Here’s hoping for an Original Six series
The Canadiens enjoyed another day off on Tuesday, time off for the good behaviour of not needing a seventh game to dispose of the Ottawa Senators.
Had that seventh game been needed, the Habs would have played it Tuesday in front of the usual full house at the Bell Centre and countless fans watching from the Montreal window ledges onto which they'd have stepped, a sudden-death game never a good thing in this town.
Or, had they known their opponent for their Eastern Conference semifinal, they might have been practising in Brossard.
But without a game or a matchup, head coach Michel Therrien chose the path of least skating and gave his troops a second consecutive day off with practice resuming Wednesday morning.
The Canadiens will work out roughly 12 hours before knowing whether they'll face the Detroit Red Wings or Tampa Bay Lightning in Round 2.
“No cheering from the press box,” the sportswriting saying goes, impartiality required to properly cover a game.
Well, forgive me if I cheer unashamedly for the Red Wings on Wednesday night in their sudden-death tilt vs. the Lightning in Tampa Bay.
It's no secret that I'm a fan of the history of hockey and the legends and the traditions of the game. With all due respect to the Lightning, the Red Wings leave them in the dust in that regard.
The view from this keyboard, not to disrespect some wonderful rivalries throughout the NHL, is that Original Six playoff hockey trumps all. It was a special atmosphere when the Canadiens swept the Lightning in their Eastern quarter-final last season, but there was something magical when they beat the Bruins and then fell to the Rangers.
Maybe it's the magnificent crests on the jerseys. Maybe it's the history woven through them. But in a 30-team NHL, a meeting between two of the “original” clubs is cause for celebration.
The Canadiens haven't faced Toronto in the postseason since 1979, when the NHL was made up of 17 teams; they haven't played Chicago since 1976, when it was 18. Both meetings were quarter- final rounds en route to Montreal Stanley Cup victories.
Now comes the tantalizing prospect of a Canadiens-Red Wings showdown, the first since a 1978 quarter-final won by the Canadiens, again on their road to the championship.
How long has it been? Those teams played in the Montreal Forum and Detroit Olympia.
These two franchises have never met in the postseason in the Bell Centre, now 19 years old, or the Joe Louis Arena, now 36 and on borrowed time, a new barn coming in Detroit.
The Canadiens and Lightning have met twice in the playoffs, a 2004 Eastern semifinal sweep by Tampa as they skated to their one and only Stanley Cup, then a 4-0 Habs romp in an Eastern quarter last year.
Theirs is a tangy rivalry without decades needed for it to foment. And on paper this spring, Tampa would be a greater semifinal challenge for the Canadiens than Detroit.
Spanked in last season’s playoffs, the Lightning beat the Habs in all five of their 2014-15 regular-season meetings, once in overtime. Detroit, meanwhile, lost all four to Montreal.
Of course, playoffs are a curious animal, upsets and unusual heroes and unexpected failures a big part of them.
Tampa Bay is the thrilling Tyler Johnson, with six goals in six playoff games heading into Wednesday’s sudden-death Game 7. It is gifted captain Steven Stamkos, stud defenceman Victor Hedman, skyscraping goaltender Ben Bishop and erudite coach Jon Cooper.
The Red Wings? They’re the wonderful Pavel Datsyuk, flashy Tomas Tatar, their terrific captain Henrik Zetterberg, rookie goalie Petr Mrazek and profound Triple Gold coach Mike Babcock, the only man to guide victorious teams in Stanley Cup, Olympic and world championship play.
The Canadiens and Red Wings have met a dozen times in the playoffs, Detroit holding a 7-5 edge. Their first series was a 1937 semifinal, the fifth and final game decided in triple-overtime at the Forum less than a month after the tragic death of Habs legend Howie Morenz.
The Red Wings would win seven of the teams’ first eight playoff meetings — they split 3-3 in the glorious 1950s — with the Canadiens having won the most recent four. Detroit holds a 3-2 edge in Stanley Cup finals.
The winged-wheel crest is one of the most beautiful in sports. And the club has at least one tradition that was even a surprise to Babcock when I related it to him after it was explained to me by their equipment staff on April 9, when the Red Wings were in town for the Canadiens’ regularseason home finale.
When the team wins, players arrive at their dressing room for the next game to find their jersey crests facing out; when they have lost, they see their numbers and nameplates on their jersey backs.
The custom of accountability goes back to the pre-nameplate days of legendary Red Wings trainer Lefty Wilson, a tradition respected by the current equipment crew.
Babcock, who played four years with the McGill Redmen and is a respectful student of hockey history, sifted through a selection of vintage Red Wings photos I had at the Bell Centre that afternoon, poring over every one.
He loves this city, as much as a visiting coach can, and delights in visiting his old haunts and cherished friends when he comes to town.
In Detroit, a walk through the quiet concourse of Joe Louis Arena is to be in a museum, marvelling at the statues of icons Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvecchio, the incredible gallery of stars, to know that the Hall of Fame career of goaltender Glenn Hall began in this city, that Terry Sawchuk became a netminding legend in the Motor City.
The franchises of the Canadiens and Red Wings intersect in many ways, dozens of their historic events and people tied to each other.
Scotty Bowman in Montreal, Scotty Bowman in Detroit. And that’s that.
None of this is relevant now, of course. The past counts for nothing when the puck drops, matchups not built around won-loss records in a sepia past.
It’s guaranteed the Canadiens won’t express a preference on Wednesday for the opponent they’d prefer to face, even if Tampa Bay or Detroit is in the back of their minds. I have no such reluctance. Bring on the Red Wings. For who they are, and who they have been.