Oh, Canada!

A bloody foreigner (okay, Canadian Mike Weir) has won the PGA’s signature event, four Canadian teams are holding their own as the NHL playoffs continue to unfold, the Montreal Expos are in first place in the National League East, and Baghdad fell to coalition forces without one Canuck dollar going toward the effort.

Is it any wonder that Anger Management is America’s top-grossing movie?

South of the border, in our own little New England cubbyhole, the only local professional team to engender confidence and hope at this moment is the lone team not playing: the New England Patriots.

Don’t believe me? Well, the Pats — having apparently traded safety Tebucky Jones for another handful of draft picks — are now in comfortable salary-cap mode, have resolved their backlog of defensive backs, and will bunker down in the war room a week from Sunday with 13 drafts picks over the seven rounds of choosing, including a pair of first-rounders and third-rounders. Defensively, it could be argued that no team has better improved itself with its off-season acquisitions than New England, as its free-agent signings culminated with highly coveted Bears linebacker Rosevelt Colvin. The Patriots can trade extra picks to move up in the draft in the hopes of snagging some top-tier collegians.

Of the other three regional pro squads that are still lacing ’em up in the month of April, the outfit inspiring the least faith and the most teeth-gnashing is the Boston Bruins.

After jumping out to the best record in all of hockey during the season’s first two months, the Bruins slowly fell back to the pack. They managed to hold on and qualify for the playoffs in the seventh spot, but in the opening round, they drew arguably the Eastern Conference’s best hope for a Stanley Cup, the New Jersey Devils. A more-focused effort in the final weeks of the season might have helped Boston reach the sixth seed, in which they would have played the Tampa Bay Lightning, the champion of the Southeast Division. The Lightning are not only veritable strangers to the whole NHL playoff concept, but Tampa also entered the post-season with the same number of wins as Boston, and therefore would have been a much better match-up for the Black & Gold than the defensive wizards from the Jersey swamps.

Not surprisingly, the Bruins have fallen into a 3-0 hole in their best-of-seven series with the Devils, and should be emptying their lockers for good no later than Thursday night. The B’s have managed only three goals in the first three games, and while their effort has been admirable, they have been stoned repeatedly by Vezina Trophy candidate Martin Brodeur.

The overriding concern for Boston in the off-season will be its coaching situation, as GM Mike O’Connell is unlikely to continue his interim duties behind the bench. The team has tried veteran coaches over the past decade (Pat Burns, Mike Keenan), middle-of-the-roaders (Robbie Ftorek), and spring chickens (Steve Kasper, Rick Bowness), and still the franchise has remained Cup-less since 1972. Adding to the local hockey woes, a possible labor standoff looms a year from now, and management is unlikely to invest significant dollars in long-term contracts pending a potential NHL shutdown.

Also staggering to the finish line are the Boston Celtics, who once entertained hopes of improving upon last year’s Eastern Conference runner-up berth, and perhaps even claiming 50 wins this year. In the past month, though, the team has looked tired and beat-up, and after losing 11 of its last 17 games, it now stands just a half-game out of the seventh spot in the eight-team Eastern playoff race. Boston has beaten only one playoff-bound team since February 26, and the team is a mere five games over .500 with just one game left in the regular season. If the Celts hold on to the sixth spot, they’ll draw Philadelphia, which has revenge on its mind after last year’s first-round ouster at the hands of Boston, and a team that blitzed the C’s at the FleetCenter, 99-78, last week. If the Celtics fall to seventh, they’ll probably meet New Jersey, a team that has demolished them the past two regular-season outings and will most likely do the same in the best-of-seven first round.

Either way, it means the same thing: a promising season punched out in the opening round of the playoffs, a carbon copy of their FleetCenter co-tenants’ exit.

While the winter despair of New England’s sports fans might be tempered by the return of their sandlot heroes, the Red Sox have done little to show that they have dramatically improved from the past two seasons. Granted, the team is only 12 games into its young season, but the first three weeks were supposed to be when the Sox would feast on the overmatched competition that littered their early schedule. The team opened the 2003 campaign with road series in Tampa Bay (55 wins last season), Baltimore (67 wins), and Toronto (78), followed by road visits from the same three teams. Throw in series with Texas (72 wins) and Kansas City (62) sandwiching a three-game road series in Anaheim, and, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you your Boston Red Sox’ April schedule.

