Montreal Gazette

Relax, Habs fans: there will be no collapse this season

- JACK TODD Monday Morning QB FULL NHL AND COMPREHENS­IVE SPORTS COVERAGE AT SEE MONTREALGA­ZETTE.COM

It was a debacle. A catastroph­e. An embarrassm­ent. A calamity. A clinker, a dud, a busted flush, a butt-kicking, a shellackin­g, a passing, drubbing, a rout, a slaughter.

Empty your adjectives, because Friday night’s 10-0 beat down at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets was all of those things for the Montreal Canadiens.

It was also only one game. In the standings B.C. (Before Columbus) the Canadiens were in first in the NHL. The standings A.C. (After Columbus) showed the club still on top. After a rather sloppily played win at home over the Flyers on Saturday, the Habs were 10-1-1 — and taking more abuse than a journalist at a Donald Trump rally.

Is there any other team in sports that would find itself the target of such fan fury after 10 wins and two losses? Anywhere? And from the reaction to the Canadiens weekend you would swear the team was 1-1-10.

Whatever happened to enjoying a win? Now, fans and media alike pick it apart. Have a great record? They insist it has come against a bunch of losers, which would come as news to the likes of Boston, Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay.

A loss is a loss, whether it’s 3-0 on 10-0. The rest is only statistics. But after the Columbus loss, people were going berserk because coach Michel Therrien didn’t call a timeout. Why? What was he going to achieve? It would have been like taking a tea break on the bridge of the Titanic.

And why didn’t Therrien yank the beleaguere­d Al Montoya, who was left in to take one for the team, and bring in Carey Price? The answer, after last season, should be obvious: Therrien’s No. 1 task is to protect Price, not to overuse him — and definitely not to bring him in from the bullpen in a lost cause.

If they weren’t going to use Price, some folks suggested, they should have had young Charlie Lindgren up and dressed as the backup. But Lindgren’s job this year is to get ready for the NHL, not to rack up the frequentfl­yer miles — and how was Marc Bergevin supposed to know that Montoya, who had played well so far, was going to have such a rough night against the Blue Jackets?

A loss like the one in Columbus is frustratin­g, maddening, discouragi­ng and embarrassi­ng — but it isn’t fatal. In fact, it doesn’t mean much at all, especially early in the season. The Habs are not as good as that 10-1-1 record indicates, you say? Well, of course, they’re not that good. No one is, except maybe the 1976-77 Canadiens. Sooner or later, this team will find its level and it won’t be a 140-point season.

More worrying than the Columbus loss was the fact the Habs have given up just under 40 shots a game for the last four games. But if that is a blip in the season, we can live with it, especially when they win three of the four.

There will be no collapse this season, not with Price and Shea Weber healthy. Different team, different season. Seriously, people. You need to learn to enjoy a good team rather than picking it apart.

Huge Impact: Meanwhile, for one glorious weekend at least, Price was the other goalkeeper in town. That’s because Evan Bush made the save of the year, stopping a first-half penalty to send the Impact on their way to an improbable 2-1 road victory over the New York City Red Bulls — and a 3-1 aggregate win that sends the Impact into the Eastern Conference finals.

As Lloyd Barker pointed out after, it’s the first time all season the Impact have won three straight games and it comes at the best possible time. Much of the credit goes to gutsy Mauro Biello, who after a clash with star striker Didier Drogba, brought him back to play a key role with a deft pass to Ignacio Piatti for his second goal of the afternoon and the one that put it out of reach for the Red Bulls.

In a city that has been rather starved for feel-good sports stories this year, the Impact have stepped up to fill the gap. And for once, I don’t hear anyone carping about how they shoulda started Drogba or fired the coach.

Bring Chapdelain­e back and we’ll forget the crow:

If I was an evil SOB I might demand genteel Alouettes owner Bob Wetenhall dine on crow this week.

That, after all, was our longstandi­ng bet, suggested by Wetenhall himself. Last winter, Wetenhall was so confident Jim Popp would lead this team back to the promised land he offered the bet: Depending on the outcome of the season, one of us would dine on a crow obtained by my trusty sidekick, Zeke Herbowsky.

But crow isn’t on the menu, mainly because someone in the Alouettes organizati­on had the eminent good sense to replace Popp as head coach with Jacques Chapdelain­e — and because the Als won four of their last six games under Chapdelain­e and appeared to turn the corner at last. Chapdelain­e’s appointmen­t had an immediate effect at the box office and on the field. To abandon the man now would be to alienate a significan­t portion of the fan base — and tick off the players to boot.

The next item of business for the Alouettes is to remove the interim tag from Chapdelain­e and make this his team. He has the experience, he has the presence — now it’s time for him to get the job.

Nasty Nazem:

One of these days, we’ll figure out why the Leafs’ Nazem Kadri gets away with it so often. This has been going since his rookie season: We first became acquainted with Kadri when he gave Andrei Markov a two-handed chop to the back of the head and wasn’t even called for a penalty.

This time, Kadri dodges supplement­ary discipline from the league because his hit glanced off Daniel Sedin’s shoulder en route to his head — another vicious, typically dirty blindside hit from Kadri. The league keeps encouragin­g this clown, and some day he’s going to end a career.

Heroes: Ignacio Piatti, Mauro Biello, Laurent Ciman, Didier Drogba, Al Montoya, Carey Price, Torrey Mitchell, Shea Weber, Jacques Chapdelain­e, Nik Lewis, Winston Venable, Bear Woods, Kyries Hebert, Vernon Adams Jr. &&&& last but not least, Da Cubs.

Zeros:

Nazem Kadri, Jim Popp, Chief Wahoo, Dax McCarty, Felipe, Claude Brochu, David Samson, Jeffrey Loria &&&& last but not least, Donald J. Trump — human foul ball.

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