The Montreal Canadiens had a truly excellent regular season.
They completed their sweep of the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday, notching their 50th victory and reaching 110 points to finish within three of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning New York Rangers for the League’s second-best record. The win also clinched them the Atlantic Division title over two teams that managed at least 100 points and a third that finished with 99.
Carey Price secured his 44th win after breaking the Canadiens’ single-season record with 43. He finished the season with nine shutouts, and became the first goaltender (of those to play 25 games or more) since Ed Belfour (1990-91) to lead the league in wins, save percentage and goals against in a season.
With Price at the helm and the Canadiens posting elite penalty-killing numbers, the team finished with the best goals-against average in the NHL.
The last time a Canadiens team finished with as many as 50 wins was 1988-89, putting Michel Therrien in the elite company of the late, great Pat Burns.
En route to their stellar record, the Canadiens barely had a losing month — March’s record of 6-6-3 was the team’s least impressive run.
Toronto wasn’t the only team in the Atlantic Division Montreal swept this season. They were also perfect against age-old rivals in Boston and Detroit.
Impressive, no?
Of course, the betting odds favour them, but up against the magic late-game heroics of the Ottawa Senators — who finished 11 points back in the standings — the Canadiens could be an underdog in the court of public opinion.
The intangibles offer great, romantic context to the numbers that enrich Ottawa’s narrative as a Cinderella turned favourite.
The Habs are tasked with beating them four times in the next seven games; a Senators team that’s only lost three in regulation and another two in overtime/shootouts over their last 20.
Ottawa climbed out of the deepest grave an NHL team’s ever been buried in to secure their place in the post-season, overcoming a 14-point deficit in the standings. Their run was sprinkled with pixie dust, culminating fantastically with a playoff berth on the very last day of the regular season.
Their team flew to the Promised Land on the wings of rookie sensation Mark Stone, who finished tied with Johnny Gaudreau for the rookie scoring lead with 64 points and led with 26 goals (six of them game-winners). They were fuel-injected with Erik Karlsson’s explosiveness, leading all defencemen with 66 points. And their season was wrapped neatly by Andrew ‘Hamburglar’ Hammond, whose anonymity quickly dissipated with the proliferation of his catchy nickname and gaudy numbers.
Hammond lived up to the billing of a master thief. In 24 games, he went 20-1-2 (he was pulled from a game against the Rangers in March after allowing five goals on 22 shots), stealing wins along the way to finish with three shutouts, a .941 save percentage and a 1.79 goals-against average.
Hammond’s dominance was featured in two of the three games the Senators took from Montreal, but it’s not just this year’s story propping up the opinion that the Canadiens could be outmatched in this series. In the lockout-abridged 2012-13 season, the Atlantic-leading Habs were pummeled in five games by Paul MacLean’s Senators in the first round of the playoffs.
They were MacLean’s ‘pesky’ Sens then. They missed the post-season in 2013-14, and they were anything but ‘pesky’ under his guidance this season, going 11-11-5 and controlling just 47.1% of the shot attempts at even strength.
“We believed at the start of the year we had a chance to be a playoff team,” said GM Bryan Murray on Dec. 8 — the day he replaced MacLean with Dave Cameron. “By [changing coaches] at this time, I think…that gives Dave a chance to get this team skating more, playing the way he wants them to play, better, a chance to take a run at a playoff spot, for sure.”
Under Cameron, the Senators went 32-15-8, rising to control 51.4% of the shot attempts at 5-on-5, delivering on Murray’s vision and rewarding his patience in not trading away players at the deadline.
It’s a confidence that should resonate in Ottawa’s dressing room. How could it not?
As for the Canadiens, they worked their own magic as an underdog against Tampa Bay and Boston in last year’s playoffs. They fell short in the role against the Rangers in the Eastern Conference Finals. They appear to be a group that thrives on being underestimated, and for that, Ottawa might present the perfect challenge to them as a first-round opponent.
Not that they’ll admit it.
“No matter who we’re going to face, we have to focus on ourselves,” said Lars Eller, who was one of the central figures that helped launch the contemporary rivalry between the Canadiens and Senators.
“I don’t really care who we play,” P.K. Subban brashly stated in his post-game comments Saturday. “We gotta beat everybody to win the Stanley Cup.”
Therrien’s under no illusions.
“It’s going to be a very taxing series,” he said after the Canadiens wrapped their impressive season. It would seem the media, the fans and everyone else in hockey agrees.
