POST-PLAYOFF PERSPECTIVE
Lundqvist great – but so was Price
The sun was shining on Parc St. Bruno on Sunday morning. Apart from a little girl who fell off her bike on a gravel path and came up bawling, no one was crying.
In the course of a four-hour hike, the only reminder we saw of Saturday evening’s devastation was a kid weaving around on a bike wearing a Habs jersey. The car flags were utterly gone from the parking lots, hockey already mothballed for another season. It’s what we do when the Canadiens are eliminated.
As Stu Cowan tweeted with a photo from New York City on Sunday morning, it was fun while it lasted.
If only more people saw it that way.
For six games this April, we have been treated to some of the fastest, most intense, most physical hockey I have ever seen. Two teams so evenly matched they were like balance weights on a scale went at it tooth and nail through 18 periods of regulation and a couple of overtimes and (as my mentor Red Fisher used to say) if they gave an inch, they never let it be more than an inch.
In the end, the Canadiens fell short by a bounce or two. If captain Max Pacioretty scores on a breakaway late in Game 5, we’re working on a different narrative. Same thing if Carey Price stops a Mats Zuccarello shot, the kind he normally stops, in Game 6.
And if the referees had called, say, three per cent of the 157 crosschecks inflicted on the back and neck of Brendan Gallagher, the Canadiens would be steaming toward the second round.
Pity it didn’t work out that way because this is a good team with a good coach and a bunch of players (Gallagher, Shea Weber, Andrei Markov, Andrew Shaw, Arturri Lehkonen, Alexander Radulov, Tomas Plekanec, Torrey Mitchell, Jamie Benn) who did everything short of scoring the goal or two that could have put them through.
Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. So instead of talking about the great hockey we saw, we’re doomed to listen to a bunch of perpetually miserable hysterics wave their Corsis at us until puck drop next season.
Those suffering from ASS (Angry Supporter Syndrome) will be on the radio hotlines and social media for a week, braying to even more hysterical radio hosts about the failures of Marc Bergevin, the organization’s collective desire to lose, and the imminent need to deal Max Pacioretty, Nathan Beaulieu, Galchenyuk, Plekanec and whomever else they don’t like this week for an offensive centre.
Or pointing out that P.K. Subban’s team advanced, while Weber’s team did not — which ignores the fact while Subban was the third-best defenceman on his team, Weber was the best on his.
Meanwhile, that elusive big, talented centreman will be touted a thousand times a day as the panacea for everything. Trouble is, that’s not the case. The Colorado Avalanche have three, Nathan MacKinnon, Matt Duchene and Gabriel Landeskog — all young, all talented — and they were the worst team in the league by a wide margin.
Check the list of the league’s top 20 centres drawn up by no less an authority than one of our self-appointed potentates of all things analytics, and you’ll find the names of Anze Kopitar, Joe Thornton, John Tavares, Tyler Seguin, Jonathan Toews, Aleksander Barkov, Claude Giroux, Ryan O’Reilly, Mark Scheifele, Jason Spezza, Logan Couture, Henrik Sedin and McKinnon.
What do all these star centres have in common? Either their teams didn’t make it to the playoffs at all or they have been, like the Canadiens, eliminated in the first round.
There are no guarantees. The Washington Capitals are still alive and Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov are two of the best out there, but Washington’s history has been one of unending post-season frustration.
Even the Penguins, with as good a one-two punch at centre as the league has ever seen, have won two Stanley Cups in a decade with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin — and the list would still be capped at one if they didn’t have a rookie goaltender go on a Patrick Roy-like tear last spring.
Does that mean the Canadiens should turn up their noses at a bona fide No. 1 centre if one becomes available? Absolutely not. It’s a need and it’s been there for a while, just like some teams need a stud defenceman and some need an elite goaltender. But you don’t create a hole in one place in order to fill a deficiency in another, and you don’t deal Mikhail Sergachev to land Matt Duchene.
Look, the Canadiens lost to a very good, very fast, very tough, well-coached New York Rangers team. Montreal is also a very good, very fast, very tough, well-coached team. They lost to a goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist, who through the six games of this series, was a fingernail better than Carey Price.
So quit moaning. Quit waving your Corsi around. Go outside and enjoy the April sunshine. And remember this spring, you were able to witness some of the best hockey this messed-up parity league can produce.