LIVE AT THE HOSERDOME, FEB. 6

by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field

In honour of the Patriots, five NHL teams that gagged even worse in the post-season after kicking so much ass during the regular season that they had to hire an intern to take the names.

Plus, a Gary Bettman anniversary party, the crimes of Guy Lafleur ... against music ... and anything else that can slapped into a hockey post:

A team shredding opponents all season long and then collapsing in the Stanley Cup playoffs is nothing new. It's happened a couple times:

1. 1982 Edmonton Oilers: Before the Oilers went on to win their five Stanley Cups, there was the Miracle on Manchester. Edmonton rolled through the '81-82 regular season. Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier set a record for teammates (since broken) with 142 goals, then it all went poof against a team from California who they finished 47 points ahead of in the standings.
   
   In Game 3 of the series, the Oilers were up 5-0 after two periods when the L.A. Kings, improbably rallied and won in overtime on a goal by Daryl Evans (no, not the former third baseman; he spelled it "Darrell"). Two games later, it was over, and so was the tenure of assistant coach Billy Harris infamously immortalized the Oilers as "weak-kneed wimps." He thus cost himself a chance to collect a few Stanley Cup rings.


2. 1971 Boston Bruins: The big, bad Bruins, the most dominant offensive team in history, were so deep that Reggie Leach, who went on to be a 50-goal scorer with the Philadelphia Flyers, couldn't get regular ice time. They drew the Montreal Canadiens as a first-round opponent and it looked every bit the laugher after the Bruins won Game 1 and took a 5-1 lead in Game 2.
   
   Coming out for the third period, TV cameras caught Bruins stars Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito sharing a laugh. Whether or not the Habs noticed, no one knows, but what history records is they rallied to win 7-5 and took the series in seven games.


3. 1945 Montreal Canadiens: Apologies for turning this into history class, and apologies still for making this Canadian history class, but during World War II, this country was violently divided (hey, we weren't always so nice) over compulsory military service; English-Canadians were for it and French-Canadians, well, not so much. Conn Smythe, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was the ultimate patriot and it burned his bigoted behind to no end that Quebec had this highest rate of call-up deferments in the country, with a few of them playing for the rival Montreal Canadiens. The Habs put up an .800 winning percentage that season, on the strength of Rocket Richard scoring an unprecedented 50 goals in 50 games, which led coach Dick Irvin -- whom Smythe had fired a few seasons earlier -- to call them the "greatest Habs team of all time."
   
   Not so fast -- Smythe's Leafs eliminated the Habs in six games.


4. 2001 Ottawa Senators: Actually, pretty much any Senators team prior to 2007 could make the list, but the '01 crew takes it for being eliminated in four straight games by a Toronto Maple Leafs team that backed into in the playoffs, scoring a mere two goals in the series.


5. 1991 Chicago Blackhawks: Having Chris Chelios and Jeremy Roenick when they were in their primes couldn't save the Hawks from a major meltdown in the first round against the Minnesota North Stars. Chicago had finished 38 points of Minny in the regular season, but started beating a path to the penalty box, and coach Mike Keenan started going through goaltenders like toilet paper, and suddenly the Hawks were done in six games.

Fifteen effin' years: Friday marked the Gary Bettman becoming NHL commissioner, and rest assured, Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel spoke for many when he wrote last year Feb. 1 is time to "mark the occasion by popping a bottle of champagne, chugging the entire thing in an effort to drown my misery and then smashing the empty bottle over my temple to black out the memories."

The latest instance of Bettman's ability to make anything unnecessarily complicated: It's bad enough that there's even something called the Southeast Division, but even worse is that its champion is guaranteed being the No. 3 seed in the playoffs.

The way it's shaping up, one team from two traditional hockey hotbeds, Buffalo and Boston, is going to be watching the playoffs for the sake of trying to convince people in Atlanta and Carolina that their barely-.500 team is a Stanley Cup contender. For shame.

The one irony is that there has been talk about doing away with the guaranteed high seed for a division winner. On TV a couple weeks ago, Al Strachan, who's a big-time hockey pundit up in Canada, cracked, "Well, what do they do in the NBA, because that's what we're going to get." Never mind that the NBA dealt with this program after that debacle a couple years ago where a mediocre Denver Nuggets team was seeded ahead of a team that won 15 more games.

It's a little funny: Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur being charged with giving contradictory evidence at his son's bail hearing is somewhat serious stuff. It must be hell being a parent dealing with a troubled adult child, but here's a clue as to why The Flower is having this drama dropped on him. Sometimes, karma pays you back in weird ways:



The "pinnacle of local disco society." You just know that place was boarded up by 1983.

Ow, my virgin ears: Who's the bigger plug -- Ottawa Senators benchwarmer Brian McGrattan for jokingly hreatening to pull out his wang in front of TV cameras after practice the other day, or the lemon-sucking broadsheet writer for describing it thusly: "McGrattan said he should have exposed himself, also in considerably cruder street language." You have to be sick to think McGrattan was being serious, but then again, the guy isn't Lenny Bruce.

Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.