Good morning, Montreal

Good morning, Montreal, good morning, Youppi!, and good morning, Insiders.

It’s a fine, if rainy, morning in a city we see so infrequently. I’ve shared this about New York in the past: there are certain cities we visit where there’s sometimes an awed hush while we drive through them. It’s not necessarily to the same degree as when we drive alongside the Hudson River en route to Battery Park and gaze up at Lower Manhattan’s massive skyscrapers, but Montreal does elicit a similar comfortable silence. I want to say that we were in either the city of Westmount or the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood – forgive me I’f I’m waaaay off here; I’ve spent so little time outside of downtown and Old Montreal – but there were charming rows of darkly bricked houses and apartments, intersected by blocks of colorful, tree-lined streets. It was so different from the neighborhoods we’re used to driving through in Los Angeles, many of which are beautiful in a much different way, and in the late afternoon and with the red, yellow and green-colored trees juxtaposed with an overcast sky, there was a clash of colors that made a number of us look up from our phones (or our blogs) and appreciate the beauty of an NHL city so far from home.

You could practically see the seasons change in our approach to YUL yesterday afternoon:

The Kings are scheduled to take the Bell Centre ice at 11:00 a.m. for their morning skate. It’s a new day, a game day, Insiders. Let’s talk soon.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.