Canadiens vs. Lightning should be a treat for fans
Tampa swept Habs in 2004 playoffs
The next time the Canadiens defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning in an NHL playoff game will be the first time. And it’s here that the Lightning, Montreal’s Eastern Conference quarter-final opponent beginning Wednesday, holds an almost unique distinction in league record books.
The Canadiens have won playoff games against 29 of the 31 franchises, existing and defunct, that they’ve faced in the NHL postseason since 1918.
That would be every one but Tampa, with a four-game sweep of the Habs in the clubs’ only series in 2004, and the Edmonton Oilers, who did likewise in a 1981 three-game preliminary-round dance.
At the Bell Centre a decade ago this month, having opened with a pair of Eastern semifinal wins at home, the Lightning beat the Canadiens in Game 3 overtime and then 3-1 in clinching Game 4, figuratively thumbing their noses at the 24 Stanley Cup banners overhead.
Two series later, Tampa was hanging a banner of its own after winning their one and, thus far, only championship.
“They say around here that hockey is a religion. Well, folks, consider yourselves converted,” St. Petersburg Times columnist John Romano wrote in his Gazette guest spot on April 30, 2004, Tampa’s sweep still wet behind the ears.
“This is a new type of faith. A 21st-century belief. The infidels showed up with no history behind them, but left with a world of possibility ahead. …”
The Stanley Cup, in fact, but then a failure to make the playoffs five of the next eight seasons and not advancing out of the conference the other three.
“For Canadiens fans,” Romano wrote, “here is the best news: This was not an embarrassment. Tampa Bay may not have a history that comes close to Montreal’s, but these Canadiens do not have the skills, heart or smarts of the Lightning.”
The history part remains the same 10 years later; the measure of talent and the intangibles remains to be seen.
This week’s matchup between Montreal and Tampa Bay will be the 147th playoff series in Canadiens history. That’s 29 more than Boston and Detroit, who will square off against each other in No. 119 for both; eliminated Toronto has played 110, with other Original Six clubs Chicago and the New York Rangers having skated 103 and 98, respectively.
It will be 134 series more than the experience brought by Tampa Bay, their franchise born on Dec. 16, 1991. Canadiens players will have 774 games of NHL playoffs under their belts Wednesday; the Lightning will have 548.
Montreal has won 89 series, lost 56 and abandoned one in 1919, when the Stanley Cup final against Seattle was called off by a deadly influenza epidemic. Tampa has won seven series and lost five.
Game 1 in Tampa will be the Canadiens’ 715th playoff contest all-time, 411 wins against 295 losses and eight ties from the early days of total-goals series.
As you’d expect with their longevity and rich history of success, their 24 Stanley Cups leading No. 2-ranked Toronto by 10, the Canadiens heavily punctuate the NHL playoff record book.
A first-year hockey historian can tell you that inspirational Henri Richard’s 11 Stanley Cup victories are more than any other player, and that fellow former Canadiens captains Jean Béliveau and Yvan Cournoyer won 10 each — 17 for Béliveau counting his later years as a team executive.
But deeper statistics are just as remarkable. Two-hundred and 10 men, or 26 per cent, of the 824 who have played at least one game for the Canadiens have won the Cup for Montreal. Since the birth of the franchise in 1909, Canadiens players have won a cumulative 493 Cups. Fiftyfive former Habs players have won hockey’s holy grail between three and six times.
All of which, to today’s fan, means only that the Canadiens have had a glorious past that serves mostly to painfully remind all that the team has not won a Stanley Cup in 21 years.
While most things point toward 22 years this spring, there are encouraging signs, on both the ice and in a forward-thinking front office.
The Canadiens made it to the 100-point plateau this season for the first time since 2007-08, if just the second time since their last Cup win in 1992-93.
Montreal is the sole Canadian-based playoff entry among the country’s seven clubs, the first time we’ve witnessed this since 1973 (another Habs Cup win), when there were just three Canadian clubs.
Of course, in the doomsday eyes of many fans, this just means that unless they go all the way this spring, the Habs will be the first Canadian team bounced from the postseason.
We should be in for a treat versus Tampa Bay, a young, swift club smartly coached by Jon Cooper, with exhilarating superstar Steven Stamkos blazing their trail.
Tampa brings superb rookie forwards Ondrej Palat and Tyler Johnson, and the hulking Victor Hedman on defence.
Should goalie Ben Bishop be out for any length of time, the resurgent Anders Lindback will be backed up by rookie Kristers Gudlevskis, the Latvian rookie who nearly gave this entire country a nervous breakdown during his 55-save masterpiece versus Canada at the Sochi Olympics.
As of Wednesday, all 16 playoff clubs have an equal chance of shouldering the Stanley Cup for a victory lap in June. For now: no wins, no losses. No more dreadful shootouts until next September’s preseason. Overtime until dawn, or thereabouts.
All hail the first team to win 16 games over the next two months, and the athletic therapists who get them there.
Not for one second are the Canadiens looking past even the pregame warm-up Wednesday night in Tampa. Should they earn four wins against the Lightning, there will be plenty of time for a freshening of their hatred with Boston or a renewal of a long-ago playoff rivalry with Detroit, whom they’ve not met in the postseason since 1978.
Some scores are delicious to settle. Others haven’t been around long enough to leave much of any taste in your mouth.
Canadiens fans said the latter last spring about the Ottawa Senators when the Habs faced them for the first time in the modern era.
And then Eric Gryba splattered Lars Eller and a coach was referred to as a corpulent marine mammal. It all didn’t end well in Montreal, with a five-game elimination and a traffic jam in the Canadiens clinic.
Now, Ottawa is on the outside looking in, fortunes reversed.
A fresh sheet of ice, dressed up with NHL Playoffs logos in 16 arenas, is the beautiful canvas for these very physical artists.
It’s now, in the days’ breath before the postseason puck drops, that everyone realizes the past six months were merely for stirring the paint.