Tits are in the clear

While we wait for the big Finals preview, here's a little tidbit for you. RDS is reporting that the Montreal cops have gone through all the phone conversations (BURN THE TAPES), and Big Tits, Little Tits, and The Hamr will not be charged with any criminal wrongdoing stemming from their association with "alleged" mobster and drug dealer Pasquale Mangiola. Whew, I guess.

The Tits brothers could not be reached for comment, as they were last seen getting out of a Bentley and going into a bar with a bevy of hot chicks.

Hockey Players Like to Make Love to Beautiful Women and Lose to the Pittsburgh Penguins : Pens 5 - Habs 4

It's hard to know where to begin. Another loss, "to build on". Somehow the coaching staff has found contentment in taking the positives out of an overall negative situation. Rumors have been coiling around the team like a venomous snake and have transformed a classy organization into tabloid fodder that would make the Brits proud.

It's easy to stir controversy when the team is losing. You feed off the negative energy and become far more receptive to the the angry tidal wave that fans and media set-off. When the team is winning, they become untouchables. You can snort coke off a lama's ass if you're at the top of the standings. Nobody wants to hear it, nobody wants their bubble to be burst.

Well, KA-fucking-BOOM!

Forget your bubbles, forget your fabled team, forget the honor, the legacy, the legend. Forget your Béliveaus, your 100 years, your 24 cups. What we have today at the Bell Centre is a round- the-clock circus. Shriners galore. The team should trade in the hockey helmet for the fez and start taming elephants instead of opposing goaltenders.

And it's embarrassing. Why does this team need to grab headlines for all the wrong reasons? Everything that is supposed to go down in history becomes marred by controversy. On an afternoon where the Habs are playing the league leading Bruins, THE  hated rival, love or hate those pajama jerseys, it was all leading up to something; something eventful, something to remember. Instead, that game turned out to be the reference point for the ensuing collapse. Kovalev was benched for the third, totally slighted before the very fans that were cheering his All-Star MVP honors a week before. 

The wheels came off at that point, and odd reports concerning player conduct started propelling the eager rumor mill, which only needs the faintest breath in Montreal to reach incredible momentum. The media took to this side of the story and went to town with it. 

Last night, Ron Fournier promised he would be staying in studio all night to ensure proper coverage of a story that would have a drastic impact on the city. He alluded to the fact that players may even be arrested on the tarmac as soon as the plane would land. 

What we have that passes as hard news is that Andrei Kostitsyn and his little brother Sergei are both horny young males, who may enjoy a drink or two or three or drugs and may like to hang around a "shady" guy. And this is supposed to become the headline of the year. You think Gotti may have had a drink or two with some high profiled athletes? Professional athletes shmooze with wise guys and this is what we use to stir the pot more?  

How naive does the media think the public is? A portion of the story does raise some eyebrows, like why "Shady guy" allegedly had financial data that belonged to the players in question. Is there a gambling controversy on the horizon? It's hard to tell, but this is not the kind of news that makes it to the front pages in Montreal. This is supposed to be old wives tale material that begins with, "I heard he slept with her and partied with them and drank this much and woke up naked in this park and got traded because of...."

Are we supposed to call the Kostitsyn party route news? How is stating the obvious news? Athletes party. they party hard. The sleep with beautiful women. They do it for free, they pay for it. The booze it up, they eat their filet mignon at night, and they have their pasta lunch and nap before games. So in the midst of this losing streak, all of this unnecessary attention to the most irrelevant gossip only serves to disassemble the entire image of a team that today looks like a blazing sinking ship.

You want news? This is news. As a result of last night's loss, the Habs are now just four points ahead of ninth place Carolina. That's all I want to hear about. Maxim Lapierre can bequeath his entire estate to a snail for all I care. Saku Koivu can tattoo a picture of Oprah on his ass.

Enough with this circus.

TMS brings you the Tits and Drugs for Friday, February 20th

Tits? Drugs? We think of Lindsay

We don't even know where to start with this. We should mention the Habs lost last night, a 5-4 entertaining affair in Pittsburgh. Habs finish the road trip 1-4-1. Ugh. But all of that is secondary to the "big story" this morning.

Apparently the Tits brothers (and to a lesser extent, the Hamr) have been palling around with a drug dealer just arrested last week. Pasquale Mangiola - get used to that name, you'll be hearing it alot over the days to come - bought cars and apartments for the brothers, and arranged for some, er, companionship. The gang and the Hamr were seen in bars together. Oooh, juicy!

