MONTREAL—This was never supposed to happen. Not for Paul Byron, and certainly not for this group of Montreal Canadiens.
But such is life in Gary Bettman’s parity show, where a player who supposedly never had much of a chance at a career in this league can be celebrating his first hat trick in his eighth NHL season and be doing so on a night where his team, which lost seven of its first eight games of 2017-18, is firming up its hold on a playoff spot on the strength of a 10-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings.
On Saturday, Byron scored goals one, three and six of the game and increased his season total to nine, helping the Canadiens win their fifth consecutive contest. This event, which seemed so unfathomable when Byron—a sixth-round pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 2007—was claimed off waivers from the Calgary Flames on the eve of the 2015-16 season, was born of incredible determination.
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And who are these Canadiens, if not a determined-to-defy-the-odds group? They are a team no one thought could score, one that looked porous on the defensive side of the puck through all of October, and one that looked like it was on a fast track for top spot in the 2018 draft lottery race.
Successive wins over the Buffalo Sabres, Columbus Blue Jackets, Ottawa Senators and two against the Wings have restored hope in Montreal.
"There was two ways to go," started Byron after Saturday’s game. "We could either pity ourselves and give up or stop fighting, or we could come together as a group and find a way to take it one game at a time and get one win at a time. I know it’s pretty cliché, but in an 82-game season anything can happen. Teams can get hot, teams can get cold, and you know I think we all knew we were much better than what our record said we were."
We’re not entirely sure how good the Canadiens in fact are, but there’s little doubt now about what they are. They are a resilient group. The proof is in who led them to such an overwhelming win on Saturday night.
It wasn’t captain Max Pacioretty, who led the team in goals in each of the last five seasons and led them in points in each of the last six. He was the only one of Montreal’s forwards to not record a point in Saturday’s game.
It wasn’t goaltender Carey Price, who was responsible for the majority of their wins since taking over as starter in 2011. Nor was it No. 1 centre Jonathan Drouin, who missed Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury.
It was Byron. It was Jacob De La Rose, who hadn’t scored a goal since April 15, 2015 but found the back of the net in this one and added two assists to his NHL total of six over parts of four seasons. It was fourth-liner Nicolas Deslauriers who scored his first goal and first three points as a Canadien. It was rookie Charles Hudon, who scored his first-ever goal at the Bell Centre.
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Byron Froese, who had two goals and three assists in his first 72 NHL games, had two assists for Montreal in this one. Defenceman Jordie Benn, who had 15 goals in 341 previous games at this level, scored the team’s eighth of this game.
And Daniel Carr, who had admitted being sent to the AHL after a less-than-stellar training camp had really rocked him, added a goal and an assist and now has three points in two games since being called up to the team.
Even Alex Galchenyuk, who should be among Montreal’s point leaders but scored just one point in his first 10 games, contributed four assists in this one.
Improbable.
"I know everyone likes to count us out and everyone wants to look at the odds, but there’s so many good teams in the league I don’t think there’s going to be as much separation as there’s been in years past," said Byron. "Until that last game in April, I think it’s going to be a dogfight to get into that last playoff spot and I think this group needs to keep working harder to get better and we certainly have a lot better hockey in us than we played at the beginning of the year. I think it’s finally starting to show for us."
Time will tell if it can last, and the Canadiens aren’t under any illusions about what this explosive win over the now-downtrodden Red Wings really amounts to.
"Stuff is going to happen throughout the course of the year," said Brendan Gallagher, who scored his team-leading 13th goal of the season and the 100th of his career Saturday. "You look at what happened last year, we lost one of these against Columbus, and we won one of these against Colorado.
"It’s important not to get too high on ourselves," added Gallagher. "The same way we didn’t get too down on ourselves earlier on in the year."
Just about everyone else in Montreal did, when nights like this one seemed too far-fetched to fathom.
