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Let me be the first to welcome you aboard the bandwagon, ladies and gentlemen. The wagon, brilliantly painted with the bleu-blanc-rouge of the CH, will depart from the St-Antoine St. media entrance to the Bell Centre in mid-October.

From there it will travel up Mountain St. to de la Gauchetière, then east to Peel, back down to St-Antoine and so on, around and around in increasingly giddy circles, until at least the second round of the playoffs next May.

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After that, my crystal ball gets a little foggy, but remember: you read it here first. The 2016-2017 Montreal Canadiens are going to be a good hockey team. They are going to be in a dogfight with the Tampa Bay Lightning for first place in the Atlantic Division all season long, they will finish with more than 100 points and they will be very tough come playoff time.

So you can put away those dumb foxhole jokes that were already stale last October, and you can stow your complaints about Michel Therrien and his much-maligned system. That system worked fine in spring 2014 when the Canadiens made it to the cusp of the Stanley Cup final and might have gone all the way if not for Chris Kreider’s infamous slide into Carey Price.