credit habs inside out

There really isn’t much not to love from tonight’s game. Old school uniforms. Price with brown pads (had memories of Roy’s debuts). A dominant performance. Two fights, none involving Laraque who had 2 assists. I’m not even sure what part of last sentence is more bizarre. Want weirder? Saku Koivu blanked in a 6-2 victory! And HE fought? Let’s make one thing clear, Saku played another solid game, he just couldn’t get a point. Not his best game but he still worked most of the night

But the man of the night was without a doubt Maxime Lapierre. He made a superb setup on Steve Begin’s goal and showed great hustling to get to the puck on Begin’s return. Add a fight and you get a Gordie Howe hat trick. Consider his 63% in the faceoff circle, a hit and three blocked shots and you have a hell of a game for a kid who played 12 minutes.

Matt D’Agostini played another good game with a beautiful setup to Andrei Kostitsyn who finished up in beauty. Seeing him fall on his ass after the goal brought back memories of Kovalev scoring the tying goal last year in the famous 0-5 to 6-5 game against the same Rangers.

In all honesty though, the Rangers didn’t look like a team who should be competing for the top of their conference. They left their goalie alone often tonight. Tanguay had all the time in the world to come back from behind the goal and take a shot and Begin was left alone twice next to Henrik. Those are three goals where support would have been necessary. Add to that the complete gift to D’Agostini in the third period. That one was all Lundquist. He was too far back in his net and off balance on an 80 foot shot he had no reason to let through.

And while Price was good and can’t be blamed on the two goals he allowed, he only had to block 18 shots. Clearly, a team as talented as New York should have been harder to beat. The only time I was scared for Price was when Patrice Brisebois made a bad back hand pass directly in his goalie’s glove at the end of the first period.

But Breezer’s play wasn’t my disappointment, it was the Bouillon-Dandenault pairing. They seemed out of place and were caught off guard too often. I think it’s time to bring back O’Byrne in the mix and I hope Dandenault will stay in the lineup. With D’Agostini showing he belongs in the NHL I see only one possibility: remind Bouillon his spot isn’t guaranteed.

Two other things grabbed my attention tonight. The Markov-Kovalev combination seems to be getting their marks back. They combined very well on Lang’s goal and Markov shot on Lundquist after a great setup by Alexei in first period. If these two can connect like they did last year the power play will only get better.

The other thing was the team spirit after the game. I absolutely love to see the Habs fooling around after the final buzzer. Josh Gorges got his first hit of the night on Carey Price who tried to trip him back and when the rest of the team got to him, he tried to avoid their face wash only to be piled on by the team. This is a team that has fun playing, like they were at the beginning of the year. That was nice to see.

And you know what, I’ll agree with Guy Carbonneau right now. The team is 15-6-4 for 34 points in 25 games, tied with Pittsburgh for 5^th place in the league. Not the Conference, the league. Despite a bumpy and unimpressive first two months, the Montreal Canadiens are within four points of first place in the Conference just before playing the Brodeur-less Devils, the Calgary Flames and the disappointing Lightning before finishing up their 7 game home stand against the Capitals.

But before looking too far ahead, right now, only the San Jose Sharks (43 points), Detroit, Boston and the New York Rangers (all at 38 points) are in front of the Habs this season. Did they let some points get away that they should have won? Oh yes. Are they perfect? Nope but how can we honestly ask them to be? I, for one, keep saying that things aren’t bad right now. The team is playing well enough to win most nights and I see improvements from many players.

No, they didn’t dominate often this season, not like they did tonight. It isn’t the old school win every games Canadiens but in today’s NHL good teams find ways to win and they did it often this year.