Tuesday night’s wild game in Montreal was like a great smoked meat sandwich — piles and piles of goodness in the middle.
Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final could be remembered for a few things, many of which occurred during 20 minutes that saw six goals, one hook, bad acting and, through it all, no timeouts.
Just by way of a refresher, the Habs held a 2-1 lead after the first frame and scored twice more before the seven-minute mark of the second. At that point, everybody started preparing their boarding passes for Game 6 in New York. At the Toronto sports bar where this scribe lightly imbibed, high fives quickly became the order of the day for Habs fans who’d staked their territorial claim to what would typically be Maple Leafs turf.
After Montreal’s fourth goal, scored by Rene Bourque, Blueshirts coach Alain Vigneault relieved Henrik Lundqvist of his responsibilities, replacing New York’s crease “King” with Cam Talbot. Lundqvist must’ve felt like a past nightmare had come to revisit him because, prior to posting two solid wins in games 1 and 2 of the series, the Bell Centre had—for whatever reason—been a house of horrors for the Swedish stopper. (It was also, oddly, the fourth time Lundqvist has been pulled in a game that could potentially clinch a playoff series for New York.)
Vigneault’s decision to yank Hank sure struck a chord with his team. Two minutes and fifty-four seconds after Bourque’s goal, the Rangers cut into the lead when Rick Nash threw what was a completely harmless puck toward the net until Habs defenceman Josh Gorges made just a beautiful tip to knock it past his goalie, Dustin Tokarski. That sucked some air out of the building, but the gut punch was yet to come.
When Derek Stepan bagged his second marker of the game 2:18 after Nash’s tally, the game was officially back on. Then, the hockey gods gave Tomas Plekanec his much-needed comeuppance. Montreal’s reputation for diving is partially deserved, partially laughable considering no NHL team employs a completely splash-free roster. But for the second game in a row, Plekanec tried to draw a phantom penalty with a head-snap that was more flagrant than what you’d see if Kate Upton walked by a school bus full of teenage boys. From the penalty box, Plekanec had a great view of Chris Kreider scoring the power-play goal that capped a span of 4:24 in which the Rangers erased a three-goal lead.
Those high fives I mentioned before? They’d turned into table slams.
At that point, most of the world expected Montreal bench boss Michel Therrien to call timeout and settle his team down. But Therrien said after the game he didn’t get the sense his club was panicking, so it was play on.
Why did the Habs remain calm? Maybe they knew a guy who scored nine times all year—which pretty much matched the number of times he was a healthy scratch—would go out and bag his seventh marker of the playoffs to restore Montreal’s lead 58 seconds after it was taken away.
Yep, that was Bourque making a perfectly placed shot past Talbot to send the Bell Centre back into a frenzy. And wouldn’t you know it, the hats rained for Rene when he slammed home his third goal of the game to really get this series pointed back to New York.
But that was in the third period, when Rangers defenceman John Moore laid a brutal hit on Habs winger Dale Weise that will likely earn Moore a suspension and New York agitator Derek Dorsett headbutted Canadiens blue-liner Mike Weaver, which incited retaliation from Bourque in the form of a cross-checking major. Oh yeah, then P.K. Subban kissed Tokarski as he was coming off the ice.
All that occurred after the 40-minute mark but seemed relatively uneventful compared to everything that happened during the nuttiest 20 minutes of the playoffs.