MONTREAL — Maybe this is just how this awful pandemic season is supposed to end, with an opportunity to host fans at the Bell Centre for the first time in over a year dangling in front of the Canadiens but never falling into their hands.
This might just be the most fitting conclusion for the men wearing playoff mustaches instead of traditional beards — losing to one of their oldest rivals in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in 54 years, in a series that came about for many reasons (none of them normal or foreseeable) and with one more nail in their coffin drilled by a player they drafted third overall in 2012. A player who wouldn’t have been playing if not for a freak accident that put one of the game’s biggest difference makers in the hospital.
This will be remembered as the night Alex Galchenyuk, in for injured Maple Leafs captain John Tavares since Game 2, scored a goal and two assists to help his team return to Toronto with a 3-1 series lead in hand. The night he put the screws to his former team, which scratched, clawed and failed to score a single goal after registering only four through the first three games.
Ouch.
“It’s the playoffs, man,” Galchenyuk said. “You know what time it is right now. There’s no friends.”
Double ouch.
Still, none of that will sting the Canadiens as much as not being able to open up the Bell Centre at least one more time — one night after the months-long Quebec curfew is finally abolished and other coronavirus restrictions are stripped away to enable 2,500 fans back in the building — if things play out as they seem likely to.
Sure, this team will do everything in its power to avoid that outcome and stave off elimination in Game 5, but it just might not be enough.
“I think we should all be really hungry next game,” said Phillip Danault, “and come back in front of our fans.”
It’s not as if he and the Canadiens lacked the will to win Tuesday’s game. They threw 32 shots at goaltender Jack Campbell, they crashed his crease and crashed into his Toronto teammates 40 times, they connected on plays and disrupted some from the opposition’s best players, but the result never appeared close to falling in their favour.
It hasn’t been since the Canadiens took Game 1 of this series, and it’s hard to grasp at anything tangible to suggest that’s going to change in Toronto on Thursday.
Jeff Petry tried, but came up with several platitudes instead.
“I think we’ve all gone through a lot this year, whether it’s injuries or tough stretches down the season, and we found a way to get out of (it),” he said, even though the Canadiens didn’t.
“I think this is no different,” he continued. “I think our group has to just rally together, believe in each other, believe in ourselves and take it one game at a time, one period at a time. It’s not going to happen in the first five minutes of the next game; it’s going to take a full 60 minutes, and we need to be prepared to put in the effort, because we are playing like it’s our last game.
“I think we just have to regroup, make sure we’re all on the same page and all believing in each other and believing in ourselves.”
We didn’t think it would be so hard for the Canadiens to do after charging out to a 7-1-2 start to their season and appearing like the team general manager Marc Bergevin promised they would be in his training camp-opening remarks, when he said they “mean business,” that they’re “here to win,” and that they can “play any way you want to play.”
That all became less true with a spiral in February that cost Claude Julien his job, and the Canadiens never really recovered with Dominique Ducharme replacing him.
Still, Tyler Toffoli scored the seventh-most goals in the NHL, Josh Anderson had 17, Brendan Gallagher was on pace for over 20 before a thumb injury knocked him out for six weeks, Nick Suzuki had 15, Cole Caufield came in and scored four in 10 and Petry had 12 and put up arguably the best season of his career. How they’ve all combined for just two goals between them in this series isn’t just mystifying; it’s the stuff this miserable year has been made of.
Joel Armia contracted COVID-19 and the Canadiens were shut down smack in the middle of it. They had to complete 25 games over the final 44 days of the season as a result, and key player after key player fell to injury at least in part because of it.
The Canadiens survived, but barely — going 10-13-2 and squeezing into the playoffs with the worst record of any of the 16 teams participating.
They’ve looked like that group for snippets of this series, but even when they’ve looked much better, it hasn’t made much of a difference.
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Credit the Leafs. They’ve been better and faster — just like they were for most of the season — and they’ve completely stifled the Canadiens.
Every part of the game has been laborious for the bleu-blanc-rouge, and that has as much to do with them as it does the guys in blue and white.
“We’re playing against another team,” said Ducharme. “If we were going 5-on-0, we’d go up and down the ice the way we want.”
The Canadiens would score on the power play, too, even with Campbell playing his role to perfection.
But with the Leafs in front of him, the Canadiens couldn’t find a way on four opportunities in Tuesday’s game, just like they hadn’t found a way on nine through the games before it.
Now they’ve got to return to Toronto and play for their season.
“We’re going to go in there, and we’ll battle to get the win,” said Ducharme.
Imagine if the Canadiens did it and got to step onto the ice to real crowd noise instead of the canned crap they’ve been listening to since March 2020?
It doesn’t feel like that’s what fate has in store for them.
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