Habs vs. Bruins: a playoff tradition
Playoff foes to meet for the 34th time
MONTREAL —The Montreal Canadiens’ road to the Eastern Conference final will go through Boston, just as the Bruins’ road to the third round will go through Montreal.
This is how it is, how it should be. How it must be.
A playoff clash is how it has been 33 times since 1929, when the fiveyear-old Bruins swept the Canadiens in a three-game semifinal on the way to the first of their six Stanley Cup victories.
The Habs, as they would come to be known, beat Boston in the playoffs both of the next two years, indeed for the Cup in 1930.They would not meet again for a dozen years, the Bruins winning a 1943 semifinal.
And then came The Streak — 18 consecutive Canadiens wins ove rthe Bruins in the post-season, from1946 through 1987,including six meetings in the Stanley Cup final.
But Boston has enjoyed the edge in the rivals’ 11 series since 1988. From 1988-94, the Bruins beat the Canadiens in five of their six playoffs series. Montreal won the next three, Boston has been victorious the last two.
Their last six meetings, dating back 20 years, have been in the Eastern quarter-finals, three of their last four going the seven-game limit.
Naturally, all of this is water under the bridge as numbers are crunched before bodies in the days leading to the latest renewal of hostilities.
If the Canadiens vs. Bruins isn’t the NHL’s most heated rivalry — there are a few dandies in the West — it statistically is the league’s most storied. We’re talking 85 years of sharpened elbows, hatchets made of lumber, spilled blood and broken bones ... all of it inflicted by some of the meanest hombres who ever laced up skates.
This isn’t to suggest the series ahead will be a gong show. In their four regular-season games this year, the Canadiens winning twice in regulation and once in a shootout, the two teams were on church-league behaviour, relatively speaking.
The Bruins picked up 53 penalty minutes total compared to the Canadiens’ 45, and 24 of those 98 minutes — 12 each — were assessed to Montreal’s Brandon Prust and Boston’s Kevan Miller.
The tidiest scouting report would suggest a series pitting Canadiens speed against Bruins brawn.
The Habs’ best chance to move on would be by playing the game that has brought them this far — using their speed to test their opponents’ discipline.
Oh, there will be battles. Is there a fan not looking forward to seeing Brendan Gallagher going nose-to-sternum with Zdeno Chara every single shift?
Fans will trade charges of diving by the Bruins’ Brad Marchand, a rat extraordinaire, and the Habs’ P.K. Subban, who will drive Boston supporters around the bend.
This could be an epic goaltending duel between Montreal’s Carey Price, the Sochi Olympic gold medallist who has enjoyed a superb season, and Boston’s Vezina Trophy-nominee Tuukka Rask.
While the Canadiens practised Sunday, the Bruins took the day off following their Saturday ouster of the Detroit Red Wings. Predictably, the Bruins were saying nothing Saturday to stir the Montreal pot.
Claude Julien, the former Habs coach who is 11-7 vs. Montreal in his 18 playoff games behind a Bruins bench, stuck a pin in the first hastily inflated balloon of hype.
“I don’t mean to crush your question (about facing the Habs) but we’re so far away from thinking about that right now,” Julien said Saturday. “We will enjoy the win today, the series win. We’ll kind of regroup and maybe next time I talk to you I’ll be able to answer that question.”
Said Boston centre Patrice Bergeron, the Frank Selke Trophy nominee as the NHL’s best defensive forward: “(The Habs) are a great team. They’re definitely playing some great hockey right now. They played well against Tampa. It’s going to be a good challenge again for us. There’s lots of history behind both teams so it’s going to be fun to be part of it.”