'This league will humble you': Canadiens hit lowest of lows in Boston once again

BOSTON — Welcome to TD Garden, home of the Boston Bruins, a house of horrors for the Montreal Canadiens this season. 

Oh, the losses have hurt.

This latest one — a 9-4 beatdown in Beantown on Saturday night — came after the Bruins, as part of their centennial-season celebration, honoured the 1988 edition of their team, a group led by Ray Bourque and Cam Neely that put an end to a 45-year playoff hex the Canadiens had put on them.

Yes, those Big, Bad Bruins lost the first game of that second-round playoff series back then, and then they obliterated the Canadiens in four straight to earn their first playoff win over their most hated rivals for nearly half a century. The ones of today watched them walk out to centre ice before the game and then paid them homage for 60 minutes after they exited stage left.

Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis later referred to it as a humbling experience for his group.

His team has to take it as a lesson, like it did after a humbling 5-2 loss in this building back on Nov. 18.

“That was the lowest point of our season,” St. Louis said earlier in the day.

But he also noted it got the Canadiens to focus on reconstructing their unglued forecheck and advanced them to another stage of development through the next six weeks of the season.

Now, the Canadiens have to find another aspect of play to attack after letting their guard down in a third period that saw them turn a one-goal deficit into a five-goal loss.

Mike Matheson said their defensive-zone coverage should probably be it.

Who would argue? 

The Canadiens were dangerous all over the ice in this game, but no more so than in their own zone, where they abandoned goaltender Samuel Montembeault.

St. Louis said he contemplated pulling him before that hideous third period but didn’t go through with it because “It was 5-4 going to the third.”

The coach eventually called mercy because, as he put it, “When it got to eight, I thought it might get to 12.”

Not exactly a feeling you’re looking for on Rivalry Night in Boston.

But it was percolating well before 40 minutes were complete.

“It starts with me,” said Montembeault, who was on his game in the first period before a 93.8 m.p.h slapshot from Pavel Zacha cracked him in the mask and left him shaken.

“I felt like I just got a punch right in the chin,” Montembeault said. “I got hit in my jaw, I couldn’t bite after that.”

He couldn’t stop the next two shots, either, with Jake DeBrusk taking a free path to the net to tie the game 2-2 and Danton Heinen doing the same to deflect a pass from Matt Grzelcyk to make it 3-2.

The Canadiens got to 3-3 on an early second-period power play. They gave up two freebies to Heinen and Charlie Coyle almost immediately afterward before striking back with one from Brendan Gallagher before the frame ended.

And then it was practically all over 1:26 into the third, when Gallagher forced a pass in the offensive zone and sprung David Pastrnak on a rink-long breakaway.

“In the third, we could’ve come back. We were only down one goal (before Pastrnak scored),” said Montembeault. “But we were atrocious, and it looked like we gave up instead of working.”

That was out of character for the Canadiens, who have often been outmatched talent-wise but have rarely been outworked to that degree this season. And the letdown had to be particularly disappointing coming off a lifeless loss in Ottawa Wednesday, and especially after such a poor performance at TD Garden earlier this season.

The Canadiens started this game with all the right intentions, hoping to erase that memory and savouring the opportunity to stand up to the troll-job they knew the Bruins had planned for before puck drop.

Defenceman Jordan Harris, who grew up a Bruins fan and was raised just 30 minutes outside the city, was excited to play, noting after the morning skate that the atmosphere at TD Garden is a little more hostile than the one he’s become accustomed to at the Bell Centre.

“They have a little more of an F-U mentality,” he said, and that was good foreshadowing.

After all, this “ceremony” was a pure F-U to the Canadiens, with Bruins fans booing them mercilessly as the video montage began to roll. There was no mention of how the ‘88 season came to a close — with the Bruins being swept in the Stanley Cup Final by the dynastic Edmonton Oilers; they just trotted out several members of the team in front of the current Canadiens to celebrate this one series, ending the video with Neely saying, “It was pretty special to be on a team that beat (the Canadiens) in the playoffs, especially up in Montreal.” 

The president of the team was laughing, and he was probably laughing in the executive suite as he watched these Canadiens come undone before night’s end.

No one on the Montreal side was laughing in the dressing room thereafter. 

Gallagher was fuming with himself about the turnover that led to Pastrnak’s goal. 

“Gave arguably their best player a breakaway,” he said. “It can’t happen.”

He added the Canadiens got impatient the rest of the way and mismanaged the puck trying to claw back into the game in one swift burst instead of methodically.

St. Louis agreed and said he wanted to let the emotions subside before reviewing the tape and plotting out corrections.

“We’ll look at definitely the d-zone,’ he said, “but I thought for two periods it was a great game, it was a fun game to be part of. The third period was hard. Every now and then, this league will humble you, and that’s kind of what happened to our team in the third period. 

“Maybe it’s a period that sends us to a higher place. We’ll learn from this. It’s hard going through it, but there’s no time to feel sorry for yourself. Just get to work.”

First step: Get out of TD Garden.