Todd: Resilient Canadiens will roll to win in first-round playoff series
It was a body blow at the worst possible time, suffered when Canadiens defenceman Noah Dobson notched his 188th blocked shot of the season against Columbus Saturday night.
Dobson stopped a Zach Werenski slapshot with his left hand and did not return. The prognosis is a thumb injury, to be re-evaluated in two weeks — after most, if not all, the first round of the playoffs is history.
Catastrophe, right? For this fine young team to lose its best all-around blue-liner on the eve of the playoffs was going to become too much to overcome. So write them off, maybe next year, too bad it happened now, woe is us, etc.
Perhaps that’s how it will play out — except that these are not your father’s Canadiens. They are as resilient as any team I have ever seen. They have boundless reserves of drive, confidence and will to win. They have already come back more times than a bad tuna sandwich.
Less than 24 hours after losing Dobson and losing to the Blue Jackets 5-2, the Canadiens went into Long Island and dispatched the Islanders with professional thoroughness, scoring three goals in 55 seconds in the second period en route to a 4-1 win, eliminating Mathieu Darche’s club despite the late-season firing of Patrick Roy.
The Canadiens are moving on, now a 106-point team with 48 wins and a game left to play in Philadelphia Tuesday (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS). No matter how things play out, I’m picking this team to win its first-round series.
Why? It starts with the astonishing Nick Suzuki, only the fifth player in the long and glorious et cetera to hit the 100-point mark with 101, the quiet leader who sets the tone for this entire organization.
The days when Suzuki could fly under the radar are coming to an end. It began on Sept. 10, 2018, the day Marc Bergevin gave up getting the Vegas Knights to give up Cody Glass and settled for Suzuki, Tomas Tatar and a 2019 second-rounder in exchange for the Prince of Denmark, a.k.a. Max Pacioretty. The local reaction can be summed up in a word: meh. This Suzuki kid — maybe a decent third-line centreman some day?
That season, Suzuki (who had a 100-point season under his belt with the Owen Sound Attack) was traded to the Guelph Storm. They would go on to win the OHL championship.
The story on the CHL website about Guelph’s deciding victory, written in 2019, is like a template for this entire Canadiens season: “It’s been a central theme through their wild playoff journey, and the Guelph Storm exemplified it once again in Game 6 on Sunday. Down 2-0 after one period, the Storm showed their resiliency, scoring five second-period goals en route to an 8-3 win. The storm recovered from an unprecedented third 2-0 series deficit to defeat the Ottawa 67’s in six games. …”
Suzuki was not even the captain of that team, but he would go on to win the Wayne Gretzky 99 Award as OHL Playoff MVP.
Seven years later, it’s as though fans, media and Team Canada coach Smug Jon Cooper are always a beat behind with Suzuki. As recently as a month ago, I saw a story asking what the chances were that Connor McDavid would end up in Montreal. (I’ll answer that one right now: none and none.)
Never have we seen a player who improves so consistently from one season to the next. Now Suzuki belongs to an elite club with Pete Mahovlich, Mats Naslund, Steve Shutt and Guy Lafleur.
Spare a thought for Lane Hutson, whose name is also aligned with the greats after he added two assists in the win over the Islanders to tie Larry Robinson’s team record for assists by a defenceman with 66.
Add 51-goal scorer Cole Caufield, and you have a trio as we head to the playoffs — three players who have been underrated every step of the way.
Steaming to oblivion: It’s not that CF Montréal has fired yet another coach, with Marco Donadel biting the dust a mere seven games into the season and six months after he was hired.
It’s not that the players appeared disinterested and unfocused during the home opener against the Philadelphia Union.
It’s the fact that the fans are catching on. A home opener should be a sellout in a stadium as small as Stade Saputo. It wasn’t. The official attendance was 14,028, but fans who were there say the stadium was half full at best, with fewer than 10,000 on hand to witness a 2-1 loss.
The moves were announced by Luca Saputo, who bears the weighty title of managing director, recruitment and sporting methodology. Philippe Eullaffroy has the thankless task of guiding the team while it looks for yet another head coach — but seriously, what competent individual would want the job?
Heroes: Nick Suzuki, Lane Hutson, Juraj Slafkovsky, Mike Matheson, Ivan Demidov, Josh Anderson, Lina Ljungblom, Ann-Renée Desbiens, Rory McIlroy, Jeff Gorton, Kent Hughes, Nick Bobrov, Martin St. Louis &&&& last but not least, Cole Caufield.
Zeros: CF Montréal, Luca Saputo, Corey Perry, Mathieu Darche, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu &&&& last but not least, David Samson and Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.
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