Journalist
Team: Montreal CanadiensSport: Ice hockeyFan since: The 1970s.
Favourite players: Guy LaFleur, Maurice Richard, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Denis Savard, Patrick Roy, Kirk Muller, Jean Beliveau, Michael Cammalleri, Guy Carbonneau ... the list goes on.
Greatest moment: Seeing the Habs beat the Kings four games to one in the 1992-93 Stanley Cup final series while surrounded by LA fans.
Been to the Bell Centre?: No, but I did go to the old Montreal Forum.
Being from Canada, I was introduced to the world of hockey (or ice hockey as it is known here) at a very young age, and for me it's still the game by which all others are measured.
Hockey is life in Canada and life, as they say, is a journey.
My journey begins and ends with the Montreal Canadiens.
By the early 1970s, Hockey Night in Canada, one of the world's oldest sports programmes still on the air today, had found its way to the 14-inch TV which sat opposite my bed.
Despite that TV being in black and white, I remember my first televised game in glorious colour.
Perhaps because it was a bit of a guilty pleasure - Hockey Night in Canada began 30 minutes after my bedtime back then, and if I could manage to feign sleep long enough to see the opening face-off it usually wasn't too long before my parents were tipped off to the fact that I was watching hockey by the dancing light protruding from under my door.
In any case, I remember few things as vividly as that first game on TV.
I don't remember how old I was, but I remember Montreal was playing the New York Rangers.
I remember the speed at which the players moved across the ice, and I remember not having to turn the volume up because I could hear my dad watching the game in the front room.
I saw my first live game a matter of weeks after that and either by chance, fate, or geographical convenience (we did live in Montreal, after all), the Canadiens were playing again.
It took five seconds of sitting in the Forum next to my old man, breathing in the stale ice air and history of one of North America's oldest sports franchises, and I was hooked on the bleu, blanc, et rouge of Montreal's Saint Flanelle (a jersey which has remained largely unchanged for the past 100 years) for life.
At the time, I didn't understand the historical and cultural significance of the Canadiens.
I didn't know they were the winningest professional hockey team of all time, I didn't know they, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, were one of the country's most hallowed institutions (sporting or otherwise), and I didn't know that on school playgrounds in years to come I would win and lose friends and fist-fights defending their honour.
All I knew was that they were a part of who I was.
By the time we moved to western Canada, when I was about 10, skates and a timber Koho hockey stick had become natural extensions of the appendages I was born with; a battle-worn Montreal home jersey was rarely off my back and quickly became the badge my peers identified me with.
It's a badge I've worn with pride ever since.
Sure, it's one that anybody would have found easy to wear throughout the '70s and '80s when Montreal was winning Conference Championships and Stanley Cups left, right, and centre, but for me it's been equally as easy to wear through their years of struggle - including last season when they sneaked into the playoffs with the worst regular season record in the NHL.
I hope for a better result this season.
A Stanley Cup would be nice, but whether we'll even make the playoffs remains to be seen.
Win or lose though, when it comes to hockey, my blood will always run bleu, blanc, et rouge.
