Nickelback celebration should make Habs your least favorite team, if they weren’t already

Let’s be honest, it’s not like anyone needed more ammo to have a strong distaste for the Montreal Canadiens. Their fanbase’s sense of entitlement even though the Canadiens have barely managed to cling to the label of “relevant” for 27 years since their last Cup (the last championship won in Montreal was the US’ World Cup triumph in 1996). The fact that their history of dominance is really based on gaming the system of a league that had six goddamn teams. Their insistence that their coach has to speak French, which means they’ve basically had the same six coaches recycle through since 1954. We could go on here.

But this is the Canadiens, and if there’s one thing that they’ll never struggle to do, thanks to tradition, is find ways to annoy you. So here’s last night’s effort.

You could waste a lot of time expecting athletes to have decent taste in music, especially hockey players who have spent most of their lives in some variation of a barren wasteland amongst meatheads. The only music they hear is in dressing rooms or the nightclubs they’re doing their best to get thrown out of. Alex Ovechkin nearly drove most of the DC area into psychosis with his post-Cup celebration DJ-ing.

Throw in the Canadian factor, and you’ve got a real problem, where Nickelback have achieved some aristocracy-like status, just behind The Tragically Hip (the very definition of a band that’s ‘fine,” yet somehow have had every government building in Canada named after them). Yes, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, so in Canada it’s not that hard to ascend to the country’s musical throne. I guess you can’t listen to Rush, Gordon Lightfoot, and Neil Young forever (sidenote: you absolutely can).

But Nickelback…this is the lowest of the low. It’s an algorithm designed to spit out cock-rock for 45-year-old suburban men on a motorcycle driving to his ex-wife’s house. Every Nickelback lyric is basically, “We can’t do any better.” When you request Nickelback in any setting, you’re admitting to the world you’ve given up and provide no service to society anymore. It’s the official soundtrack to puking up Miller Lite.

If you needed more reason to hope the Canadiens never win another game, here you go.