Boston has managed to capture seven out of its first 12 contests this season, but they’ve all pretty much been struggles, which does not bode well for when the heavy-metal aspect of the schedule kicks in next month. Sure, the Sox took three out of four in Tampa, but Boston did not lose once there all last year, and that first victory on April 1 took 16 innings to complete. Low-lighting that series was the debut of the Boston bullpen, which blew a 4-1 Pedro Martinez Opening Day victory by giving up five runs in the bottom of the ninth.

On to Baltimore, where the ’pen nearly blew an 8-3 ninth-inning lead (before winning 8-7), and the offense took the next day off in a 2-1 loss in which the winning run was walked in by Opening Day goat Chad Fox in the bottom of the ninth.

In Toronto, where the Jays were still smarting after losing three straight to the pinstripers at SkyDome to open the season, the Sox were hammered, 8-4 and 10-5, before surviving another 8-7 victory that saw another bullpen meltdown and a three-run rally by the home team in the bottom of the ninth.

After losing two scheduled Opening Days to rain over the weekend, Pedro Martinez finally got to take the hill at Fenway Saturday night, only to give up 10 earned runs in four-plus innings en route to a 13-6 pasting at the hands of the Orioles — a team that was collectively batting just .238 coming in to the contest. Only a 2-0 gem thrown by Derek Lowe on Sunday salvaged the weekend for the Fenway Faithful.

So what are we to make of the team’s first dozen games?

Well, one could argue that any game in which your team scores four runs — especially considering Boston’s starting-pitching prowess — should reasonably be penciled in as a victory. If that were actually the case thus far this season, then the Red Sox would be flying high with an 11-1 record, with only the 2-1 loss at Camden Yards tarnishing their log. Indeed, the Sox have averaged nearly seven runs a game over the first two weeks, but they have also given up over six on average in each of those contests. Martinez has a loss and two no-decisions over the course of his three half-million-dollar starts, and has not exactly endeared himself to the fandom by lamenting his inability to land a multi-year contract from the team that just placated him with a $17.5 million 2004 season contract.

Former Marlin Kevin Millar has certainly become a fan favorite quickly, as he is batting .415 with three homers and 12 RBIs (including the 16th-inning homer in Tampa on April 1), and is first in the league in slugging percentage and second in batting. Trot Nixon is chugging along at .375, but no other Sox player is batting over .300 at this point, which is mystifying considering the misleading averages that can be compiled in the first weeks of play. Nomar Garciaparra is hitting .291, Jason Varitek has as many hits (nine) as strikeouts, and 2002 AL batting champ Manny Ramirez — he of the explosive March in Fort Myers — is plodding along at .260, with just one HR. Shea Hillenbrand, while batting only .267, leads the league in RBIs (16) and has displayed some admirable versatility while defensively bouncing between first base and third. Free-agent signees Jeremy Giambi and David Ortiz, however, are batting .205 — combined.

No one’s really worried about Martinez, Lowe showed Sunday that he could be headed for another 20-season, and Tim Wakefield has had two solid starts in addition to his save of Lowe’s shutout on Sunday. Casey Fossum’s inconsistency has been on display in his two starts thus far, but fifth starter John Burkett has given the team a couple of strong outings in compiling a 3.17 ERA.

The serious questions revolve around the bullpen. While I have no problem with the "bullpen by committee" concept, it seems to me that it’s the components of said committee that are suspect. Yankee cast-off Ramiro Mendoza, Alan Embree (now on the DL with tendinitis), and Bobby Howry all have earned-run averages of over 11 and a half, and it is those numbers that have inflated the staff ERA to 12th-best in the league, behind even 1-10 Detroit.

Certainly it’s way too early in the season to make broad generalizations about the future of this team, and Toronto and Tampa Bay have both shown that they will probably perform a lot better than initially predicted. Nonetheless, what drives Sox fans batty is the fact that a .260 team batting average and 5.73 team ERA are being compiled against the so-called easy pickings of the American League. The Yankees, meanwhile, have jumped out to a 10-2 record — while playing a slightly more difficult schedule — even though two of their most valuable components (Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera) are missing to injury.

Simply put, if the Red Sox do not address the early-season problems exposed against the weak sisters of the AL, it could get downright revolting when the Angels, the A’s, and the Anakin Skywalker Traveling All-Stars begin to pop up on the schedule.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com