Montreal Canadiens 4-3 Boston ‘We’re not really sure why we don’t have an actual Bruin on our jersey’ Bruins
TopShelf’s completely professional GameReport:
In a thrilling, even match up; the Montreal Canadiens came away with a 4-3 shootout victory in their season opener at the Bell Centre against the Boston Bruins.
In what was sometimes a scrappy affair, the Bruins fought back after being 3 goals down early on to gain a fully-deserved point. The Canadiens, perhaps fuelled on by an extremely impressive, if somewhat shiny, pre-game ceremony, took it to Boston early on with Kovalev getting the first goal to give his team the lead. Saku Koivu, who had 4 points before any pucks were dropped tonight, doubled his team’s advantage when a rebound came off Tim Thomas and the Captain made no mistake steering home the puck. And before the period was over, the Habs found themselves 3 up when Maxime Lapierre, on a Penalty Kill, pressed Patrice Bergeron for possession of the puck, won it, passed to Mathieu Dandenault behind the net, who passed it back to Lapierre who backhanded it with no mistake past a sprawling Thomas.
Before any of this happened though, Georges Laraque – who was making his first appearance in a Montreal uniform after being acquired in the off-season from the Penguins – dropped the gloves against Shawn Thornton within 10 seconds of being on the ice. After a bit of a rough start to the fight, Laraque got back into it with a couple of lefts straight to Thornton’s jaw, and the tone was set for the game.
If it was Montreal who was doing most of the shooting in the first 20 minutes, the roles were reversed for much of the rest of the night. Boston started to take a stronger stranglehold on the game as the seconds washed away, and it could be seen.
First, it was David Krejci (I don’t care if I spelled it wrong, no-one should be named that) who pulled a goal back for the Bruins from a fine slap shot, and Marc Savard then did his best to be an effective antagonist on this centennial night. Scorer of 2 goals and creator of most of what Boston did offensively, the Ottawa native added two markers to bring his season tally to 5 netters. If his first goal was a right place at the right time situation, his second was pure luck. After a dump into the Montreal zone by former Hab Michael Ryder with 45 seconds to go, the puck freakishly hit the boards, Price’s net and then bounced right in front of Savard who had an open net and made no mistake to send the game into overtime.
The aforementioned Maxime Lapierre had his team’s best chance to win it in O.T, but his shot on an empty net after Thomas skated out to do god knows what barely missed. Carey Price was called upon to make a couple of important saves as well, but soon after the capacity crowd at the Bell Centre were gearing themselves up for the ‘best play in hockey’.
After Phil Kessel and Andrei Markov missed their opportunities to give their respective teams the lead; Alex Tanguay, Montreal’s other off-season acquisition did just that, steering a beautiful wrister into Thomas’ top left corner. Michael Ryder was up next to try to keep the game going for his team, but the pressure was probably too much for the Newfoundland native as Price easily pulled off the save to give his team a 3rd consecutive win on this, the 100th opening night in Montreal Canadiens history.
TopShelf’s notes o’ da day:
Man, am I awesome with my predictions or what? I almost had it. And if the boards at the Bell Centre weren’t members of the Marxist-Leninist party, Price would have had that puck and we would have scored an empty netter. Before any of that happens though, when did a hockey game become 20 minutes? We have to learn to play for 60 minutes. This isn’t some “throw-away game up in Rochester!” (cr. Herb Brooks). Boston should have never gotten a chance to fly out of here with a point, ‘cause I’m assuming their team charters aircrafts for them, and not Greyhound buses.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Maxime Lapierre put in a phenomenal performance tonight. He did it all. Hussling to pucks, fore checking in the neutral and offensive zones, making smart passes, killing penalties and he finally got the goal his work all season long (3 games is a lot, ok!?) has deserved. And I’m really happy for him. Kyle Chipchura is a good player, but is he better than Lapierre? I don’t think so. Is he a smarter player? Probably. Is he faster? No. Is he stronger? Definitely not. Chips will have it tough to get a job in Montreal. Lapierre’s p.k capabilities remind me a lot of a certain Antoine Vermette over in Ottawa. And they also bring back memories of the duo extraordinaire of Mike Johnson/Radek Bonk. Right, I’m not supposed to be mentioning Bonk and Johnson anymore, sorry. But Maxime Lapierre, with a performance like tonight, should be the guy in the new Michelin commercials.
And yes! Laraque! Laraque! Amazing! Sexy! Appealing! Erm, YES! The Iceman was well and truly present tonight. It took him all but 1.7 nanoseconds, and Shawn Thornton was his chosen prey. A bit of a rough start at first, but the man got up and started pounding on Shawn. Don’t tell me he fought too early on. There is no “early on” fight. This isn’t a space shuttle launch. Everyone wanted to see him fight, and he got it out of the way.
Alex Tanguay, and this is the 100th time I say this, is an extremely smart hockey player. He made that goal in the shootout seem so easy. But the goalie doesn’t just give you that much space automatically, but the way Mr Tongue moved his body gave him that tiny bit of space to work with, and what a beautiful shot it was.
Seeing Emile Bouchard and Elmer Lach, among others, was really special. The ring of honour is a nice touch too, and they misspelled my name, but that’s all right.
Now if we can just play all 60 minutes like we played in the first period, everything will be okay again and I won’t have to write anymore long paragraphs.
Stuff I just plain ol’ did not enjoy:
-Milan. Lucic. Is. A. Fucken. **** (It starts with the letter C, and rhymes with FUNT!)
-Zdeno Chara. Human beings should not be that large.
-The officiating. Is McReary on those ‘I can’t see very well so I always give the call in favor of the team that’s chasing a game and closer to my anu…erm, heart’ pills again?
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