by EP31, AllHabs.net

MONTREAL, QC. — Being a Bulldogs fan in Montreal is tough. The major reason being that Hamilton is 6+ hours away so it’s next to impossible to just go to see the team on a whim. Thankfully for me, the Bulldogs have been kind enough to visit Montreal not once, but twice a year for the past couple of years.

I don’t know if it was the most riveting game ever, but to be fair to the Bulldogs, their most riveting player in David Desharnais and all-around awesome guy Ryan White are with the Habs right now. The important thing is that the Bulldogs won the game and they didn’t give me too many heart attacks in the processes.

The good:

• Just under 15,000 fans for a Bulldogs game. Not bad considering all the little kids are on spring break, we were supposed to get a snow storm and the Montreal Juniors aka where all the little kids go to watch hockey were playing.
• No Michael Leighton in nets! Backlund was flung to the wolves aka the Montreal fans. Actually, the fans were quite tame this time around so Backlund got it easy.
• New guy Nigel Dawes looked good in his first game. He took a good step in the direction of winning over the fans by scoring the Bulldogs first goal of the game.
• Sanford stayed healthy throughout the game. Last time I saw him play in Ottawa, he left after the first period with an injury. This time he remained healthy and looked solid in nets. He also got more than a bit lucky at the end of the second period when the Phantoms threw everything but the kitchen sink at him (to absolutely no avail) and could he seen tapping the posts of the net for an extended period of time.
• Wyman broke the 1-1 score and got what I feel like is his first goal in forever.
• Former Bulldog and current Phantom Jancevski still clearly wanted to help out his old team. He was in the box for hooking when Palushaj scored giving the Bulldogs a 3-1 lead.
• Palushaj added an empty netter later which officially sealed the deal.

The bad

• The ridiculous Bulldogs PP that lead instead to Wellwood tearing in on Sanford instead. Wellwood got tripped up and then got a penalty shot. The good news here was that Wellwood completely missed the net, but that was pretty much the moment when yours truly nearly died for the first of many times during the game.
• Syvret’s goal. Either Sanford let in a weak one or else he didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it because the people in front of me decided to stand up to watch what was going on….
• Me nearly getting clobbered to death as people scrambled to grab the shirts that they kept randomly shooting into the crowd…..

The win puts the Bulldogs in a four-way tie for first in their division with Manitoba, Toronto and Lake Erie and 6th in the AHL. They have two more games this weekend as they travel to Syracuse tonight and then it’s back to Hamilton to host the Grand Rapids Griffins.