What's all this about then?
It sure sounds, looks and tastes like another according-to-Hoyle humiliation for Quebec.
There are just four héros de la nation on Team Canada's 2010 Gold-Medal Winning Senior Men's Hockey Team (tm).
Now, that all three goaltenders would hail from Quebec is a given: this place produces élite netminders at almost as frantic a pace as it does mob hits and café bombings.
But one lousy forward?
For shame Canada, ignoring valorous Marty and Vinny (and, while we're at it, Simon, David, Daniel and - why not - Guillaume).
The outcry has been, well, an outcry.
The defender of all that is proper and Québécois, Réjean Tremblay, is in full froth this morning, tartly pointing out there are no pure laine Quebecers in the Hockey Canada apparatus and "that's just how we like it."
Open-mouth radio is also atwitter over the omission of Martin St. Louis, whose Olympic hopes are deader than Nick Rizzuto, Jr., (RIP).
After all, our Marty is eighth in NHL scoring, and second in assists behind the conspicuously Anglo Joe Thornton.
Plus, he's a swift skater, a blood-and-guts competitor and a cerebral player.
Here's what no less an authority than Vincent Lecavalier had to say on the subject: "That they would decide to leave me aside is very disappointing, but I can understand it. But to forget Martin? That's hard to accept."
The keening, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, which seems to be building to a crescendo this morning, is justified, then.
We actually wrote many of these points yesterday evening, when our eagle-eyed media monitoring section first started sending excited emails about the gathering storm, but were foiled by technology (that "send" button is a capricious beast).
In this post-Copenhagen time, French Immersion Enterprises LLC is resolutely committed to recuperating, reusing, and recycling, so here we are.
Where were we again?
Ah yes, the humiliation and implicit denigration of Quebec hockey by Team Canada selectors.
N'en déplaise nationalists like Tremblay, the complaints over the roster selection are a very Canadian thing (speaking of which, has anyone set fire to 17th Avenue yet?) There are two fewer Quebecers this year than in the 2006 edition (and we all know how they did), and one more than the 2002 squad, which, um, won gold, didn't it?
The surprise, to these admittedly jaundiced eyes, there is that the din of protest isn't louder.
That's mostly because Stevie Y went off the board by picking Patrice Bergeron - who we've seen play lots, in fact we reckon he is one of the three or four most consistently impressive players in the NHL in the last year-and-a-half - a guy who confounds the stereotype of the Quebec-reared player.
Oh, he can score, but he also back-checks, blocks shots, wins faceoffs, hits, and generally competes his derrière off.
If you're skeptical of the choice, just watch, he'll be great. We might point out Bergeron dominated the World Junior tournament in which he played with Sidney Crosby.
If Canada somehow stumbles, it won't be because of him.
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