It is a perfectly reasonable assessment of the Montreal Canadiens that they are recipients of a long and lingering tongue kiss from the gods. It is equally rational to remind Habs fans in their moment of glorious triumph that the gods are treacherously profligate trollops who distribute their drooly favors indiscriminately and without a moment's thought for whomever they kissed last.
But that's tomorrow's broken heart. In the immediate moment, the hyperplucky Habs are the charmed ones, and rarely more so than Monday night in the seventh game of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Buffalo, in Buffalo, before the most beloved and never rewarded fan base on the continent. Months of indomitable Sabre-hood boiled down to one last superb performance foiled in the end by the impish Alex Newhook.
Newhook's wrister from the left side, epically described by ESPN's Ray Ferraro as "a nothing play; there's nothing going on," delivered with the considerable help of a fly-by screen by linemate Jake Evans, beat Buffalo goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen over his glove, and gave the Gallic upstarts their second consecutive Game 7 road win—very much against the run of play in both the game and the calendar year.
The goal itself came off a very nothing-esque turnover inside the Montreal zone and taken into the Buffalo end by a quite unimpeded Alexandre Carrier. He dropped it off to Newhook, who had already won Game 7 of the Tampa series with a goal nine minutes from the end of regulation, and his goal seemed to come as a great surprise to the entire world. Buffalo, which had fallen behind 3-1 in Game 6 before scoring seven consecutive goals, fell behind 2-0 in the first 15 minutes last night, but from that moment outshot the Canadiens, 32-14 and played most of the rest of the night in Jakub Dobes's face. Tying the game 2-2 with 13:33 to play almost surely proved that Buffalo, having been the better team most of the evening, would be rewarded as better teams usually are in Game 7.
That is "usually," as in "less often than you might think." The longer the third period went on without the Sabres' coup de grace, the less Buffalo's chances of survival became because overtime operates on its own rules and, well, the gods' most promiscuous instincts. And when the pucker finally came, Newhook was there to accept it as though it had always been meant for him. He has scored a series winner in Tampa on a night when the Habs had only nine shots on goal, and he has done so here with little more in the way of clues as to his importance in club history.
In doing so, he put the Habs closer to a Stanley Cup than they have been in a normal (read: non-pandemic year) season since 1993. They have replaced the Sabres as the NHL's Cinderella, and have taken on the swelling hopes of two nations: Canada, and French-speaking Canada.
And what is their reward for all this charmed living? The brutish jackboot of history, or as it is otherwise known, the Carolina Hurricanes. More precisely, the best-rested-playoff-team-in-NHL -history Carolina Hurricanes. Carolina has benefited in part by the tortuously silly playoff bracket, but facts are facts and wins are wins—they are the first team to sweep successive best-of-seven series since 1969, and have played eight games in the last 36 days. That's eight games played and four weeks off, a towering tribute to the virtues of excellence as the gateway to laziness. Any Cane not currently healthy is either hopelessly wrecked or simply uninterested in trying to get better.
Moreover, the Canadiens are the 12th team in NHL history to survive two initial seven-game series, and only one of the other 11 survived the third series. If they're not wrung out after all these flirtations with extinction, they and the gods who have nurtured them against all odds will be tested in a very different way by the most extreme example of rest-vs.-rust in continental history. We dare not rule out Montreal as a spent force, because Dobes has shown all the instincts of a stand-on-your-head goalie for the big moment, and because Newhook has That Thing about him.
But be careful not to forget the haunting words of Ray Ferraro: a nothing play. You can believe that this is the road to a parade if you choose, but truth be told, it's not the way to bet. In the end, trust the gods to abandon their new toy without warning, and maybe in the middle of a slow dance. The way gods like to do.