All sorts of rumours about half the team being on coke and that's why we suck, but we'll just shut up about that. We're a quality news source here! Bwahahahaha. Anyway, much more to come as this all plays out.

Little Tits disappear from Montreal

The supply of Tits in Montreal has been cut in half. Sergei Kostitsyn has been assigned to Hamilton, with Gregory Stewart taking his place.

Bob tweaks while Rome burns. We need a major move already, especially after the Capitals beat us 8-1. Oh, that hasn't happened yet? Sorry.

Habs Overcome Breast Reduction to Defeat Senators: MTL 3 - OTT 2 (SO)

The Canadiens can seek comfort in two more undeserving points. Fans can cozy up to the fireplace with a cup of warm cocoa, resting with the delightful vision of Alex Tanguay backhanding his way to glory. But alas, we can't. Because these are hard times. Because we've lost something and for things to be the way they once were, we need that something back.

Because the Canadiens have lost their tits.

While the organization was hard at work over the summer building the appearance of a contender, two brothers in Belarus concocted a plan that threatened to throw the team in another direction.

Vanished. Pouf. Disappeared. Scooby-I’m-starting-to-get-a-bad-feeling-about-this gone.

FHF headquarters in Belarus is telling us that the brothers have done this before.

When they were children, while often left alone at home, the young Kostitsyns would spend hours on end making time pass by indulging in a game of hide and go seek. We are told that one cold winter morning many years ago, an amused Sergei told his big brother Andrei, “ok, I hide you seek”, and darted away. Simple instructions, even for the simplest of men, but that day Andrei had been distracted by the television and a new game he had recently discovered: Wheel of Fortune. The night before, 8-year old Andrei confided in his younger brother: “I want to go to America to turn letters like Vanna. I dream to turn letters”.

So as Sergei was telling Andrei that he would be seeking while Andrei would be hiding, a dazed Andrei understood the opposite, resulting in them both hiding. The Kostitsyns are known for their voracious tenacity, and so both brothers, unsuspecting and unaware of the miscommunication, stayed in hiding for days, each brother waiting for the other to find him. They were also plenty shrewd, and so their parents couldn’t find them for days. They were sure their children had run away. Mama Tits even told her husband that she had noticed how mesmerized her eldest had appeared in front of the television lately. Maybe he had darted off to America to fulfill a dream, to learn how to turn letters, and would return to Belarus as the country’s first Professional Letter Turner. Maybe, upon his return, he could even open a school where he could teach the craft of letter turning. The Academy of Letter Turning Technology of Belarus. Dare to dream, she thought, if only that were the reason her boys were gone. A mother can only hope.

Ironically, only hunger saved the boys, who had both been hiding in the same bed under the covers, oblivious to the fact that they had been 3 inches away from one another for nearly two weeks.

Now, alas, it seems the Canadiens, like the Kostitsyn family before, have lost their Tits. Don’t look beyond this fact when trying to conjure up some kind of logic to explain the team’s shortcomings so far this year. The tits are hiding under their metaphorical covers together again. And as the whole organization attempts to retrieve the Tits, by calling out Where Are You Tits? you can just hear the two giggling uncontrollably , tempting fate and defying the searching coaching staff.

But you know what, Andrei, Sergei? It’s not funny.

Your antics have extricated the zip out of what were intended to be two pure offensive lines.

Kovalev is doing just fine, as he still brushes strokes off his palette to paint pictures of wizardry. The Koivu line is carrying the team. But without the two tits in full force, this team loses much of what made it so menacing and multidimensional. It loses speed. It loses grit. It loses pure skill. It loses the advantage.

Last night’s game was the perfect testament to this. And don’t let Sergei’s two assists fool you, this was not a game the Habs won because of his efforts. Not in the least.

The Habs keep getting outplayed because the four lines Carbo rolls out are producing at half the rate they are meant to: two of those lines are stalling, because the two brothers are playing as if the first 50 games of the season were nothing but meaningless tune-ups. The agony.

You know what Andrei? You had dreams? We all had dreams. So you wanted to turn letters for a lifetime. I wanted to go on tour and sing backup for Barry Manilow. Cry me a river. Get over it. It’s time for the Canadiens to grow up and grow some tits.