Go Flames Go!

I've been a Maple Leaf fan ever since I can remember. An infusion of blue and white blood came into me when I was three or four years old, sitting on Dad's knee watching Hockey Night In Canada.
Alas, it's been a disappointing and frustrating lifetime in Leafdom. Actually, it's been much more annoying of late. Back in the eighties, you expected the Leafs to lose every night. Every goal was a win; every win was a playoff berth earned; every playoff berth earned was a Stanley Cup. In short, they sucked rocks and you knew it. In fact, you considered yourself that much more loyal a fan the worse your team played.
Lately, it's been hard. Because the Leafs have been pretty good. They've certainly beat Ottawa often enough to gladden the heart. But the consistency hasn't been there, not when it counted. You never knew which Leaf team was going to show itself on any given night. And no Cups...for 37 years and counting.
So every year, when the Leafs fall again, you have to pick an alternate team to root for. This is not as easy as it sounds; there are many different arguments to make here.
One school of thought says that you should start cheering for the team that beat you, on the grounds that if they win the Cup, you're only one squad removed from glory. (How does it feel to be the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that wins the Cup?)
The brain sees the logic in that, and yet the heart rebels. "I'll take a Flyer on that". Philadelphia has done everything it can to cast itself as a team of goons, dating all the way back to the seventies, and it has molded its fans in its own image. One of these years you'll see it: the Wachovia Center Kitten and Puppy B.B.Q.!
So you start looking around the league for other teams. Dynasties are out: too frigging boring. The New Jersey Trapping Devils and their ilk are out as well: too frigging boring. A Canadian team trumps everything, of course (unless it actually CALLS itself the Canadiens.) But so few of those have even MADE the playoffs, much less threatened for a Cup.
As of right this second, there are three teams left in the hunt for Lord Stanley's Stein: Tampa Bay, Philadelphia, and Calgary. Having no further use for the Flyers, we'll discard them, shall we?
Tampa Bay has all the requisites: a young-gun team on the rise, with some of the finest talent in the game, a willingness to take risks (read: play entertaining hockey), and speed to burn. I wouldn't feel badly if they won it all.
But Calgary's Canadian.
Moreover, it's the kind of team that gives Gary Bettman nightmares: a small-market franchise with a comparatively minuscule payroll, based somewhere in the non-Yankee universe, expected to do the decent thing for the American public and not even make the playoffs. Yet here it is, challenging for the mug. How can you not cheer for them?
GO FLAMES GO!!!