It will go down as another classic in the history of one of the oldest hockey rivalries in the NHL. The game could also be the beginning of the end for a Canadiens team that has given up 10 goals in the last two games against a supposedly offensively challenged Bruins team.
I could write about all kinds of aspects of the game, why the Canadiens lost or why the Bruins won tonight’s game but what it all comes down to are the efforts and sacrifices the players have to make in order to win in the playoffs.
Teams have to be able and willing to raise their games to a higher level or at the very least, raise it to the oppositions level of play. The Canadiens have not been able to accomplish this task the last two games against a very determined and highly motivated Bruins team. You wouldn’t be wrong to say the Bruins could have easily been ahead or even won this series by now if it wasn’t for Carey Price’s great play in games #2 and #4. As Carey Price stated after the loss,
The last two games, the Bruins have transformed into the Habs of the regular season while the reverse has happened to the Canadiens. Not even the additions of Saku Koivu and Francis Bouillon could help the Habs pull out the victory on a night when the Bruins were the more desperate and harder working team.
The Habs have some big time passengers not making enough sacrifices for the team and the ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup.
Where are the players who made huge contributions towards the regular season success? Where is Alex Kovalev’s excellence of the regular season (-3 tonight!!, weak effort clearing the puck out of the zone on the winning goal and only 2 shots on net) and his usual clutch playoff performances of the past? Do I need an APB for Andrei Kostitsyn (-3 and only 1 shot)?………Paging Andrei Markov, paging Mark Streit!!!!!
Gritty performances by Saku Koivu, Christopher Higgins, Tomas Plekanec and Sergei Kostitsyn were wasted because some of their teammates weren’t willing to dig deeper and play hard enough to end this series. The Canadiens have wasted a great opportunity to get some much needed rest and convalescing time before the next series.
At the other end of the ice, the Bruins are playing with a new found confidence against a team which dominated them during the regular season. If you’ve watched this series from the very beginning, you would be hard pressed to find many passengers in the Bruins lineup (maybe Glen Murray or Tim Thomas haven’t produced every night but it wasn’t from a lack of effort). They have bought into Claude Julien’s system of play and are playing “playoff hockey” with every player on board.
As hard as it is to say, being a hard core Habs fan, the Bruins are the better team in this series, point finale!!! The last two games, they have done everything the Canadiens needed to do in order to win this series.
With all that being said, the Canadiens can’t afford to have any passengers on Monday night when they will play the seventh and deciding game of this series. The Bruins have all the momentum going into the seventh game and will be eager to re-write history in the long, suffering Bruins/Canadiens rivalry they have endured over those years and this season as well.
The Canadiens will require a total team commitment with sacrifices beyond words by every player as anything resembling tonight’s game will end a Cinderella season with everything forgotten.