Plus/Minus: Guys... Where are we?

I went on a short vacation last week. I spent five days in Florida, where seventeen degrees Celsius is considered unseasonably cold for January, two 23-ounce cans of Four Loko* will set you back a whopping five dollars, and people set up memorials (complete with paper signs) for a historic tree that burned down in a forest fire. I came back to a city where fans want their hockey team to lose and then are upset that they do, and where winter happens every year but drivers seem to forget that it exists. I'm still not sure which place is weirder. (Probably Florida, because they have lots of gators and gun stores.)


PLUS

+ Somehow, the Habs' open practice is always a bright spot in the season, regardless of who's there or how well the team is doing.
+ Saku Koivu scored a hat trick!
+ Former Hamilton Bulldog Ryan Russell scored his first NHL goal as a Columbus Blue Jacket. Congratulations?
+ My favourite thing about sports is sportsmanship. So it made me happy when Ray Lewis and Arian Foster signed and swapped their jerseys after a playoff game last week.
+ Rene Bourque scored his first goal as a Hab! Welcome to the jungle.
+ 30 Rock is back!
+ My interest in New Girl was starting to wane before the holiday hiatus, but last week's episode was great. I hope Lizzy Caplan's character sticks around for the rest of the season.
+ I may not agree with Tim Thomas' decision to skip his White House visit (after all, wouldn't a hard-working, beer-drinking proletarian goalie want to high-five Barack Obama and maybe sing a few bars?) but I like the way he handled it - so far, as discreetly as he could while still making the statement he wanted to make.

MINUS

No more.

- Okay but why would you put Scott Gomez in a shootout?
- The way the Cammalleri trade went down is an abomination. Yeah, I said it. Habs fans don't need any more drama, and we definitely don't like being the laughingstock of the NHL.
- I was supposed to go to the Habs-Capitals game last Wednesday. Considering that the Habs got shut out, and deserved to, I guess I'm not too beat up about missing it.
- Rest in peace, Joe Paterno. He did something wrong (which I will not defend), but he was also a successful coach whose players respected him and whose family will miss him, and for those reasons I absolutely will not be one of those heinous people who thinks it's funny that he died.

I don't know where my team is going, and I'm not sure I understand where they've been so far this season, but there's an Original Six matchup this week, and that's all that matters.

And, just because I put a Lost reference in the title of this post and didn't follow it up with anything, here's a smattering of Lost-related musings:

• Pierre Gauthier is the smoke monster. 
• What lies behind the shadow of the statue? Probably another confusing trade. 
• Kyle Wellwood ate too many Apollo bars.
• Andrei and Sergei = Jacob and the Man in Black? Discuss.
• Is Erik Cole like Montreal's Hurley?
• Do you think Jorge Garcia has ever been to Hurley's on Crescent?
• Half of "the numbers" are hanging from the rafters at the Bell Centre.
• You all, everybody.

*Do not drink Four Loko.