The Tampa Bay Lightning storm into the Bell Centre tonight to take on the Conference leading Canadiens. Canadiens fans surely remember the last time these teams met having been swept out of the playoffs in 2003-2004.

A lot has changed since then, The Canadiens are an entirely different team and up to this point of the season have been playing strong enough to win on a consistent basis. The Canadiens are coming off 4 straight victories while the Lightning who have been under performing have lost the last 3 in a row. They are not a team who is used to dropping 4 games in a row.

The Canadiens would like nothing more than to prove they deserve to be where they are, and beating the defending Cup champs and avenging that sweep could solidify them even more.

Not to forget, The french contingent on Tampa love to come home to play in Montreal. You can expect Vincent Lecvalier and Martin St-Louis to want to impress in Quebec and come out swinging. St-Louis in particular who is having a pretty weak start to the season.

The numbers favor the Habs but anything can happen.

In TSN’s NHL “power rankings”, where would you expect the Montreal Canadiens (sitting atop the Eastern Conference with Ottawa) to rank?

#1? #2? Surely the top 5?. Top 10? WRONG.

#16. Ya, sixteen. Who writes this garbage for TSN? The Toronto Sports Network has every team in the Northeast Division but the Leafs ranked ahead of the divisional leaders, the Habs. Not placing the Leafs above the Habs is shocking in itself.

What kind of recognition is that for a conference leading team? Last I saw we beat Buffalo back to back, beat the Panthers and beat the Rangers. Curiously all of these teams outrank us. You can argue these results are a few days old, but I’d be shocked if we crack the Top 5 in the next updated version.

Should we complain? I seriously doubt any NHL coaches are reading and formulating their gameplan from TSN’s power ranking, but if they are maybe we’re sneaking in under the radar. No TSN power rank, no need for visiting teams to worry right? We’ll sit quietly at 1st overall in the east and let the TSN power ranking camouflage our excellence.

“If you would like to voice your opinion regarding the NHL Power Rankings please e-mail Scott Cullen at scullen@tsn.ca.”